Battles at South Street Seaport

The last show for the summer at South Street Seaport last night, and the crowd reflected it. Or maybe it was just because Deerhunter and Battles are getting so much hype. In either case, the most people I've seen down there this summer.

I missed Deerhunter because, well, I don't like them.

Battles were a lot of fun. Cool bleeps and bloops, high-energy post-rock jams. I have a lot of criticisms tho. . .well maybe not a lot. I won't go into it all here, I will say they're not even close to Don Caballero (in either incarnation) in musicianship or with the songwriting. My main beef with loop-heavy bands is that things take too long to develop and the whole song becomes all about an "additive" formula (here's vamp layer 1, now here's vamp layer 2, etc etc). This was defintely going on at several points during their set. My favorite part was probably the drummer's impossibly high cymbal which he had to fully extend his arm straight into the air to even consider reaching. Nice one.