Nowhere Nothin' Fuckup (Juno)

Built to Spill approach this track with the kind of controlled looseness that defined indie rock in the late nineties — guitars that interlock and then diverge, a rhythm section that anchors without constraining, and Doug Martsch's voice somewhere in the middle of everything, slightly reedy, slightly distracted, completely sincere. The song operates at a mid-tempo pace that feels like a long walk rather than a sprint, and the guitars occasionally open into longer passages that let the notes breathe and shimmer. Martsch's lyrical world has always been one of precise observation applied to ambiguous situations, and here the title's bluntness signals his method: plain language, complicated meaning, no resolution offered. The production is warm without being slick — there's a live quality to it, the sense that the band recorded something they might have played slightly differently another night. Built to Spill have never been a band interested in hooks above all else; they're interested in the feeling a song can sustain over four or five minutes, and this one sustains something melancholy and restless in equal measure. The Juno appearance introduced them to listeners who found the song's mood — not quite sadness, not quite irony — perfectly suited to the film's combination of emotional honesty and deflective humor. It's music for people who prefer their feelings at a slight angle. Best heard driving through a city at dusk, or doing something repetitive with your hands while your mind wanders somewhere you're not sure you want to go.