Battles - Gloss Drop

The reaction of many fans to the departure of Tyondai Braxton from Battles - who sang on the band's mostly instrumental debut LP and preceeding EPs and made the smallest contribution instrumentally - says a lot about the strength of the band's original lineup as a unit. However, if we're to believe the band, it was a blessing in disguise following a series of uninspired recording sessions that would have led to a perfunctory second album. Instead they had to start from scratch and effectively skipped over the "awkward second album" cliche.

This particular three-legged dog has re-learnt to walk better than, say, REM in the late 90s. John Stanier still drums like an agitated robot, while David Kanopka and Ian Williams have kept the sound as dense as before. On the one hand, most of the sounds themselves aren't surprising - it seems Mirrored mostly exhausted the band's repertoire of weird sounds such as walls of delayed guitar and stabs from instruments you can't quite identify. On the other hand, it turns out they hadn't run out of ways to apply those sounds.

Gloss Drop isn't so much influenced by popular music as it is aware of its existence. This manifests itself in strange-for-Battles touches such as chord changes in places where you might actually expect them from another band. But of course probably the most talked about aspect of Gloss Drop is its handful of guest vocal spots. Two of these are, for my money, the worst songs on the album. "Ice Cream", featuring Matias Aguayo, sounds like a bad remix of a Vampire Weekend song. It's amazing it doesn't have steel drums. "Sundome" takes an ill-advised trip into World territory in its first half, and it actually does have steel drums. I hate steel drums. Two of the best tracks are also products of collaborations: Gary Numan fills a guest spot nobody else could have on "My Machines", sounding as if he's competing for attention over said gadgets, and "Sweetie and Shag", featuring Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) is simultaneously the album's weirdest and most straightforward track. The vocal tracks are integrated seamlessly into the album, and if there's one aspect in which Gloss Drop is easily equal to Mirrored, it's its cohesion. Whether the core of the band is accompanied or playing on its own, each track sounds like a talented trio making the best of its circumstances.