In Battles, Anything Goes
“Race: In,” the opening track on Battles’ debut album, Mirrored, begins with a steady drumbeat. Then an escalating guitar line enters. A loop of whistling, another guitar, keyboards, and sleigh bells all join the fray in a steady coalescence. Like many of the other songs on Mirrored—an album that drummer John Stanier describes as a “simmering volcano”—“Race: In” toes the line between being restrained and chaotic.
A veritable supergroup, Battles consists of Stanier (also of Helmet, Tomahawk, and Mark of Cain), guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm and Stress), guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka (Lynx) and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Tyondai Braxton. With such illustrious resumés, it would be easy for the group to rely on their reputations to power them to success—but there’s more nuance to Battles than that.
Battles began in New York four and a half years ago, when Williams’ previous band, Don Caballero, broke up and he moved to the city. Williams and Braxton were fans of each other’s work and started a collaboration that involved a choir of 10 women. Williams soon brought in Konopka, whom he knew from Chicago, and they started to play a few shows together. When Stanier ran into Williams on the street in Brooklyn, he too joined the group.
“Ian mentioned what he was doing and this choir of girls, which obviously sparked my interest,” Stanier says. “A choir of 10 girls—of course I was interested in playing with them.” However, the ladies were not around for long, and, according to Stanier, “the group kind of went from being an art project and turned into an actual band.”
Although the group was a “real band,” Battles still required a series of EPs and singles released in 2004 and over two years of non-stop touring to come into its own.
“It wasn’t one of those things where the first time we played together it was magic,” Stanier says. “It took a long time for it to get off the ground. When we started, we really didn’t know what it was going to be. There was no rush to be this kind of band—no master plan.”
Despite the players’ undeniable rock backgrounds, their recently released EP, Tonto+, features contributions and remixes from rapper Joell Ortiz, techno act The Field, and electronic musician Four Tet. On tracks like “TIJ” and “Tonto” from Mirrored, dueling, interlocking guitars are accentuated by animated keyboard notes, all while Stanier beats the living daylights out of his drum kit.
Although there is some serious riffing going on, none of it sounds quite like average rock music—there is always something a little unfamiliar about the group’s sound. “I’d be stupid if I was just like: we’re a rock band, because it’s so vague,” stanier says. “But do you need some kind of label?”
Rock, electronic, experimental—call Battles anything you want. Just don’t use the m-words: “math rock,” a category that has followed the band since its inception.
“The term ‘math rock’ is lazy and bad journalism. It’s just the worst,” Stanier says. “Math rock is so gross. Ian’s old band [Don Caballero] basically invented math rock so I think he feels guilty about that. That scene kind of sucked, it was just a bunch of super-duper nerds. I want nothing to do with that scene.”
But Stanier himself acknowledges that when you make music that is different or that pushes boundaries, falling into the avant-garde and elitist trap is easy. “We walk that very thin line,” he says. “When we first met I thought it was cool but I had to ask them ‘Can we not fall into that avant-garde, Wire magazine wankery?’ I don’t wanna be in a band like that. But thankfully we escape being that.”
Upon entering the band, Stanier admits that neither he nor any of the other members had any idea of what they were going to do.
“One great thing about the way it started was that we got together and said ‘Let’s do something different and not put any rules on there,’ right off the bat,” Stanier says. “So it was a weird, blank-page, anything-goes kind of thing.”
For a band with such an aggressive name, the members of Battles tend to keep things jovial. Take, for example, Stanier’s answer to the question of whether the band has any pre-show rituals. “Before the show? Well no fucking Lord’s Prayer or anything like that, just beer.” Asked about the dress shirts the group tends to wear onstage, he says, “We’re classy guys. Not wearing a collared shirt onstage… well, that’s just tacky.”
It’s this irreverent, uninhibited, and balls-out attitude that allows Battles to pursue what they consider the most important part of performance: a good time. “The whole point is to have fun. I hope that’s the vibe that comes across,” he says.
Onstage, Battles certainly look like they’re having fun. At a show last month at Webster Hall the band bounced around, sweated through their collared shirts, gyrated, gesticulated to one another, and smiled, all while playing to a crowd that was half awed, half dancing. Over the past year, the band has toured almost non-stop, playing shows in Japan at the legendary Fuji Rock Festival, in South America, and all over Europe and the U.S. After such a whirlwind year, the band plans to take March and April off, then work on new material and begin touring again.
However, the group does try to stop themselves from going too far. “The only rule we have is that what we’re playing can be super crazy, but it still has to be digestible, it’s gotta be fun and sound fun,” Stanier says. “A lot of music from our world is so damn serious, serious music made by serious people. I don’t want to cater to a few people. I’d rather there be many different elements that appeal to people.”