I actually prefer Keep It Like a Secret but there is no denying Perfect From Now On has no equal in Built To Spill's catalog. For me, it does not get as much play time as Keep It Like a Secret or There's Nothing Wrong With Love but in terms of the sheer elegance and texture and beauty of the instrumentation and just the album in general, I would say it's their most impressive "achievement".
I think the fact that the initial recordings burned up in the back of Phil Elk's car and caused them to have to re-record all those guitar parts was actually beneficial to the albums sound (all that painstaking work aside) as it just allowed for another facet of the musicality to unfold; in other words, having to rerecord meant they had another chance to do it all over again, just with the added knowledge and experience of having done all of it already before. I cannot say if the guitars sound the way they do as a direct result of the first set of tapes igniting into flame but there is something so entrancing about the guitar on this album; like a deeply complex myriad of overlapping sound and the texture of those sounds coalescing together. Maybe it sounded just as it does now on the first go around but there seems to be something timeless about the instrumentation on this album that I think may have come about as a result of all that guitar playing and all the hours devoted to recording the guitars that it just culminated onto/into eight songs in such a perfect way; a PERFECT way.
I actually prefer Keep It Like a Secret but there is no denying Perfect From Now On has no equal in Built To Spill's catalog. For me, it does not get as much play time as Keep It Like a Secret or There's Nothing Wrong With Love but in terms of the sheer elegance and texture and beauty of the instrumentation and just the album in general, I would say it's their most impressive "achievement".
I think the fact that the initial recordings burned up in the back of Phil Elk's car and caused them to have to re-record all those guitar parts was actually beneficial to the albums sound (all that painstaking work aside) as it just allowed for another facet of the musicality to unfold; in other words, having to rerecord meant they had another chance to do it all over again, just with the added knowledge and experience of having done all of it already before. I cannot say if the guitars sound the way they do as a direct result of the first set of tapes igniting into flame but there is something so entrancing about the guitar on this album; like a deeply complex myriad of overlapping sound and the texture of those sounds coalescing together. Maybe it sounded just as it does now on the first go around but there seems to be something timeless about the instrumentation on this album that I think may have come about as a result of all that guitar playing and all the hours devoted to recording the guitars that it just culminated onto/into eight songs in such a perfect way; a PERFECT way.