Send "The Bats " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Things move slowly in the world of beloved New Zealand band the Bats. 2012 will conclude their 30th year as a group, although they're not likely to be in any rush to celebrate that fact. After all, this is a group that took five years to release its debut full-length album (Daddy's Highway) and is only now issuing its eighth record, Free All the Monsters. The long gaps in the Bats' catalog can partly be attributed to singer/guitarist Robert Scott's presence as bassist in the Clean and his intermittent work as a solo artist, including his excellent 2010 album, Ends Run Together. Remarkably, despite long periods of inactivity, the band's original lineup of Scott plus singer/guitarist Kaye Woodward, bassist Paul Kean, and drummer Malcolm Grant remains intact. So too does that dreamy, disconsolate feeling that settles in whenever the Bats' best music takes hold and nimbly seeps under your skin.This relatively swift follow-up to 2008's The Guilty Office reunites the group with Flying Nun for the first time in over a decade, during a time when the legendary Christchurch label is celebrating its own 30th year in the business. It may be a stretch to imagine that realigning of forces caused the Bats to up their game, but this feels like their best record in years, possibly ever. Free All the Monsters simply consists of a set of plaintive songs that draw on all the stylistic cues this band has worked hard to establish in the past (a Byrds-ian jangle, a touch of Velvets-style dissonance) and tightens everything up a touch. Parallel feelings of warmth and longing criss-cross through much of the material, with songs like "Long Halls" and "On the Bank" bedded down in Kean's warmly looping basslines, while the vocals cut through the glow with a whole heap of self scrutiny....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| In their 30 years as a band, The Bats have made only eight full-length records. There are years, even occasional decades, between the band’s statements, gaps that reflect other musical obligations (Robert Scott is in a half dozen other projects, including The Clean), work, children and family life. Free All the Monsters comes only three years after The Guilty Office, a relatively short span in Bats terms. (It was 10 years between Couchmaster and National Grid.) It sounds very much like The Guilty Office, and, in fact, very much like The Bats have always sounded — a jangle and clatter subdued somehow into melancholy introspection. As with The Guilty Office, themes of longevity, mortality, memory and loss predominate. Scott is, clearly, thinking a lot about his life, where he’s been and where he’s inevitably headed. “And in the final place, I’ll find you,” he sings, “Where that may be, I don’t know.” In “Long Halls” and elsewhere, he contemplates death with equanimity, singing softly, without much strife, over a warm tangle of guitar and drums. Occasionally, he ventures higher, a little out of his vocal range, into a creaky tenor that accentuates uncertainty and longing, but the overall tone is one of acceptance and calm. There’s not much overt drama in Bats songs. They run along placidly, guitars interlocking, rhythm steady, melodies fragile and tinged with sadness, until they end. Scott’s main partner in The Bats’ sound, here as always, is Kaye Woodward, whose high, pretty voice sounds just as it did in the late 1980s and whose guitar solos still strike out, bright and unconflicted, from shadowy, minor-keyed verses. When The Bats’ music transforms, mid-song, from moody introspection to surer, more triumphant pop, it is often because Woodward has stepped in, either vocally or with her instrument. Hear her using the rising end of the “Free All the Monsters” chorus as a springboard, vaulting up and away with her guitar over the tune’s gentle undulations. It changes the tone, briefly, from rumination to triumph. And maybe that’s the secret to The Bats’ appeal, the quicksilver shifting of moods that makes every song, even the fast ones, both happy and sad. “In the Subway,” the album’s standout song, drives hard and fast, its jangly urgency rivaling “North By North.” Yet, the melodic line is built out of melancholy materials, rising minor thirds that peter out and fall backwards in defeat. It’s only the steady pulse of drums, the careening buzz of lead guitar that saves the song from sadness. You could spend a lot of time unearthing middle age insecurities in Free All the Monsters’s lyrics, the simple things that no longer satisfy, the days that drag on, the years that fly by. It’s all there, observed obliquely but accurately, and without self-pity. Still, I have to admit that my favorite line is the “hey-ey-ey-ey-aye” that brackets each verse of “Fingers of Dawn.” There’s a warmth and assurance in these meaningless syllables, a serenity that transcends any linear narrative. The song is about waking up from a dream, relinquishing an imaginary haven and coming to terms again with ordinary life. It’s an unpleasant process, this daily rebirth and reorientation, but I like to think of the “hey-ey-ey-ey-aye” refrain as the sunlight streaming through the window, making another day of the quotidian struggle possible, even somewhat attractive....full text |
| Nzherald |
| The Bats' previous two albums (2005's National Grid and 2009's The Guilty Office) went largely unnoticed but this one arrives with a tailwind. The mainland veterans have been chaperoning the label's youngsters during the current Flying Nun 30th anniversary gigs. And this comes after singer-guitarist Robert Scott's 2010 beautifully realised solo album Ends Run Together with producer Dale Cotton. Cotton is on the buttons here too, seemingly laminating vast layers of melody throughout and adding extra spangle to the jangle. Between the hazy guitars and splashy drums of opener Long Halls and the acoustic afterthought of Getting Over You which ends this 11 tracks later, is possibly the Bats' most captivating set of songs. Among the best is the title track with its dreamy chorus of plaintive harmonies by Scott and co-guitarist Kaye Woodward giving way to a gently searing hook of a guitar line. And that's but one magic moment of revitalised southern folk-rock among many....full text |
The Bats lyrics
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