Bats, The

May 16, 2009

The Bats

By Sophie in Bats, The | 0 comments

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The Bats website

The Bats Myspace

MP3: Castle Lights

MISTLETONE PRESENTS THE BATS ANZAC WEEKEND TOUR:

SYDNEY: Oxford Art Factory on Friday April 23 with special guests Richard In Your Mind. Tickets on sale Wednesday, February 10 from Moshtix.

BRISBANE: The Troubadour on Saturday April 24 with special guests Greg Brady & The Anchors and The Deadnotes (with The Legend!). Tickets on sale now from Oztix.

MELBOURNE: East Brunswick Club on Sunday April 25 with special guests Ross McLennan & The New World Sympathique + Milk Teddy + DJ Frankie Teardrop. Tickets on sale Wednesday, February 10 from the venue.

cover

“The Guilty Office will delight anyone interested in reflective antipodean pop - meaning The Go-Betweens, The Chills, Underground Lovers, Mum Smokes… The songs are ideal, unforced miniatures about spending time inside, the mysteries of friendship, dropping out in mottled sunspots and other dressed-down themes that are never maudlin, and without trace of frustration. Profound simple pie.” - TWO THOUSAND

“One of the purest distillations ever of The Bats’ strengths… show(ing) off the poppy propulsion and happy-sad core that made The Bats one of the defining bands of the Flying Nun catalogue… the band’s revival appears complete.” - INPRESS

Legendary New Zealand band The Bats have been playing their distinctive style of melodic infused pop folk/rock for long enough to have drifted in and out of fashion several times, without even trying.

Let’s recap - it’s been well over 20 years so some might not know the background to The Bats ….

Often loosely referred to as an indie pop band, The Bats have amassed plenty of fans from their home base in Dunedin, New Zealand and offshore, notably in US where they  toured frequently from 1986 to 1993 with Radiohead and others, and won gushing reviews from every corner of the music press. From 1994 they were busy in New Zealand working on raising families, side projects of Minisnap (Kaye Woodward’s songs), The Clean and solo albums from Robert Scott. In 2000 they put together a Bats greatest almost hits CD, 1000’s of Tiny Luminous Spheres, followed by their 2005 studio album The Bats At The National Grid which was rapturously received by the critics and led to a US tour in 2006.

For The Guilty Office - their seventh studio album and their Mistletone debut – The Bats continue to refine and develop their own idiosyncratic path, whilst also adding fresh sparkle and new ideas. The strings and additional instruments come to the fore, such as on the first single Castle Lights, and Robert Scott’s songwriting has become particularly strong on tracks such as Countersign and Crimson Enemy. It could have been the pentagonal room they recorded in at  Christchurch music doyen John Kelcher’s studio, or the proximity to Christchurch’s beautiful Heathcote River, but either way, the band have come up with an album that shines among their best.

>>> Fun Bats fact: the music for the title sequence of the ABC-TV political-comedy series ‘The Hollowmen’ is The Bats’ North By North.

The Bats are - Robert Scott (vocals, lead guitars); Kaye Woodward (guitars, vocals); Paul Kean (bass, guitar, backing vocals, production); Malcolm Grant (drums).

Mess + Noise review:

