the bats: C/D

(have any of youz indiekidz heard the rotor+ remix of "north by north"? it's great!)

I rather disagree.

And 5% more sexy.

.5%, I'll grant.

Matters not. More people outside NZ have heard The Bats than in it. To be honest, most people I met in a year of living in NZ wouldn't know a decent band if it bit them on the arse.

Anyone heard Robert Scott's album of NZ folk tunes BTW?

even Messr Cave's intervention couldn't free them from unfair contract!

(um, I have a lot to say re: FN & overseasers, but it's more of an essay thing)

the fuck does this mean?

Huh, I think I'd only heard the Magick Heads version.

Supposedly the last time they'd played Chicago was 20 years ago.

I discovered that a critic I know reviewed a Bats album for the Washington Post in 1993, so he thinks they appeared in DC then.

I think they did "Smoking Her Wings" in DC this time.

they were stellar saturday night in los angeles. crystalline. one thing that struck me seeing them live is that there's an unusually clear division of labor among the four of them, especially the two guitarists. those guitars are wielded as two very different instruments, and they lock so beautifully together.

there's a new 3-disc comp called Volume 1 - early material, eps, b-sides, etc. available on spotify.

tho i had 95% of it already it's been nice having these tracks back on rotation

14 bonus tracks, a nice package for $25!

Just saw "The Law Of Things" reissue at the store the other day. Definitely will get that one soon.

the other day = yesterday, actually

The only album I heard from them was Free All the Monsters. It was a top ten album of the year for me. For some reason I haven't yet explored their back catalog yet, though. I need to rectify that, especially if all their albums "sound the same" as described way up thread. I'll take more of the same from them.

Compiletely Bats is a good place to start. I think the new reissue has a version of Block of Wood on it as well.

2 versions

(2 demo versions i mean)

New Robert Scott album, "The Green House" is very good... but... I feel like I've heard this all before. It's my problem, but I can't help thinking David Kilgour's solo albums are just off-kilter enough to keep me coming back.

I like it a lot. The duets with Hollie Fullbrook add a wonderful distinction. But true, I dunno if I'd be so taken if it were just Robert on vox for the entire lp.

Agreed, the duets are the standouts, especially the opening track. An entire album like that would be killer.

Somehow didn't even know that Minisnap existed, or when they released an album, but it's predictably lovely.

It is! Kaye needs to do more singing.

New album! It's great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfiO9iqpGoY

I'm as psyched these guys keep killing it as I am with theoretical peers the Feelies.

On the Robert Scott solo tip here but he's been busy this past week on Bandcamp!

https://robertscottnz.bandcamp.com/album/deep-set-demos

https://robertscottnz.bandcamp.com/album/moonlight-potato-robert-scott-gina-rocco

https://robertscottnz.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-m-nster-gleis-22-robert-scott-the-wilde

https://robertscottnz.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-wellington-bar-bodega-2000-harmonic-deluxe

"Red Car," from the new one :')

Wow, a new one! I had no idea. Happy Saturday!

When I got onto the Clean a month ago, a couple of people recommended the Bats. Burned and listened to Daddy's Highway twice in the car today, and yes, quite liked it.

would recommend checking out Couchmaster, and you might also like the Magick Heads records.

also "Smoking Her Wings" is worth hearing if you haven't already - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9D6xqMI3NA

All of their albums (and pretty much offshoots, too) are pretty good. Though they're also one of those bands where for some the first album (Daddy's Highway) is enough. But if you like one you'll probably like them all. Albums like "Couchmaster" are maybe a tiny bit more diverse? "Silverbeet," too. This is one of many gems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YLTPCOMXss

Glad you like it clemenza!

Yeah The Bats are super consistent however some albums grab me and some don't. The Law of Things never really clicked for instance, but by no means do I dislike it. Definitely just a preference for some tunes over others among a perfectly solid discography.

I will say At The National Grid, on the other hand, TOTALLY clicked. Love that one a lot as well (favorite along with Daddy's Highway).

Here's my favorite Magick Heads song, since that came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glTwigeLC_Y

This is lovely, but no surprise there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRB7wdr-rOU

I also love that album cover.

Thanks for the recommendations; I'll do some more investigation for sure. Someone labelled them power-pop earlier in this thread. Even with a more liberal net when it comes to that term than most people, I wouldn't classify them as such. Not a criticism--I just don't hear them as sounding like what that implies. I was thinking more of, I don't know, maybe the Vaselines, or the Mekons of Fear and Whiskey?

They're definitely folky and poppy, that's for sure. Maybe even a little twee at times. I wouldn't call them power-pop. Something like the Vaselines may not be a terrible comparison (though of course the Bats came much earlier!). I've always thought the Bats (not least because of Bob Scott's vocals) reminded me of some of Eno's early material. Stuff like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03-EJBnzW1A

I've been listening to Daddy's Highway too, and while the whole thing's pleasant I wish there were a few more intense moments like "Had to Be You" and "North by North". Also there's a thinness of "personality" in this music (and lyrics, in as much as I can hear them) - after five or six listens I don't feel I know anything about these people, other than that they like (making) pleasant music.

