{"id":150274,"date":"2026-02-10T15:18:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/150274\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:18:06","slug":"built-to-spill-returns-to-culture-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/150274\/","title":{"rendered":"Built to Spill Returns to Culture Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

The indie rock institution Built to Spill<\/a> is not currently on tour. So what accounts for the band\u2019s surprise, one-off appearance at Fort Lauderdale\u2019s Culture Room last night? A working vacation, you might say: For three days prior, the trio joined Modest Mouse on its inaugural curated cruise leaving from Fort Miami, entertaining guests on the Norwegian Pearl to and from their port of call in the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow was the cruise?\u201d queried one fan between songs last night, eliciting a simple \u201cit was great\u201d from bassist Melanie Radford. The band, ever workmanlike, was not in Fort Lauderdale to rhapsodize about their maritime adventures but to blanket us in two and a half hours (!) of blissed-out guitar journeys where the contours of tightly structured indie pop wrestled agreeably with extended forays into the jam-band cosmos. This was my fifth Built to Spill show in Fort Lauderdale alone, and my eighth or ninth overall. Most of them ended after 14 or 15 songs, but this performance nearly hit Paul McCartney length, with the band truly leaning into its opener-free \u201cAn Evening With\u201d designation.<\/p>\n

One could argue that the set peaked early, in the form of second selection \u201cStop the Show,\u201d a psychedelic journey that lived up to its name, allowing plenty of room for singer\/guitarist Doug Martsch to stretch out musically, while Teresa Esguerra rained thunder down from the drum kit. But, like an impressive mountainous skyline, this proved to be the first of many such apices, including but not limited to \u201cStrange,\u201d wherein Martsch essentially sang with his guitar, blissed out and eyes closed; the twisty and elaborate solos that beefed up the early classic \u201cTwin Falls\u201d; and an absolutely epic \u201cConventional Wisdom,\u201d a marathon of Dead-at-Fillmore-West sprawl, where I could swear I astral-traveled at some point in the middle. So did Martsch, perhaps: This is what happens when you give this man a muscular rhythm section that can dig deep into a groove, allowing the frontman to sail into the sonic stratosphere.<\/p>\n

The performance also included \u201cFire to Dust,\u201d a new and unreleased tune whose folky shuffle offered a pleasant disruption from the eardrum-tickling volume of much of the show. It was followed by Radford on vocals for a smoldering cover of Heartless Bastards\u2019 \u201cThe Mountain\u201d\u2014the first time in Built to Spill\u2019s history, so far as I\u2019m aware, without a Martsch vocal. Consequently, the tune sounded like a different band\u2019s vibe, but by no means a lesser one. Martsch has always been the nucleus around which its various particles converge, but I\u2019d welcome more of Radford\u2019s creativity beyond her stellar contribution to the low end.<\/p>\n

The staccato power-pop of \u201cBig Dipper,\u201d as it often does, energized the packed-to-the-gills Culture Room crowd, with one front-row fan bringing along a stuffed brontosaurus in reference to a lyric in the song. But the most notable aspect of this performance may have been Martsch missing his cue to start the second verse because he was laughing with Radford\u2014a rare moment of obvious joy from a performer not known for foregrounded emotions in his playing. Needless to say, the enthusiasm was mutual.<\/p>\n

For more of Boca magazine\u2019s arts and entertainment coverage, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The indie rock institution Built to Spill is not currently on tour. So what accounts for the band\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":{"0":"post-150274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-fort-lauderdale","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}