Keep It Like a Secret is the fourth studio album released by American indie rock band Built to Spill, and their second for Warner Bros. Records. The initial tracks for the album were recorded in November 1997 at Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, Washington by Phil Ek, with overdubs recorded on mid-1998 at Avast! Recording Co. in Seattle, Washington. Keep It Like a Secret was released on February 2, 1999. The album spawned two EPs: Carry the Zero and Center of the Universe. Background After feeling burned out from constructing the lengthy songs on his previous album, Perfect from Now On, Doug Martsch made a conscious decision to write shorter, more concise songs for Keep It Like a Secret. Recording Many of the songs on the album originated from a week's worth of band jam sessions in Boise. During these marathon jam sessions, which could last up to five hours at a time, Martsch used a foot pedal that triggered a tape machine to begin recording. He would later comb through the hours of recorded music and find parts that he liked, methodically building them into songs. The song "You Were Right" features a collage of famous lyrics from songs by The Rolling Stones ("You Can't Always Get What You Want"), The Doors ("The End"), Jimi Hendrix ("Manic Depression"), Bob Dylan ("A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"), Bob Marley ("Three Little Birds"), Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven"), Kansas ("Dust in the Wind"), Bob Seger ("Against the Wind"), and Pink Floyd ("Another Brick in the Wall"). "You Were Right" almost didn't make the album due to perceived copyright issues. At the last minute, Warner Bros. Records secured permission for the band to use the lyrics. In a 1999 interview with The A.V. Club, Martsch described how he wrote the song: "...I came up with the chorus, 'You were wrong when you said, 'Everything's gonna be all right,' and then I decided the verse would be, 'You were right when you said...' something more pessimistic. And then I knew immediately that it was going to be a bunch of clichés, and I decided to use other people's clichés." Reception Keep It Like a Secret received mostly positive reviews when it was first released. On Metacritic, the album has a score of 79 out of 100, indicating "generally positive reviews." Pitchforks Jason Josephes praised the album, writing "at the risk of hopping on a