The Guilty Office

The Bats
The Guilty Office

One of the most fascinating aspects of Flying Nun’s legacy is that a large percentage of its roster from the early 1980s are still producing music of the same quality as they did more than two decades ago. The very isolation that bred the idiosyncratic musical talents of The Clean, The Chills, Verlaines, Look Blue Go Purple, Tall Dwarfs and The Bats, meant that there was never any questions of bands crossing over into the mainstream. Instead it allowed songwriters to delve ever deeper into their own imagination and please themselves first and foremost without feeling beholden to anyone from the outside world.People in Australia were blissfully unaware bands like The Bats still existed. When distribution of their material outside of New Zealand ceased due to economic factors in the 1990s, audiences found new trends to latch on to and NZ pop music became the domain of file-sharing enthusiasts. It took the dedicated prodding of new generations of music lovers, bands who were influenced by their Kiwi heroes, and the enthusiasm of new independent labels like Mistletone, to reawaken interest in the “Dunedin Sound” and make it seem feasible for an act like The Bats to tour and release their albums in this country.Hopefully, some of the great “lost” albums The Bats put out during the last two decades will see a re-release at some point, but in the meantime we have The Guilty Office, as fine a collection of songs from the pen of Robert Scott as there ever was. With the original line-up of the band from 1983 still intact, The Bats have refined their craft and mellowed a bit musically. The nervous strumming of Scott and Kaye Woodward is calmer these days, comparable to Dean Wareham’s band Luna on tracks such as ‘Later On That Night’ or ‘The Guilty Office’. Ironic really, as Wareham himself was greatly influenced by the early Flying Nun sound.As a collection of songs, The Guilty Office flows ever so effortlessly. The warm, organic production and subdued instrumentation is comparable to side one of the band’s classic album Daddy’s Highway, which should no doubt please longtime fans. There’s a laid-back, folky feel to the tempo, the relaxed drumming and clean guitar tones, which are broken only occasionally by Woodward’s soaring electric guitar lines. Mostly her contributions blend subliminally into the overall sound, as they always have throughout The Bats’ oeuvre. A close listen reveals all those hidden melancholic notes, as well as Woodward’s occasional beautiful vocal harmonies.Lyrically, Scott mines domestic territory, finding poetry in the everyday the same way he might stroll through his seaside hometown. Like all The Bats’ releases, this album reflects the landscape and atmosphere of NZ’s South Island, the crisp cold air of a spring morning, woodfire smoke hanging in the air, lush green hills and open coastal spaces. It’s a place worth getting lost in.by René Schaefer

Photo galleries: The Bats Sydney show, August 2009

Doubtful Sounds blog

Fasterlouder

Inpress live review (Melbourne):

inpress

PBS 106.7 FM review (Melbourne):

The pure sound of The Bats at Northcote Social Club Friday 8th August 2009.

As the curtain draws at the Northcote Social Club and the Bats are already on stage, playing the first few bars of their opening track, an image pops into my head: my red pencil case. When I was thirteen years old in Masterton (small town at the arse end of the North Island, New Zealand) I had ‘The Bats’ written in black marker on my red leather pencil case, right next to ‘Nirvana’. As far as I was concerned they were the coolest band ever. The fact that I’m finally getting to see them play live is something I’ve been excited about for the last month.

The sell out crowd tonight seem to be sharing my mood. The Bats have fake flowers intertwined around their microphone stands and drum kit and the mood in the venue is upbeat. However, it being a Melbourne/New Zealand crowd, we’re all standing still, arms folded, keeping a tight reign on our emotions.

In town to promote their great new album ‘The Guilty Office’ (distributed here by Mistletone Records) The Bats are pleased to be playing their first show here in five years. Throughout the night they play a set of recognisable old favourites and newer stuff and by the end of the concert we’re dancing because bassist Paul Kean tells us to. He says, “I want everyone to dance – even if you never dance. Didn’t you used to spin in a circle when you were a little kid?”

It’s a rare concert that can make you go from standing looking uptight to dancing as fast as you can and hugging the stranger next to you. The Bats do five encores and it’s still not enough. A man in front of me turns round and exclaims, “they’re just pure sound – pure sound!” I’m not sure what that means exactly but at the time it makes perfect sense.

Cass Scott

Nine.msn live review (Sydney):

It’s fair to say Sydney’s premier indie venue, the Hopetoun, was filled tonight with people from one of two camps: those fanatical fans of the Bats and those who, perhaps not entirely acquainted with The Bats’ music, were attracted by two words attached to the New Zealand band: Flying Nun.

Formed in 1981, Flying Nun Records championed the “Dunedin sound” and is home to some of New Zealand’s finest acts: bands like The Clean, Bailter Space, The Chills, Straitjacket Fits and many more, including of course, The Bats, here in Australia for the first time in six years to support their new album, The Guilty Office.

Opening acts Songs and Crayon Fields couldn’t have been more perfect an accompaniment. I arrived just as the last chords of Songs’ set were ringing out (thankfully I’ve seen them before, and they are great) and Crayon Fields were taking to the stage in some of the most adorably ugly jumpers I’ve ever seen. With their introspective twee pop and shy, nervous demeanours, Crayon Fields give off the impression it wouldn’t make a difference to them if there were one person in the room or 500. The foursome seemed truly lost in their own world of rolling green hills and falling autumn leaves; the faint natter of picnicking revellers blowing in from yonder fields. I for one thank them for allowing us to peep in on their quaint existence but feel certain we mustn’t disturb them; letting them play and watching in quiet anticipation.

