Built to Spill occupy a curious realm of popular music: They are hailed as elder statesmen of the independent rock scene—they’ve been together for over a decade now—and yet they remain largely under the radar while maintaining a degree of autonomy unparalleled by most artists on a major label. And this is how Doug Martsch seems to like it. Martsch is the nucleus, resident guitar hero, and master architect of Built to Spill’s signature pop-meets-jam-band aesthetic. Theirs is a sound informed by artists as diverse as Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., and Neil Young, and Built to Spill in turn have influenced their contemporaries, most notably Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse. Martsch spoke with Saturday Night Magazine regarding the band’s newest LP, You in Reverse, which marks the band’s first output in five years. It is a fine release, an album many critics are calling a return to form after 2001’s uneven Ancient Melodies of the Future. Talking with Saturday Night Magazine, the soft-spoken Martsch was candid and appears to be refreshingly out of touch with the trappings of this digital age.

You suffered a detached retina recently, preventing you from playing SXSW. How’s the eye? It’s fine now, thanks. I injured it playing basketball.

As a band, Built to Spill has slowly evolved in the sense that you’ve established permanent members for your more recent albums, as opposed to your earlier work, when the idea was to have a revolving group of musicians play and tour. Was this a natural, necessary development? Natural yes, necessary… not really. It just progressed that way. When we began working on this album, we just jammed together and the songs came from that process.

As a well-established band with certain sonic idiosyncrasies, at this point, do you feel limited by what Built to Spill are expected to sound like? Not at all. I don’t feel that we have a set sound. People might say we do, and in some ways they might be right, but I’ve never felt bound by any limitations when it comes to the music I write.