Happy 15th – Downtown Battle Mountain

2022-05-15T22:25:56Z

Happy 15th birthday to an album that will always encompass how it feels to be 15. Downtown Battle Mountain has a youthful energy that is so prevalent in early post hardcore and so hard to come by nowadays – it is delicious, nostalgic, and a little bittersweet. I can't remember the source, but I recall Will Swan saying once that he feels every Dance Gavin Dance album holds up well except for DBM; it is dated, very much a product of the 2007 Myspace scene. But that is part of what is so beautiful about it, isn't it? It is unfortunate that it doesn't hold up, because post hardcore should still have this juvenile energy to it, shouldn't it?

My friend Brian says that if DGD's discography were people, this album would be the sexiest. It is dark in a way no other album is. Sure, Happiness is dark thematically, but it is instrumentally colorful and funky. DBM is unapologetically edgy and brooding. When you embrace it for what it is, it is one-of-a-kind.

The same friend told me that listening to DBM while high would be a life-changing experience. We would joke back and forth about how the final track, "12 Hours, 360 Minutes," is out-of-place and boring, and how the album should have ended with "Surprise! I'm From Cuba, Everyone Has One Brain" (which is my second favorite DGD song, by the way). He told me I needed to listen to this album high because "you will understand 12 Hours, I promise." And he was right.

Not every album plays front to back like a coherent story. Most albums are coherent to some extent (just by nature of being written by the same people at the same time), but a select few albums have a delicious storybook quality to them that is addicting. One that comes to mind is The Amulet by Circa Survive – every song goes into the other and progresses an instrumental narrative. I don't know what the secret ingredient to music is that gives it this quality, but DBM has it, and it hit me full-force the first time I laid back and listened while edible-high. Like distant mushroom cloud, "Untitled" gently begins before "Times New Roman" starts blasting like a wave of heat and fire. The album really begins, to me, with "It's Safe to Say You Dig The Backseat"; the first two tracks are more of an introduction, or a prologue (if any of you read the Warriors series as kids, I imagine Untitled/Times New Roman as the battle and prophecy before we meet Rusty in Chapter 1). The guitars in the beginning of Backseat create an edgy, uneasy atmosphere, which is amplified by Jonny's vocals. The energy rises and falls throughout the song until the resolution of tension during the last minute and a half of the song. "Strawberry André" is a little jumpier, a little more playful (Jon's verse where he says "slit her throat on the frying pan / you caught a cold and forgot the plan / turn the dial on the oven / until the skin has got that even tan" is one of my favorite moments in the album... with Jonny singing lightly and hauntingly in the background... it's addicting). "Lemon Meringue Tie" is the only song on this album that still makes set-lists, and for good reason: it is energetic, upbeat, hopeful – a perfect song to cut the edge of the earlier tracks. Plus, that beginning base line... and then "The Backwards Pumpkin Song" brings the edge right back (the screaming at the end!). "Antlion," "Turn Off The Lights," and "Open Your Eyes And Look North" are similarly more up-beat and playful, which makes "Surprise! I'm From Cuba" hit so much harder. With the call-back to Untitled (I believe there's meaning, no I believe there's nothing) and the harrowing vocals, it would be a perfect hard-hitting closer... but it isn't. The song fades out with noise that slowly becomes more and more tense (in a way that conjured images of Alice falling down the rabbit hole in my edible-high brain) until the acoustic guitar in 12 Hours starts, sounding almost empty in comparison. But it is perfect – after all the edge and all of the build-up, the album reaches its climax in Cuba and finishes out with a calm epilogue in a jarring way that perfectly matches the uneasiness of the rest of the album.

Clearly, I listen to this album too much. I just like it a lot. And it will always capture an energy that is so hard to find nowadays. Happy birthday.

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Happy 15th – Downtown Battle Mountain