Artist Profile: Battle
From Union of Knives, we move to my other favorite new UK find, Battle. Rather, I should say it was Lizzy’s find, as it was she who first played “Tendency” for me in the car this summer, and though I remain unaffected by it upon first listen, I took an immediate liking to it the second time around. “Tendency”, Battle’s debut single, stands as the perfect introduction to their sound: straight-forward organic guitar rock with tight production, extremely urgent vocals and instrumentation (a la Bloc Party) and clever, blue collar lyrics (“every weekend it’s my only vice/let me drink myself to debt to forget about the rent”). Second single “Demons” builds on this formula to even greater success, riding on a driving rhythm section and a punchy vocal structure that climaxes in that anthemic “some-TIMES…” chorus. The highlight comes after the second chorus, when lead singer Jason Bavanandan (or Bananaphone or something like that) yelps, “I’ve thrown stones at passing cars/it’s funny ha ha ha” and each ha is punctuated by a quick drumbeat, further highlighting the group’s creative songwriting ability and tight production.
Battle’s full length debut, Break The Banks, drops this fall on Transgressive Records (where Bloc Party got their start before signing to Wichita) and will be preceded by a four track EP release, but unfortunately the rest of the material on the album for the most part fails to maintain the high standard set on the singles. Download the two aforementioned highlights below to get a feel for this exciting new group.
MP3s:
“Tendency” – Battle
“Demons” – Battle
A third single, “Children”, was released this June and is quite good as well, and you can go here to view the beautiful video in sparkling high resolution, which is excellent with the whole invisible explosions thing but might be better if Bavanandan didn’t completely lack the ability to act. Also worth noting is that the “Children” seven inch release features a remix by Union of Knives as the b-side, which I would kill to hear but doesn’t seem to be available anywhere on the various internets (Hype Machine and Limewire yield nothing, and even the omnipotent Oink fails to deliver). But hey, if you have it and want to send it my way, I just might love you forever (and ever). Finally, I urge everyone to head over to their MySpace, which is somehow the most classy and asthetically pleasing MySpace page I’ve ever seen, quite a feat considering there probably isn’t anymore more inherently classless than a MySpace page.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:54 pm
They went to my Uni.
They’re a bit mediocre I think..
Try Good Shoes www.myspace.com/goodshoes for “extremely urgent vocals and instrumentation (a la Bloc Party)”
All In My Head has been properly produced so sounds slick as.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Quite a shame about Battle. Driving to Coachella ‘05, I remember saying they’d for sure be at Coachella ‘06. It didn’t happen, becuase they haven’t put out anything good since Tendency. Agree re: Good Shoes. However, I’m still waiting for new material from them as well.
August 31st, 2006 at 8:25 pm
All In My Head has got some good new b-sides on it. They’ve had a fair bit of material which they’ve only been airing live which was a shame.
They’re off in Sweden recording their new album now which I have high hopes for.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:12 pm
I really like “children”
September 1st, 2006 at 11:09 am
Yeah, I’d have to agree about Good Shoes, great band, I’ll probably feature them on here at some point in the near future. I don’t have (and hadn’t heard until you brought it up) “All In My Head” or the b-sides from it, if someone wants to hook me up with them on AIM or some such thing (AIM = DerekDavies). Unfortunately I only have “We Are Not The Same”, “Small Town Girl”, “Never Meant To Hurt You” and a bunch of demos I grabbed off Oink. Good shit though.