NEWSFLASH! Indie guitar godhead Doug Martsch, having grown tired of the fast-paced corporate Idaho lifestyle, has relocated to the backwoods of Lou'sana (or Mizzou, depending on your sources), and decided to re-learn his chosen instrument from scratch. To accomplish this feat, he has studied under a succession of colorfully nicknamed Delta bluesman like "No-Toes" Willie Green and "Hodag" Rufus Dillingham. Martsch was last seen wearing denim overalls and a straw hat, sitting on a log in an undisclosed swampy location, plucking on a banjo with a half-empty jug marked "XXX" resting by his side.

Indeed, Doug Martsch has made his blues album. Since 1993, Martsch has been kicking out poptastic classic rock with his full-time unit Built to Spill, crafting crazily infectious hooks and ripping Malmsteen solos that'd fit nicely between The Who and Styx on your local oldster-demographic FM stop. In accordance with this image, it should surprise no one that Martsch has made this record-- the solo blues album is a textbook 70s move. So, those of you who've been waving those DOUG MARTSCH IS THE NEW CLAPTON signs for the last ten years can finally take your bow.

Fortunately, Now You Know is a different brand of blues homagery from Clapton's From the Cradle; this isn't your usual 12-bar cookie-cutter "my baby done me wrong" pretend-mourning. Instead, Martsch test-drives a Delta blues sound-- a style closer to the point in musical evolution where country/western and blues went their separate, segregated ways. His weary rasp is minimally accompanied. For the most part, we're offered only acoustic guitar, on which Martsch delivers beer-bottle slides and gooey bends played dirty enough to draw a clatter-rattle from the occasional string section. Drums? Sometimes, but always kept unobtrusively distant in the mix. Electric guitar? A few times in the record's second half, and sparsely implemented even then. In short, this record is about as intimate an impression as we're likely to get of Martsch outside of the short tour he's launching in support of it.

The music, of course, is strictly Blooze for Dummies-- or in this case, indie rockers-- and thus is probably best dealt with through comparison to the Built to Spill catalog. Through that lens, Martsch continues the sub-greatness trend of his recent work, releasing another record that fails to carry the weight of the canonical two-fer that lies at the center of his career. The blues outfit switches off and on from gimmick status (the thematically and sonically overweight "Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Jesus") to clever twist, but never seems to be the thesis statement of the album. Nearly every track begins with bluesy intentions, but only a handful (the pace-setter "Offer", and the gritty faux-field recording "Stay") stick with that dynamic for their duration.

Instead, the fretboard whines mostly serve as a contrast tool for segments that sound like, well, stripped-down acoustic Built to Spill-- and not just because Martsch's double-tracked nose-singing is too easily identifiable to allow for a complete departure. Witness the smooth segue from the almost bluegrassy hoedown finger-picking of "Window" into a more poppy electric segment a la "Time Trap"; or the Casio bubbling under the Delta-flavored first movement of "Lift" before it implodes into gentle There's Nothing Wrong with Love-style pop.

But hell, who's to bitch about Doug doing solo BTS-type stuff? Anyone who's heard the beautifully aching b-side loner version of "Kicked It in the Sun" can attest that it's Martsch's songs and delivery, not the raging guitars and drumkit, that gives the band's music its gladiatorial impact. And sure enough, the more familiar-sounding material is what really sticks amongst these eleven tracks. "Heart (Things Never Shared)" is a haunting, drumless rumination spiked with Mellotron orchestra and plunky vibraphone, while the double guitar slides of the instrumental "Instrumental" (straight shooter, that Doug) is a more rugged interpretation of recent BTS fare. Most impressive, though, is "Impossible", the first Martsch composition in years to give me that Perfect From Now On feeling, partially due to the cello accompaniment (why did he ever stop using that cello?), but mostly because of its slow build through multiple movements into cathartic, majestic guitar wank.

So what do we now know from Now You Know? Well, as is the norm for the publicity-shy Martsch, very little. Only Doug would release an experiment with new influences as the first record under his Christian name (not to mention that he admits picking up said influences only recently). But judging from the album's tendency to lapse into traditionally Spill-ish moments, even Doug realizes that the restrictive nature of the blues isn't the Southern faith healer he needs to shake off his creative rut. As a result, Now You Know remains a mere temporary dalliance with the Delta sound, nowhere near as uncomfortably colonialist as the blues workouts of his guitar deity ancestors, but not a particularly bona fide new direction, either.

-Rob Mitchum, September 24th, 2002