Battles - Mirrored

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Not too long ago, I noticed that the “indie” movement had suddenly exploded. Without warning, everyone, no matter what sex, chose to start looking like Gordon Freeman in a sweater and decided to start using the camera their grandma had thrown away, because it was too rusty and depressing, to make “warm” photos to post on Facebook. Everyone was selling their iPod to buy Beatles LPs, and everywhere people only talked of Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire whilst making romanticist posts on Tumblr that managed to simultaneously sound insightful and naive. Grass went from poisonous green to unhealthy greenish-yellow. Skin went from spray-tanned orange to “radioactive meltdown” dirty-yellow. Glasses and facial hair expanded and lo-fi became all the rage. I think I ought to mention smoking pipe somewhere as well...

I myself didn't follow the movement much, and that applied to the indie music accordingly, as I furiously, relentlessly and tirelessly didn't follow the movement much, meaning that I know as much about it as Pluto knows about still being considered a planet (it probably never knew anyway, as planets tend to be pretty dumb, but I digress). Still, from what I do know about it, and I cannot stress enough that it's very little, the music seems to defend the notion of sounding very pleasant and pretty much ignoring most other things. Battles, on the other hand, fuse this notion with the intricacy and rhythmic candy of jazz and math rock as well as some experimental leanings to create a form of music that I can relate to much better than to any of those genres alone.

The tracks usually revolve around a few core ideas, adding and subtracting layers as they trod through their track length, and these layers are one of the main things Battles have going for them on this debut. The layers make some of the most fun and captivating arrangements I've heard yet, simultaneously spastic and restrained, bombarding you with information without ever becoming confusing, every musician providing space for the others to be creative but without ever turning into a mess. And on top of that, the occasional and incredible vocals, which make the second main thing Battles have going for them on this debut. The way the vocals are alternately controlling and being controlled of/by the surrounding music. And the sound of the vocals themselves is nothing short of brilliant. Their unstable nature, the way they randomly change in pitch, like if Tyondai Braxton had a Helium canister and a valve inside his lungs.

As for progression, the songs are constructed in a "building blocks" fashion, and that begins to really hurt the album toward the latter half. I'm not saying, though, that the material presented on the second half is in any way worse than the material on the first in terms of quality. It's just that the lack of dynamics that originates from the songwriting approach means that there is too little flow, meaning that as the songs become more introspective (yeah, right) and less energetic, the album becomes more tiring and seems to start falling apart. The core ideas are still there, though, and some of these will definitely stay with the listener forever, such as the last 3 minutes of "Rainbow", or the gigantic yet compressed soundscape on "Race : Out", and, like I said, they are what makes the album great.

The same things that could have ended up ruining Mirrored are what make me leave indie music as a last resort. The albums of the style that I have so far listened to are musical, but lacked anything that would make the music interesting on an intellectual level. It's like instead of containing songs, they contain "musical experiences", something to consume and discard and reconsume. For some moments in the album length it really seemed like Battles were falling into that trap too, but they have managed to escape the temptation, and the resulting work is a must hear for anyone who hasn't heard it yet.

Standout tracks:

Atlas
Ddiamondd
Leyendecker
Rainbow
Race : Out