Battles - Gloss Drop [Warp]

7.3

Who can even compare Battles’ first record Mirrored to their sophomore record Gloss Drop when lead man Tyondai Braxton left the band for commitment towards solo work? It’s purely unfair. Braxton was Battles, he made Mirrored one of the lead experimental math rock albums of the decade. Now with no vocalists, Battles had to pick out some guest singers to make up for a missing element to their music, Battles picked out guests like Gary Nuwman, Blonde Redhead lead singer Kazu Makino and even Japanese musical virtuoso Yamantaka Eye. Gloss Drop can hardly be related back to the intricacy of Mirrored, making Gloss Drop seem like a debut to a very ambitious, almost supergroup-like record.

Battle surely picked perfect contenders as guest vocalists for Gloss Drop. The guest vocalists compliment the sound of Battles with an uncanny sense of creating light-hearted math rock jams. Shining track, “Ice Cream” with Matias Aguayo, takes an approach of thrilling guitar hooks and a jangly keyboard line. Besides the other couple of other tracks with guest vocalists, Gloss Drop’s beef is within instrumental jangly math rock that really has a knack to drag on and on with fast paced quirky instrumentation that really is in need of a singer to correspond with the sounds of Battles.

Ironically, Battles are their best on Gloss Drop when they create shorter, more pop oriented songs, as opposed to their very strong “math rock” appeal. “Dominican Fade” is a perfect example, with its very brief and heavy-drummed presence. Though it is roughly just over a minute long, Battles really keeps your attention on a song like that for just that long. Battles can still make consistently good math rock in a shorter format instead of the long, drawn out tunes like “Inchworm” or “Wall Street”. It’s hard to label Battles as a “math rock” group anymore when their greatest moments come from hard-hitting, shorter tracks.

The atmosphere Battles create on Gloss Drop is light-hearted, jumpy, and a perfect summer record. There really aren’t any “dark” moments throughout Gloss Drop. Maybe the long foreboding “White Electric” can be seen as a more dark and menacing track with its heavy distorted and sinister drive, but it all ends happy like light at the end of a dark and never ending tunnel. Other than that, Battles jumps and bounces around into so many different realms of different noises and intricate drum beats that groove.

Even the finale “Sundome” with the brilliant input of Yamantaka Eye is an excellent rendition of so many different, diverse sounds. In a way, this track can be seen as the ultimate image of Battles as being a fun-loving varied pop-oriented math rock band that has a keen interest in creating left field prog rock. Battles don’t make the best record that can be seen as group breaking as Mirrored, but Battles are hardly the same band so really that comparison is unfair and unnecessary.