Battles

Battles

Sunday at FYF was an unusually over-crowded final day of a festival, a stacked lineup spread out over the oddly laid-out festival so that there was a whole lot of “Catch twenty minutes of this, run back across the entire festival grounds to see twenty minutes of that.” But there was a bit of a lull in the early evening, perfectly filled by a strangely danceable Battles set, full of experimental rock that often times sounds like some kind of 8-bit video game hitting the Singularity, or something. Of course, the thing with these guys is the musicianship, the incredibly tight jams and the chunkily catchy riffs mingling with quirky synth layers. For me, personally, having once briefly taking a detour from my interest in guitar for drums, watching John Stanier was the highlight. His beats have this light aggressiveness, more like whiplashes than thunder crashes, and he really forms the backbone of the Battles live experience: center stage, directing the show, propelling them forward with a playing style that has all these little dexterous, quick details but also this inevitable, locked-in groove.