Built to Spill gets back to foundation

For nearly 25 years, Idaho’s Built to Spill has specialized in twisty, wiry, guitar-driven rock jams, songs that are musically complex but sparsely versed: It’s not unusual for frontman Doug Martsch to first open his mouth halfway through an eight-minute track. The band started life as a trio, though you’d never know with how huge their instruments sound on recordings.

The lineup had expanded to five members in recent years, but Built to Spill is touring as a three piece again. Founder and guitarist Martsch has been recording and touring with bassist Jason Albertini and drummer Steve Gere, and it’s an arrangement that allows for fewer moving parts.

“A lot of the old stuff, the first three or four records or so, was done when we were a three piece and we’d embellish things in the studio,” Martsch said during a recent phone interview. “I have my own basic idea of how the song is and which guitar parts are the essential ones.”

The Boise band performs at the Knitting Factory on Wednesday – it was last here in 2013 – touring behind its eighth studio album, “Untethered Moon.”

“We tried to make the songs (on the new album) work with just a three piece,” Martsch said. “The songwriting has turned in that direction since these guys have been in the band. There are a lot of older songs we can’t do, and that’s tough … It’s a different experience, but I’m having a good time.”

“Untethered Moon” sometimes functions as a musical document of the current chapter in Built to Spill’s long history: It touches on themes of rebirth and renewal, and it explores the challenge of looking to the past while simultaneously trying to move forward.

On the opener “Old Songs,” Martsch reminisces about the feelings that come flooding back when he listens to an old album (possibly one of his own): “All night we listened to their second record / It had all these songs / Sounded like we’re in this together.” Later, in the song “On the Way,” he concedes, “There’s nothing in the past / But that’s all right.”

“I don’t think anything’s very purposeful as far as the theme of the record,” Martsch said. “Sometimes I’ll go back to an idea I’ve had that just fits into a couple different songs lyrically. Some of it’s just subconscious that I just sing out. I don’t think I’m trying to communicate anything through my lyrics, but maybe I’m communicating a lot more than I think I am.”

Those lyrical themes carry over to the recording process itself, because many of the songs on “Untethered Moon” were originally put to tape with a previous lineup and then scrapped.

“The songs were kind of not working. There were a lot of loose ends to them,” Martsch said. “We recorded them, and I thought the rhythm section did a great job, but I was having a hard time filling it in and making it flow nicely with the spaces I’d left. It was a little unplanned, and sometimes that works and something cool happens, but nothing cool seemed to be happening.”

That resulted in a six-year gap between “Untethered Moon” and its predecessor, 2009’s “There Is No Enemy,” but the wait ended up being beneficial.

“That was the best thing about those guys quitting the band, is that the record got scrapped,” Martsch said. “We reworked the songs and made them a lot stronger, more complex, better.”

Martsch says the band’s current set list features most of the tracks from “Untethered Moon,” as well as a handful of brand new songs and some outtakes and B-sides from the newest LP. The band will also perform six or seven tunes from its older albums – at least the ones that can be played with only three musicians.

“But the old songs are kind of a pain in the ass to me right now,” Martsch said. “I want to get working on new stuff. The band’s been around a really long time, so we’ve become sort of a nostalgia band or something, and I know that’s the experience a lot of people want to have when they come to a show. But right now we’re in a really good, vital period in the band, so I’m more excited about working on new songs and seeing what lies ahead.”