Battles: Mirrored

Label: Warp

A fine year 2007 was musically, so fine that there was some serious debate as to what we would name the best album of the year. Against some stellar competition we ultimately decided on Battles’ Mirrored, I guess because it seemed to offer a little bit of something for everybody. Filled with anthemic, fist-pumping energy, the album appealed to those of us who like music that’s spirited and unpretentious. But the expert musicianship and great precision of playing in each track satisfied the music geek in us too. But there’s so much more to this great debut full-length from this local fourpiece. Mirrored is forward-thinking and visionary, combining today’s love of technology with traditional nods to math rock, prog, avant noise and electronica. It’s unlike anything we’ve heard before, and that isn’t something we say often these days. Despite the mesmerizing virtuosity of the music – the interplay of drums and guitars is particularly dazzling – the music has a delightful streak of humor in it, best exemplified in the album’s most memorable track, “Atlas,” a brilliant seven-minute blast of ferocious rhythms and indecipherable lyrics. So what the hell is Tyondai Braxton “singing” on that track anyway? The matter has been hotly debated on the chat rooms (my favorite interpretation: “Evil woman, evil woman, eat a sandwich …”), but in the end, it hardly matters. Indeed, ambiguity might even be the point. The lyrics are anything you make them out to be. Mirrored is all about sounds, not words, and what remarkable sounds they are.