There Is No Enemy

Seasoned veterans of the indie scene, Built To Spill’s seventh studio album is as textured and sprawling as any of their best work, and that’s no easy feat after 17 years as a band. There Is No Enemy is surprisingly full of fresh ideas (shiny trumpets! willowy strings!), so don’t let the first track, “Aisle 13,” fool you. While it’s a neat and tidy BTS song that delivers the goods, it doesn’t offer anything really new — the song’s wallop would be felt more viscerally following, say, the mildly twangy “Hindsight” or the darkly beautiful “Nowhere Lullaby.” The somber strings on the latter and the slide guitar on the former make clear that this band is not resting on its laurels. Other highlights include the soaring “Good Ol’ Boredom," the bitter and raging “Pat,” the Neil Young/Crazy Horse-inspired howl of “Oh Yeah,” and the lulling and ruminative “Done.” As the set winds down, one gets the feeling There Is No Enemy is an expression, to some degree, of regret, or loss ... or resignation. Maybe the bright side is that great music can come from an early mid-life crisis.