Perfect from Now On is the third full-length album released by Built to Spill

Built to Spill

Built to Spill is an American indie rock band based in Boise, Idaho. The band has released seven full-length albums. Their most recent album, There Is No Enemy, was released on October 6, 2009.-History:...

, and the band's first major label (Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

) release. The line-up for the album was singer/guitarist Doug Martsch

Doug Martsch

Doug Martsch is an American musician. Martsch, a native of Boise, Idaho, is best known for his distinctive vocals and guitar style in the band Built to Spill. He has also worked with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening in The Halo Benders. Martsch's first band was Farm Days, with Andy Capps and Brett...

, bassist Brett Nelson

Brett Nelson

Brett Nelson is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter best known as the bassist for the indie rock band Built to Spill....

, and drummer Scott Plouf. It was recorded at the Avast! Recording Company in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

 by Phil Ek

Phil Ek

Phil Ek is an American record producer, engineer and mixer. Ek began his career in Seattle, Washington, in the early 1990s recording live sound in clubs. He then moved into studio recording, recording small projects and demos for local bands. Around this time, Ek was frequently working with...

. Stylistically, the album was marked by its experimentation with longer song structures, philosophical lyrics, and the incorporation of cello.

The album was essentially recorded three times. The first time, Martsch attempted to play all the instruments except drums. He and Phil Ek were dissatisfied with the results, so Martsch brought in Nelson and Plouf and recorded the album again. However, these tapes were destroyed by heat when Ek was driving from Seattle to Boise to record additional overdubs. The band rehearsed some more, then recorded the album a third time. Perfect from Now On was released to widespread critical acclaim on January 28, 1997. Pitchfork.com ranked this album at #22 on its "Top 100 Albums of the 90s" list. http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/5923-top-100-albums-of-the-1990s/8/ It was re-released with a bonus track ("Easy Way") on vinyl in 2007.

In September 2008, the band embarked on a three-month tour to perform the album in its entirety.

Additional musicians

• Brett Netson - guitar
  Guitar
  The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
  
   on "Randy Described Eternity," "I Would Hurt a Fly," "Stop the Show," "Velvet Waltz," and "Out of Site"
• John McMahon - cello
  Cello
  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
  
   on "I Would Hurt a Fly," "Stop the Show," "Velvet Waltz," "Out of Site," and "Untrustable/Pt. 2 (About Someone Else)"
• Robert Roth - Mellotron
  Mellotron
  The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
  
   on "Made-Up Dreams," "Velvet Waltz," and "Untrustable/Pt. 2 (About Someone Else)"
• Peter Lansdowne - drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
   on "Made-Up Dreams

Track listing

1. "Randy Described Eternity" – 6:09
2. "I Would Hurt a Fly" – 6:15
3. "Stop the Show" – 6:26
4. "Made-Up Dreams" – 4:52
5. "Velvet Waltz" – 8:33
6. "Out of Site" – 5:33
7. "Kicked It in the Sun" – 7:32
8. "Untrustable/Part 2 (About Someone Else)" – 8:53

Sampling

Rapper Cage

Cage Kennylz

Chris Palko, better known by his stage name Cage, is an American rapper from New York City. He has released three studio albums and two extended plays. Cage is also the founder of the underground hip-hop supergroup called the Weathermen.-Early life:...

's song "Ballad of Worms" sampled "I Would Hurt a Fly". The song appeared on Eastern Conference All-Stars, Vol. 3 and Purple Rain Mix CD Vol. 1

External links

• Interview about the making of Perfect from Now On

• Retro tour info http://www.prefixmag.com/news/built-to-spill-to-play-perfect-from-now-on-this-fa/18855/