BATTLES @ Princeton

Whilst staggering through a typical night of thesis-crunchtime caffeinated haze, I managed to find myself at Princeton's own Terrace F. Club on a certain Thursday night. After putting in long hours in the lab I needed a break. And what to my wondrous ears should appear? Twas BATTLES, who mission to rock was clear.



BATTLES are a band from New York who play very technically challenging instrumental music, in a style often dubbed "math rock." I'd caught wind of them not too long ago due to some high praise blog posts anticipating their debut album on May 22nd. Even though this will their first proper album, the band has generated a lot of buzz from their three EPs over the last 4 years and an intense live show which I can attest is a marvelous display of musical prowess.

Front and center was the drumkit. At the helm was an awkwardly out of place 50 year old dude who was apparantly the former drummer for Helmet. I only ever remember hearing one Helmet song ("Unsung") from back in my high school, grunge-obsessed, 98 Rock days. I remember it coming on the radio only rarely and late at night, as if it was one of those songs the DJ actually wanted to play, but 2am was the only time he could avoid the usual crap he was forced to play. Even now, that song still rocks, in no small part on account of the drums. And damn, that old dude could drum! The best thing was that his crash cymbal was on this really tall stand, like 10 feet up, so he had to reach up really high every time he hit it. It's little touches like this that really made the band's performance interesting. Automatically, you could understand their inventiveness, and it did not come at the expense of their music.

Flanking the drums were two guys at keyboard/laptop stations - one sported a big fro. These guys demonstrated the highly technologic aspect of the band. Each had an elaborate setup of mixers, loopers, vocoders, and digital mystery boxes to go along with their laptop/keyboard setups. Even more impressive was that they both picked up the axe from time to time and played guitar and keyboard simultaneously while adjusting the other gizmos at their disposal. In the back was the guitarist/bassist who spent the majority of time perfecting the sounds of the band member on the slew of analog dials on their amplifiers.

Despite all this talk of technical and robotic sounding rhythms the band really gels together creating tight grooves that chug along like a well-oiled machine. My friend Keith said it best as he came up to me during the ominous bass synth of their wicked single "Atlas": "Man these dudes are fucking heavy!" True to his words their sound is really thick and foreboding, but it is also fun as revealed by the vocal textures on the same song. And you could definitely tell these guys were having fun playing this stuff. Watch out for BATTLES! On May 22nd Mirrored will be out!

Menomena @ Princeton

I'm a big fan of Pitchfork Media. Go ahead and heckle if you like; depending on which side of the fence you are on you might find the site to be either too obscure and inaccessible or just fanboys of the current scene.

But to me the site's a great resource for finding out about new music. If you haven't noticed, a lot of the stuff I like has been featured on their website. Sometimes I worry that my own judgements simply just reflective of theirs, but I really do try to reevaluate things for myself. Case in point, I'm just not a huge fan of Deerhoof. As creative as they are, that singer's voice just really bothers me. But in the end, I think the creators of the site have a great understanding of music and tastes that often matche mine, even if they are a bit snooty from time to time.

One band they turned me onto a few weeks ago was Menomena. On a whim I decided to get their album partly because of this review and partly because of the neat cover art. Upon first listen I wasn't tremendously excited. The music was good, but not overwhelmingly. But over the next couple of days I realized I had all these new songs stuck in my head and I realized they were Menomena songs. On rare and special occasions bands like this crop up: on first impression you don't really know why you like the songs, but for some reason it sticks with you and then over time it just digs under your skin until you can't stop listening.

Better yet, just as I was getting into them I found out they were coming to play here at Princeton! It was a great show even if they did get irritated at the drunks. The best part was when the singer made note of the cramped Terrace venue by asking the person standing right in front of him "Isn't it awkward when we make eye contact since we're only two feet apart?"



I should also mention that the opening band, Land of Talk really rocked too. One of the best female rock singers I've heard in a long time. I picked up their CD at the show and it's great! The songs are all a little similar, but they are all well written.

Girl Talk @ Princeton

Wow! Something I never would have expected happened last Saturday.

For the past couple of months I've been rocking Girl Talk's latest effort Night Ripper pretty hard. For the uninitiated Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis - a biomedical engineer from Pittsburg), is a DJ who takes euphoric moments of already well known songs (e.g. from Notorious B.I.G., Elton John, 50 cent, the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, Ludacris, Fleetwood Mac, Weezer, Nirvana, just to name a few) and mashes them up into 1 awesome track of ultimate party.

Well, then I heard he was coming to my very own Terrace club here at Princeton! What a crazy show! It was packed beyond belief, making it uncomfortable at times, but that only added to the energy.

Highlights:
-Kicking things off with "Throw Some D's" on that Bitch!!!
-Justin Timberlake "My Love" matched with the bassline from Nirvana's "Lithium"
-Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" with some booty rap song about getting pussy
-Flute solo from Toto's "Africa"
-Chugging a pitcher of beer before the entire audience:


I highly recommend you check this guy out. Night Ripper is hand's down the best party soundtrack I've ever heard. One of my favorite Girl Talk tracks (though not on the album) is this one:



It mashes Clipse's "Wamp Wamp (What it do)" with Grizzly Bear's "The Knife. " So freakin awesome! Grizzly Bear's Yellow House, which featured "The Knife" was one of my favorite albums of last year (#2!). And, mostly because of this Girl Talk song, I recently got into Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, which has been getting a lot of critical attention lately . They are amazing! One of the best hip-hop groups out there for sure.