suiting up for battles

Sometimes it just takes a while before a band sticks with me. I’m notoriously bad, for example about rejecting people based on their names before I even hear their music.

A few weeks ago Eric J. Lawrence (there he is again) handed me a compilation of new music coming through the station that was starting to catch some buzz. One of the songs was Battles’ “Ice Cream.” The below video has since blown up on the blogosphere as something totally trippy and weird but also undeniably exciting and awesome (the girl dancing in echo of herself is just plain rad). The Fox is Black’s Bobby Solomon summed up it’s hip factor very nicely.

BATTLES - Ice Cream from CANADA on Vimeo.

It’s appalling for me to think about saying now, but I had pretty much written them off based on this song. For whatever reason, I figured I didn’t get down with what they were putting out because this one didn’t grab me right away.

So when Eric J. handed me their newest album Gloss Drop as a “strong recommendation,” I took it knowing that he’s usually right about what I’ll like (see previous EJL post). That same day, I went home to find the leading post on La Blogotheque was A Take Away Show with Battles.

At that point there were just too many people whose opinions I respect telling me it was awesome for me to ignore it.

What I found was that, while “Ice Cream” is great in its own way, it doesn’t begin to capture the entirety of Battles’ sound. Listening to their songs like “Futura” and “Inchworm” are like looking at Pollock paintings. There are innumerable textures, colors, and layers of things to hear. If these songs were tangible, you’d be able to take a magnifying glass and examine them for hours finding new nooks and crannies to appreciate with every sweep.

It’s in this way that La Blogotheque gets it SO right (like they always do). Their video for Wall Street has an entire section with cutaways of the different band members doing different things as well as a blank dark space. These rotate and change and appear and disappear and create a spastic and yet totally appropriate and controlled visual representation of Battles’ music.

Battles | Wall Street | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

So EJL wins again. Battles is going to live in my CD player until I can peel myself away from studying it like a science project.