BATTLES (London Scala, 16/05/07)
After a run of rather disappointing shows, I approached Wednesday’s Battles show with a degree of trepidation. Despite the fact that everyone I know who’s seen them have been unanimous in their praise for this New York quartet, I’ve found the majority of their recorded material rather underwhelming. Yet the almost reverential hype around their live shows piqued my interest, so I headed Scala-wards to see what all the fuss was about. The supports certainly didn’t inspire confidence; Clark bored me to tears with his insipid, dated electro piped straight out of a laptop, and Four Tet’s “DJ Set,” consisting of Kieran Hebden occasionally coming out of the dressing room to pick his nose and put on some mind-numbingly pedestrian beats, begged the question, “how much is he getting paid?”
Needless to say, the headliners had to be something special to redeem the evening. And special they were. In fact, they were one of the top five live acts I’ve seen in my life, and as someone who’s seen more than his fair share of top-tier musicians, that’s pretty fucking good! They’re hard to pin down musically; they employ wonky time-signatures and unusual rhythmic patterns a la 65daysofstatic intertwined with the mesmerising grooves of the Earlies, flavoured with avant-garde knob-twiddling and vocodor-ed vocals. In many ways they reminded me of a less skinny-jeaned version of Broken Social Scene- they make a huge fuck-off racket that slowly coalesces into something that unexpectedly makes perfect sense. What makes them special though is their top-notch musicianship- they seem almost to almost effortlessly play in perfect sync no matter how odd or complex the rhythmic demands of their music and it’s all executed with a relentless energy, enhanced by the fact they play so close to the front of the stage. The drummer, in particular, deserves an award for his frankly awe-inspiring performance- within ten minutes he was completely drenched in sweat, and by the mid-set mark he looked like he was going to die but he still hit those drums so hard you could see the sawdust flying off. The highlight naturally was the mindblowing “Atlas” but despite their experimental nature, the band only rarely ruined the flow of the set by descending into atonal BSS-style wankery. But that said, even the few moments of pretentiousness couldn’t ruin such a spectacular performance and when it all ended, you could just hear everyone turning to their friends and saying “that was AWESOME!” It’s a shame that their inaccessible albums will put a lot of people off, but hopefully word-of-mouth will give this incredibly exciting band the audience it totally deserves.
Oh, and the keyboardist started beat-boxing at one point. It was fucking awesome.
