This story originally appeared in our May 27-June 9 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch just keeps going. The Idaho native’s ragged guitar heroics and high-whine vocals — think Neil Young filtered through J. Mascis — have propelled nine studio albums over the last 34 years, each marked by its creator’s search for meaning in a world gone mad. Cue “Gonna Lose,” the lead track on the band’s most recent album, 2022’s “When the Wind Forgets Your Name,” an uncommonly compact riff fest featuring this admission from Martsch: “I’ve come to realize time’s all wrong/Answers materialize, then they’re gone/They were here, but the ones like that disappear/And they don’t come back.”
After years as a five-piece unit, Built to Spill has pared down to a trio for recent tours with Teresa Esguerra on drums and Melanie Radford on bass.
“I wanted to switch the lineup for many reasons,” Martsch said at the release of “When the Wind Forgets Your Name,” the band’s first for Sub Pop. “Each time we finish a record I want the next one to sound totally different. It’s fun to play with people who bring in new styles and ideas. And it’s nice to be in a band with people who aren’t sick of me yet.”
The current tour pulls from every era of the band’s history, from the psych-tinged guitar explorations of 1997’s “Perfect from Now On” to the sleeker, hook-laden elements of 1999’s “Keep it Like a Secret” to “Fire to Dust,” a new song that is likely to appear on the next Built to Spill album.
Sometimes it seems as if Martsch’s sonic missives could spill on forever. Likewise, his ability to choose ace touring partners continues — Cincinnati legends Wussy join Built to Spill as openers on six shows in the Midwest, including the stop at Ludlow Garage that occurred on May 17. Unfortunately, Wussy co-frontperson Chuck Cleaver was not there with his bandmates.
“Chuck fell … and obliterated his kneecap,” Wussy relayed recently on its Instagram page. “He has surgery soon and is doing good, but he isn’t gonna be able to come along for this run. It isn’t the way anyone wanted it, but we are looking forward to the surprise of playing this one time in a strange new way. We hope you understand and share our calloused enthusiasm.”
For the uninitiated, Wussy formed as a duo when ex-Ass Pony Cleaver and then-unknown Lisa Walker started collaborating in 2001. A full band eventually materialized, as did a string of inspired albums marked by the duo’s distinctive lyrical tales and intertwining vocals. The fivesome’s most recent record, 2024’s aptly titled “Cincinnati, Ohio,” is a melancholic masterpiece — atmospheric, reverb-laden tunes haunted by the 2020 death of longtime bandmate/pedal-steel guitarist John Erhardt.
The album’s centerpiece is “Inhaler,” a wistful, five-minute exploration of a world altered by loss, as Walker’s ever-expressive voice delivers a realization (“It’s time to get up and fight the terror/You chalk it up to marvelous error”) before suggesting the best way to cope: “And nothing else to do but turn the radio on again.”
This article appears in May 27 – June 9, 2026.