Built To Spill's third album, Perfect From Now On, was the one that broke the back of Doug Martsch--to all intents and purposes, the man that is Built To Spill--over the knee of the music industry. After an ill-fated tour with the Foo Fighters, which proved that the pierced hordes of the post-grunge generation don't take easily to the subtleties of warm psychedelia, sun-flecked harmony and songs with 'cellos, he gave up on the spirit-crushing world tours, the bland press interviews and the brainless meet and greet merry-go-round. Martsch is alt-rock's Brian Wilson--and that's no fatuous comparison, in the face of the incandescent six-minute rock & roll ceremony of opener "Randy Describes Eternity", or the tirelessly inventive lo-fi psychedelic garage-rock of "Made Up Dreams". Perfect From Now On is an obvious precursor to the modern-day Great American Psychedelic Rock records: the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump or Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs. --Louis Pattison