“Carry the Zero” by Built To Spill

"Carry the Zero" is perhaps Built to Spill's best-loved song, the second single from Keep It Like a Secret, the band's fourth album, released on Warner Bros. in 1999. Doug Martsch produced it with Phil Ek, and he, Brett Nelson and Scott Plouf wrote it together.

Martsch stretches a bit of schoolroom arithmetic into a picture of a relationship gone numb, in that tumbling, talky way of his, while the guitars spiral and stack up like a suite. The Washington Post heard a guitar manifesto in three movements, and David Fricke praised the curveball wordplay. It's still a staple of their shows, and a younger crop of indie players took it to heart: Frances Quinlan covered it on the 2020 album Likewise, and Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast learned it as her first song on guitar.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.