“I Would Hurt A Fly” by Built To Spill

"I Would Hurt a Fly" comes off Perfect From Now On, Built to Spill's third album and their first for a major label, Warner Bros., and it's Doug Martsch's song top to bottom: he wrote it, sings it, plays guitar and Moog, and helped Phil Ek mix it. Brett Netson adds a second guitar and Scott Plouf plays drums and percussion, with Ek producing and recording at the Avast! Recording Company in Seattle.

Getting the album onto tape took three tries. Martsch first tried to play everything but the drums himself, then brought in a bassist and Plouf and started over, only for that second set of tapes to be ruined by heat on Ek's drive from Seattle to Boise. The third pass is the one that stuck, all long, winding structures and lyrics wrestling with mortality and the folly of chasing perfection.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.