the bats: C/D

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?

Schwip, how old are you? I'm not asking this in a demeaning way. I'm generally curious if there is a new generation of folks in NZ who have, somehow, taken the mid-to-late 80s FN roster very bitterly for some reason. That seriously interests me, and doesn't necessarily sadden me, unless someone makes really lame sweeping generalizations/insults about people who DO like these bands like you and apparently others are making.

To answer your question: what if the Bats weren't from NZ. Jeez.. hmmm, um what if Coldplay were from Germany? What if Creed were from Namibia? How to hell am I supposed to answer these questions? Alternate-universe questions poised as refutations make no sense at all.

i say this despite being not too impressed with the new record - sure there are some nice new tracks, but it feels a little half-baked... also - alastair was totally under-utilized.

The Bats have this particular gift for a wistful melody that I've always liked a lot, though I haven't listened in quite some time.

Maybe there's no reason to it, that's just how I feel about them, I would never say my opinion is representative of any rejection of "the mid-to-late 80s FN roster". They seem pretty well established as iconic "world famous in new zealand" types that I've never actually heard anyone listening to.

xpost - the abover is responding 2 tha iDonut

Also, I think it's a bit less crass to insult a product than to insult an artist. But now I'm getting to the splitting hairs part, admittedly.

young david kilgour is k-fvcking-hott, his brother ain't so bad, but bob scott has always been a minger.

Haven't heard the new one yet.

-- paulhw (pppso...), November 6th, 2005 11:51 PM. (paulhw) (later)

What a load of bollocks.

Apart from the bit about Block of Wood being their best song, it probably is my favourite.

So what's the deal with the Wedding Present/Bats thing, and why should it matter as far as one liking/disliking their music? I don't see the Bats as a Wedding Present rip-off by any means, if that's what you were aiming for.

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