I can’t remember when I first heard of Battles; it would have to have been before mid-2003. I’m going to say it was mid-2002 or so, because I was doing some digging and looking for anything on Ian Williams. I was a huge fan of Storm and Stress at that point, just coming down from the high of obsessively listening to Don Caballero and appreciating the direction Williams was taking with his music. Of course, I was unaware that Storm and Stress was completely kaput at that point (and still can’t figure out why–I remember reading some rumor that the bassist slept with the drummer’s wife, but that’s neither hither nor yon), so you can imagine my impatience. If you’re reading this, you know I’m something of an obsessive about the music I love and to which I listen–if I love something, I have to know everything there is to know about it, and if I really love it, I turn it into my oxygen, my fucking life’s blood, and I immerse myself in it and make it a part of me. That’s how I was about Storm and Stress, how I was about American Don (the last Don Caballero album–fuck you, Damon Che), and how I generally was about Williams. So, when I heard that he finally had a new project going on, and it involved the drummer from Helmet and the son of Anthony Braxton, I was, if you’ll excuse the expression, jazzed, and I couldn’t wait for something to come out. But that’s exactly what I had to do. The band had set up a website by that point, barely updated and with a bunch of cool photos and nothing else, and no record label or magazine seemed to be printing anything about them, despite their status as a “supergroup” (an annoying label that persists to this day). I checked that website pretty much constantly for months, and annoyed the living shit out of record store clerks (mostly Jason Buehler at O3 Records) asking when the band was going to release their EP’s. When I finally, FINALLY got EP C in my hands, it was like my brain melted; it was one of the first times I’d anticipated a record so thoroughly and it had been exactly what I’d wanted it to be.
I saw Battles a couple times during that time period–both opening spots, both at well-known-yet-smaller venues (Dante’s, Berbati’s Pan), and one thing stood out about them other than the fact that they really ought to have been headlining: that there was an interesting disconnect between them and the audience. Drummer John Stanier’s perpetual scowl, Dave Konopka’s determined focus on manipulating his pedals and Ian Williams’ spaced-out seeming disinterest made it seem, regardless of whether or not it was true, like the band were really simply there performing for their own reasons, powering through challenging songs simply because they could. Having come to the band through Ian Williams, I was simultaneously not surprised and nonetheless let down a bit by the approach. Naturally, I gravitated toward Tyondai Braxton, not only because he was the youngest member of the group (close to my age), not only because he was the only member of the group that sang, not only because he was the only member of the band who seemed to be of mixed ethnicity, but because he was the only member of the group that actually engaged the audience on any level. Even off-stage, he was the closest thing the band had to a frontman: I ran into him walking across a bridge immediately before my first time seeing the band, and he was not only engaging and funny, but seemed genuinely pleased to be in a band, and grateful to have fans in the first place.
Anyone that actually cares enough to have read this far will undoubtedly know how this story continues: three-plus years after they debut, Battles signs to Warp and releases Mirrored, incorporating lyrical vocals into their sound and thus gaining the interest of hipsters that need an ostensible frontpersonality to gravitate toward in order to infer some stylistic sense to ape or rate. Pitchfork loves the album and the band finally gets the love and respect they deserve, and suddenly the band’s playing bigger venues. Braxton finally finds the time to release Central Market to considerable acclaim, establishing a foothold in the realm of modern-day composers and warping people’s ideas of what composed “new music” can be. Battles takes their usual forever-and-a-day to record the follow-up to Mirrored, culminating in Braxton deciding he wanted to leave the band rather than embark on an epic world tour and neglect his solo career again.
Interestingly, despite my affinity for Braxton (and my appreciation for his solo music, which had grown in the many years between Battles releases into something greater than my love for Williams’ work), I actually thought his leaving Battles could still be good for the band. With Braxton emerging as the charismatic focus of the group’s energies, the band’s direction quickly seemed to be limiting some of the other members to side player roles whether it was Braxton’s intent (which was unlikely) or not. Williams seemed to be particularly relegated by the situation; despite his unmistakable stamp (to anyone who knew or cared) on many of Battles’ compositions, his disassociative personality often got lost, and his notoriously abstract performances, while mercifully reined in by necessity among the band’s taught compositions, occasionally seemed out-of-place or needlessly dissonant. Moreover, Braxton, while a phenomenally interesting live performer, never seemed to fit the mold of indie-rock icon; his own contributions to the Battles ethic were meticulously crafted, more suited as part of an ensemble playing longer-form pieces than what were, in essence, pop rock songs. While he clearly seemed to enjoy playing with the band, the responsibilities intrinsic to being a pop rock frontman clearly weren’t the ones he wanted to continue facing. While there’s no doubt in my mind that Battles could have continued to release great music with Braxton (their last song with him being a great example), his departure meant the band could go back to being the instrumental combo they began as and still sound as complete as they did with Braxton.
That is, until I heard the band was going to use other voices to complete songs begun with Braxton.
Leave a Reply