Built To Spill's new live album is fun to listen to, but not very necessary

'm not sure there needs to be a Built To Spill live album.

Sure, it's a thrill to hear frontman Doug Martsch's angular, sheet-metal-on-concrete guitar leads, all complicated and full of evocative frustration. Sure, Built To Spill is one of the best live acts in independent rock. Sure, we love to hear the gale-force blasts of noise so carefully grafted with pop sensibility. Sure, most indie bands are too sloppy to deserve the live album treatment, while Built To Spill epitomizes songcraft and musicianship on and off the record.

That kind of reputation has spawned a mad live taping scene (sanctioned by the band), which means that lots of the fans already own high quality, full-length concert recordings. They also come out to the band's shows, which aren't hard to catch since they tour almost perpetually these days. Live compiles some choice cuts from the band's 1999 tours for Keep It Like A Secret, an album that wowed critics and kept the attention of the indie geeks that made them famous. At 73 minutes, Live is a good bit shorter than most Built To Spill live shows.

So who is this album really for? Is it the ardent fan with some concerts on CDR, or the casual fan who's never been to a show and wants to check the band out?

I'm not even sure Built To Spill have casual fans. But if they do, this album probably isn't the best introduction. It isn't a particularly good survey of their catalog, drawing almost exclusively from the band's two Warner Bros. releases. The non-Warner stuff, one song from 1997's There's Nothing Wrong With Love, and two cover songs, is the album's most exciting material, but it might not be worth the price of admission for most people. But hearing the band careen full-tilt through a twenty-minute version of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer" is a gripping, meditative pleasure. By the middle of the song, Martsch gets positively symphonic on the instrument, fluttering through arpeggios and knee-knocking chords that makes you almost forget the band has only one guitar player. It's a perfect live album conceit, a roiling sprawler that wouldn't make sense on any other kind of album.

So do we need a Built To Spill live album? This material is great as a snapshot of the band's onstage prowess. But it's also an incomplete, unfairly tailored snapshot, shorter than one of the band's live shows, and lacking the continuity and narrative power of one single concert. Live albums always have the onus to "beat the bootlegs," and while it's a great listen, this one simply doesn't.