Untethered Moon
Built to Spill are the AC/DC of indie rock: Their catalog is full of one melancholy LP, jam-packed with guitar pyrotechnics, after another. But frontman and six-string virtuoso Doug Martsch knows how to vary the formula just enough to keep things interesting. On their eighth LP, and first since 2009, Martsch explores 50 shades of disappointment on “Never Be the Same” and “Another Day,” wraps his anxieties up in post-Hendrix guitar swirl on “When I’m Blind” and builds a stomping, Crazy Horse-style jam about forgetting someone close to him on “C.R.E.B.” The album’s consistency is a testament to Martsch’s perfectionism (he scrapped a whole album in 2012) — and for that, we salute him.