Built to Spill Pours It on at Orpheum

By JED GOTTLIEB

BUILT TO SPILL, with DINOSAUR JR. and MEAT PUPPETS

At the Orpheum, Saturday night.

“Perfect from Now On” is Built to Spill’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” The Idaho band has made equally intense and cathartic records, but maybe because of album’s amazing gravity – it’s a quagmire of eight precious pop tunes hidden in epic, swampy and symphonic overdriven guitars – “Perfect” is the cult’s favorite.

So when Built to Spill leader Doug Martsch announced his band would being doing the 1997 album in its entirety on a September tour culminating with Saturday’s date at the Orpheum, the cult rallied – and the underground band nearly sold-out the theater.

But Doug Martsch isn’t Roger Waters. A perfectionist in the studio, Martsch stubbornly refuses to bring professional polish to his live show – which isn’t surprising considering the bald, paunchy, affable genius has never embraced the whole rock-star thing. This means that between each brilliant, sonic tidal wave, there was a minute and a half of re-tuning guitars and putzing around onstage. “Perfect from Now On” is an album you want to fall into completely, and the long pauses between songs disturbed the dream.

Bumpy momentum and lack of rock-star attitude aside, the band did an excellent job of re-creating each little sonata. “I Would Hurt a Fly,” pushed early on by John McMahon’s haunting cello, lapsed into the expected feedback squall. “Stop the Show” repeated the formula with more ghostly cello, turning into a slamming crescendo three guitars deep.

But it was the final two songs – the only two not from “Perfect” – that were the set’s most dynamic. “Going Against Your Mind,” the nine-minute opener from 2006′s “You in Reverse,” gave the show some much needed aggression. “Car,” which is often exploded into a 20- minute jam but remained precious and small, was instantly recognized, eliciting a 2,000-strong, show-ending singalong.

Openers Massachusetts’ own Dinosaur Jr. and Arizona’s Meat Puppets, both heralded ’80s indie bands, reminded the kids that Martsch’s guitar has awesome antecedents.

Dinosaur Jr. boss J. Mascis jacked up the volume on his 7-foot- tall stack of amps and bled the ears of some elated youngsters. The trio – now reunited with wayward bassist Lou Barlow – pulled from early albums and its latest, 2007′s “Beyond,” but was most comfortable performing its mid-period stuff. On “Out There,”"Feel the Pain” and the Cure cover “Just Like Heaven,’ Mascis played the guitar with passion and mischievous intent.

Best known for being covered by Nirvana on (and helping the band out with) its “MTV Unplugged” performance, the Meat Puppets offered up a set of Southwestern-fried, powerful indie rock, including a sloppy, hardcore version of “Lake of Fire.”

– jgottlieb@bostonherald.com

Originally published by By JED GOTTLIEB.

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