Hudson Valley indie rock group Battle Ave have never been ones to follow convention. Formed back in 2009 by guitarist/vocalist Jesse Doherty, drummer Samantha Niss and guitarist Adam Stoutenbrugh, the band have sporadically released music that’s distinctively theirs. From boisterous debut War Paint to the more considered Year of Nod, Battle Ave have conjured a sound at turns harsh and gentle, bold and unassuming, delivered in an uncertain whisper and defiant wail.
Last year saw the release of a self-titled EP which heralded something of a comeback, a patchwork of influences and inspirations that served as a reintroduction for existing fans and a Battle Ave primer for new listeners. Writing of the EP’s closing track, ‘There Can’t Be Love’, we described how Battle Ave build songs with patience and care, the song “giv[ing] itself time and space to follow its convictions, ebbing and flowing with intuitive rhythm.” A sound which swaps constraints for uncertainty in order to achieve a certain organicity. The sense it is always shifting, always willing to cede its current form in the face of progression or change. As we continued:
The effect is both reflective and very much within the present moment. An opportunity perhaps to recognise the passing periods of life. The years with devils and wizards and lovers. The fact that nothing ends within any one moment, and there will always be another.
This spring sees Battle Ave return with a brand new full-length record, I Saw the Egg. A joint release between Friend Club Records and Totally Real Records, the album not only continues the band’s embrace of uncertainty within songs, but positions the band’s career as a larger scale model of the same concept. Tracks which took sixteen years to complete sit next to those hammered out in half an hour. Some run barely two minutes and others closer to six. What emerges is a constant interplay between contemplation and forward motion. An openness to contradiction that allows vastness to sit alongside intimacy, ominousness next to sincerity, and ultimately embraces the beauty and truth of ambiguity. I Saw the Egg is the work of a band who have come to understand the value in dropping any preconceptions or images of their own future, allowing themselves to be shaped by the uncertain present instead.
Today, we’re delighted to share the first two singles in anticipation of the release. ‘Maya’ draws on lo-fi indie folk, a warm and emotive song built on a surprisingly simple guitar loop. MIDI strings swell as if from a break in the clouds and soon the whole thing sounds big and unabashedly heartfelt, the closest thing to a ballad Battle Ave have ever written. But there’s still a weirdness too, a shimmering mirage-like quality exacerbated by the opaquely romantic lyrics. The sense that the track, despite the purity of its intentions, is not quite built on solid ground.
The second single, ‘Leo,’ is a song about everyday toil and strange, strained friendships. About hiding hurt and losing connection, and how we’re all just doing what we can to get by. Sometimes at the detriment of things we care about. “Michael is a friend of mine,” Doherty sings in a line that illuminates the underlying sentiment, “we never talk, who has the time?” The song emerges in a kind of stupefied swirl, capturing the sensation of being locked on the slo-mo conveyor of day-to-day life and sometimes losing sight of loved ones locked onto tracks of their own.
A collaboration with Laura Stevenson, ‘Leo’ arrived with unusual haste. Indeed, Doherty describes it as one of the quickest Battle Ave songs ever written. “If I remember it correctly, I got high and started playing my roommate’s piano (I don’t really play piano) and came up with the chords and melody that became the center of the track,” he explains. “The entire song came together in about 30 minutes, which runs counter to my usual writing process, since I normally take years per song.” The immediacy of the process is coded within the track itself. It feels like a swift and necessary release of feelings accumulated across many months (a period which saw Doherty face both the isolation of the pandemic and the joys and challenges of a new baby).
Stevenson proves the perfect foil, her vocals adding not just supporting melody but clarity too, guiding Doherty’s wavering voice with quiet confidence. Though very different in style, her latest record occupied a similar headspace. As we wrote back in August, the album “evok[ed] the turbulent milieu in which it was created.” Its moment of crisis not “some snap moment of terrible energy but a lingering process, a phenomenon to be endured, rooted as it is in both the past and what is still to come.” The sedated swirl of ‘Leo’ (created in part by slowing the original recording by 15bpm) is in many ways the polar opposite of the fiery catharsis of tracks like ‘State‘, but beneath the surface lies a shared spirit. The fact that its very much a product of these strange times, the sense of being within something and accepting the fact without looking for beginning or ends.
And this is what proves to be the lasting message of I Saw the Egg. It finds a band returning to what they do best after seven years, but returning somehow changed. Returning in a different place both personally and creatively, with dreams discarded and other dreams realised, and a newfound sense of patience and acceptance for what the future holds. As Sammy Maine’s bio puts it: “This is the sound of Doherty loosening the constraints of a preconceived future, instead embracing the uncertainty of whatever comes next.”
I Saw the Egg is out on the 1st April via Friends Club Records and Totally Real Records and you can pre-order it now from the Battle Ave Bandcamp page.
