- Record Label: Warner Brothers
- Release Date: Jul 10, 2001
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Entertainment WeeklyA lovely surprise. [17 Aug 2001, p.72]
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MagnetMartsch and Co. have dipped their bucket deep into the well of pop's past to create a recombinant, joyous sound that has few modern equals. [#51, p.87]
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Built To Spill relies on old-school verses/ choruses that demand humming just like that old-time rock 'n' roll...
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Built to Spill's latest album is mellower, dreamier, and more laidback than their previous recordings.... Yet the album is as much of a rock-guitar masterpiece as anything they've done.
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With their intensely layered harmonies, pounding rhythms and Martsch's own nasal drawl, songs like "Alarmed" and "You Are" are sublimely hummable pop gems.
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Not as immediate as Keep It Like A Secret, or as unified on the sonic surface, but with enough patience, Ancient Melodies of the Future resonates on a level that connects the band's body of work, while also taking it a step further.
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Built to Spill expands on the big sound that they crafted with Keep It Like a Secret.
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Ancient Melodies... acknowledges the importance of ongoing adult relationships. This may reduce the music's hipness quotient, but it greatly increases its emotional resonance.
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Martsch and his bandmates (bassist Brett Nelson and drummer Scott Plouf) continue to make dense, driving rock with good old-fashioned chords and melodies, and for this we should all be grateful.
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Once it establishes that it won't again radically update the Idahoans' sound, Ancient Melodies Of The Future reveals itself for what it is: a compilation of 10 more snaky, tricky, engrossing rock songs that continue in the vein of arguably Built To Spill's best album.
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Songwriter Doug Martsch again succeeds in striking an impressive balance between guitar-saturated bombast and impeccable melodic taste.
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For most other groups, it would be a winner, but for Built To Spill it's a slight comedown from their stellar streak.
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It lacks the freewheeling, go-for-broke gusto of its predecessors.
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SpinBuilt to Spill used to grab for structure, dividing albums between compact songs and epic gushers; now the songs themselves throb like big guitar solos. [Aug 2001, p.137]
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Has muddied sound in spots but careful, detailed and varied playing.
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It's not that the music is bad, per se, it's just not very interesting.
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Alternative PressWith Ancient Melodies, Built To Spill are concentrating more on developing a single idea rather than worrying about the patchworking of the past. This fails to play to Built To Spill's strength: their firm handle on alt-guitar dynamics. [Aug 2001, p.78]
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Ancient Melodies of the Future sounds more like "vaguely familiar melodies of the past," but so do some of the best albums in rock.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 13 out of 14
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Mixed: 0 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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KrisBJan 19, 2006
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yarightJan 10, 2005moody, melodic, beautiful, bliss......
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JulianE.Aug 16, 2002