Flying Nun acts always seemed to keep the emotions a little distant. Not too much angst-ridden heart-on-the-sleevery, for which I'm quite thankful. Must be in the Kiwi character!

I can see what you mean about that thinness of personality - I find them quite shyly charismatic on stage and in interviews, but it doesn't come out in the music really. Having said that I think the smallness of the vox and simplicity of the lyrics gets across a sort of communal melancholy / homespun despair about something ineffable. So I actually don't really love things like North By North where they get kind of drowned in unearned bombast, I prefer the warmer, more ramshackle stuff, everyday drama and longing.

Here's "Neighbours", a lovely example of what I'm talking about, always moves me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoLt_qcWj_k

Or "By Night", which is a bit peppier but still has that sore heart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_juMjNep9F0

The bass is really alive in that one.

Matt #2 makes a good observation about Flying Nun bands not doing too much existential angst. Without projecting too much, there's a lot of empathy in the music that may come from the spirit of community and camaraderie, with people's parents and families quite closely involved and supportive, and most bands not having one central (tragic) figure. That kind of community doesn't lend itself to mythologising the pain of the solitary artist (even if may have been no shortage of it).

There are a lot of songs that are quite good at sketching someone else's despair rather than claiming it for oneself. More of observing "you" than experiencing "I". Am thinking of "Born in the Wrong Time" by the Great Unwashed, some of the Verlaines' less smart-arsed character studies, some Chills stuff.

there's a lot of empathy in the music

I think this is very OTM, and may stem from the bands' environments, both literal and metaphoric. Especially on the south island, that remoteness, the proximity to nature (and especially winter/snow/cold) leads a lot of Flying Nun bands to express both pleasantly bucolic vibes but also a quiet sort of sadness for the state of things in nature. And then on the former count, yeah, the community in which they share a lot of the same experiences, positive and negative, I think does come across in the music as generally empathetic, even at its most melancholy. That is to say, warm or twee or gentle or celebratory, rarely outright aggressive or confrontational (as confrontational as acts like Chris Knox or even the Clean could be, in their own respective ways), lonely but not necessarily alone, kind of in the Charlie Brown Christmas sense.

I like many songs, but these are my favourites from the first three albums: "Treason," "Tragedy," "Had to Be You," "Mastery," "Nine Days," "Watch the Walls," "You Know We Shouldn't." Very in sync with my mood as of late.

Just holding up my hand for <i>Free All The Monsters</i>, a latter-day album that is the best overall record in their canon IMO. The Bats-curious will also find <i>Thousands of Tiny Luminous Spheres</i>. a sort-of-best of, to be a strong intro to the best of their 20th century work.

Oh god, it's been so long since I posted here I forgot how italics tags work, sorry.

Plan to keep working my through their albums for as long as they're still good, which so far they are.

Let me add "Jetsam" to the above list. When the singer (don't know names yet) gets to the lines "It's such a waste now" and "And now you're face down," he sounds just like Ian Curtis!

Huh, Martin Phillips on the Bats' "Offside" via a Radio New Zealand 'The Song I Wish I'd Wrote' feature:

Martin Phillips from The Chills wishes he wrote 'Offside' by The Bats.

Phillips thinks he must have first heard 'Offside' when it first came out in the 1980s.

Songs by The Bats were often "pretty upbeat" and positive, he says, but 'Offside 'was something else, striking him as a different, beautiful and "lowkey number".

He believes the song is about those days when you're young and just feel a bit hopeless.

"This song seems to be dealing with that."

(via https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/music101/audio/2018889690/nzmm-special-the-song-i-wish-i-d-written-part-two )

Always thought "Offside" was an amazing album closer.

Why isn't everyone listening to the Bats all the time?

because The Chills exist as well? (no shade on the bats tbh)

Well, I guess that's true. And the Tall Dwarves, and the Clean and all sorts of stuff in that orbit, but I find the Bats closest to the comfort of a nice warm blanket and a campfire.

That's v fair. Been awhile since hearing them, thx 4 reminder!

A few Bats-related interviews from Radio New Zealand earlier in the year:

Musicians who paint: The Bats’ Robert Scott plays Fast Favourites and remembers Hamish Kilgour
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/culture-101/audio/2018929301/musicians-who-paint-the-bats-robert-scott-plays-fast-favourites-and-remembers-hamish-kilgour

The Mixtape: The Bats’ Paul Kean

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-mixtape/audio/2018939945/the-mixtape-the-bat-s-paul-kean

(Aldous Harding - Imagining My Man, the Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows, Jay Clarkson and the Containers - Children of the Rule, Can - She Brings the Rain, Brian Eno - St Elmos Fire, Lee Scratch Perry - Above and Beyond)

If people missed the Sundae Painters album (Paul & Kaye from the Bats, Alec from Tall Dwarfs, and Hamish from the Clean (RIP)), it's lovely:

https://sundaepainters.bandcamp.com/album/sundae-painters

Had no idea about the Sundae Painters, thanks!

10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2USP0kwiJw

New album, new single!

https://thebats.bandcamp.com/album/corner-coming-up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ9wkSsk9Nk