Battles @ The Crocodile
I’m surprised it took me over a year of living in Seattle to make it to a show at the Crocodile Cafe. The venue is somewhat legendary, known for having appeared in the quintessential 90s Seattle movie Singles and for being co-owned by REM’s Peter Buck.
The reason I finally made it, after missing many a great show, was to see Battles.
Their recently released full length debut, Mirrored, has been at the top of my obsessive-rotation playlist since it was released, and I’d already missed the band back in San Francisco when they opened for Prefuse 73. I was basically a fan before I heard a single note of the band, and by the time I checked out their first EPs, I was sold.
Fortunately, the live show didn’t disappoint in any way. If anything, it made me an even bigger fan. The sheer virtuosity with which they manage their massive pile-up of gear puts them far above most of their peers. Among their bag of tricks: simultaneous guitar and keyboard playing, live looping of every instrument in their arsenal, pitch-shifted vocals, using a compact mixer like a volume pedal…and of course, a ridiculously tall crash cymbal stand.
Not only are they inventive and skilled, but their stage presence is cool and calm, with every intricately choreographed arrangement seeming completely effortless. Watching Ian Williams and Tyondai Braxton do their one-hand-on-guitar, one-hand-on-keyboard thing at the same time without breaking a sweat or furrowing a brow was pretty astrounding.
Besides technical prescision, they have a total mastery of the propulsive energy behind their songs. John Stanier is to be given the lion’s share of the credit for this, with his heavy, clockwork drumming. He’s solid and metronomic, but not at a cost to his creativity. My favorite theory regarding his 7′ cymbal stand is that it forces an element of restraint into the music. Having to reach high above the rest of the kit makes you leave that cymbal for the really dramatic moments, rather than relying on it as punctuation.
For the first half of the show, Ian Williams’ elderly aunt was standing in front of us, enjoying the show with her earplugs in and a beer in one hand. I think maybe the pounding math rock got to be too much for her midway through, although if she’d heard her nephew’s previous work with Don Caballero or Storm & Stress, it shouldn’t have been too surprising.
