Tynan's Anger

SONGS OF THE DECADE #36

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Battles - Atlas (2007)



I'm all for looking beyond a rockist viewpoint, but in order to declare music "post-rock," you have to ignore the good qualities of rock: it's ability to be loud, dangerous, fun, and enthralling. It makes sense that post-rock would need at least a decade to regain its willingness to use muscle; the genre errs on the side of brains at the expense of brawn. In perhaps the only good thing that came from the breakdown of the traditional genre classifications of music, post-rock was able to start from rock without being rockist.  Battles, who are old enough to remember post-rock when rock was still cool, were able to infect it with heavy drums, a bass line straight out of hell, and perhaps the best use of a synth in any song this decade. The vocals were skewed to a preposterously artificial feminine extreme, but if you're the type who feels vocals are the most superficial part of a rock song (or the type who had already listened to plenty of Deerhoof), that wasn't a problem. More than any other individual song this decade, "Atlas" was a musicologist's wet dream that still resonated with the crowd who would think that calling a song a wet dream sounds douchey.

Labels: 2000s, atlas, battles, lists, pop music, songs of the decade