After a short wait The Bats began their one-and-a-half-hour long set, and by this time the Hopetoun was packed to a cosy get-to-know-your-neighbour brim. It might sound uncomfortable, but it actually provided the perfect setting to be witnessing the gorgeous, perfectly executed delirious pop emanating off stage.

Like many of their fellow Flying Nun label-mates, The Bats are purveyors of bright melodies performed in an understated fashion. Singer Robert Scott possess a voice drenched in the warm familiarity of an old friend, and while the Crayon Fields ask us to keep a respectable distance, The Bats want you to kick off your boots, pour a drink and listen to their dreamy tales of the sorrowful things in life that, once reflected upon, actually make you pretty happy.

An adoring crowd lapped up every moment of the warm interaction between band members, whose homely three-part harmonies still echo in this reviewer’s ears the morning after. Yes, The Bats truly are the mature pinnacle of indie-pop, the forever young-at-heart forefathers of bands such as Songs and Crayon Fields, and it was a pure delight to be able to see them in such an intimate setting on a cold winter’s night in Dunedin… uh, Sydney, I mean.

Aimee-Lee Curran

Two Thousand album review:

New Zealand’s The Bats are mild-mannered, look-off music epitomised, and twenty-six year veterans of the art. Their influence, and that of the famed ‘Dunedin sound’ with which the band’s members are variously associated, casts its unmistakable shadow over all late style ‘indies’ - from Superchunk to Panel of Judges - both in terms of their inviolate, post-Velvets under-playing and definitive expression of this music’s end feeling: a contradictory, dreamy mixture of disenchantment and pleasure at once, sustained over and again in same-but-different songs without ever resolving the contradiction between the two.

The Guilty Office will delight anyone interested in reflective antipodean pop - meaning The Go-Betweens, The Chills, Underground Lovers, Small World Experience, Mum Smokes - trigger extended reverie in thirty-something Heads everywhere and send fans of new, US groups obsessed with NZ (Crystal Stilts, Pains of Being Pure at Heart) on Bats-genealogy record digs. The songs are ideal, unforced miniatures about spending time inside, the mysteries of friendship, dropping out in mottled sunspots and other dressed-down themes that are never maudlin, and without trace of frustration. Profound simple pie.

By Mark Gomes

Inpress review:

inpress

From The Age:

Yet another landmark event

Never gone: Robert Scott (far right), with Bats bandmates Malcolm Grant, Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward.
Never gone: Robert Scott (far right), with Bats bandmates Malcolm Grant, Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward.
August 7, 2009

After 27 years and some eye-opening experiences, the Bats just keep going. By Anthony Carew.
ROBERT Scott has, by his estimation, lived a blessed life. The long-time member of legendary New Zealand bands the Bats and the Clean has travelled far and wide on the back of rock’n’roll.
‘‘It’s been my window onto the world,’’ Scott admits. ‘‘I’ve felt very fortunate to see a lot of things, and visit a lot of cool places, all through just being able to sing a song.’’In fact, in the late 20th century, Scott almost became some Zelig-like figure, tours with both bands intersecting with world events with alarming regularity.
‘‘In 2001, the Clean flew into New York on September 10. So, we were there, the next day, to see it all happen,’’ Scott recounts. Then there was the time, back in 1986, when the Bats were on tour in Europe right when the Chernobyl disaster occurred.
‘‘We were in London,’’ Scott says, ‘‘about to leave to play a bunch of shows in Germany and we were umming and ahhing about whether we should go, because we were hearing all these reports of radiation. We did go but we made sure we didn’t eat any leafy vegetables, because they were what was catching the radiation.’’
Then there was the series of shows the Bats played at ice-skating rinks and town halls in the former East Germany, where Scott saw life in the final days before the Iron Curtain fell.‘‘Because we were going up to Sweden and Norway, we left via a German port on the north coast,’’ he remembers. ‘‘Hanging around in this little port town for four hours, people were coming up, trying to buy our Levis off us.’’
Raised in tiny East Taieri, outside Dunedin, Scott’s beginnings in music were provincial. He grew up learning trumpet and piano but even when he discovered the early punk-rock of Suicide and the Ramones, he felt too much of a geographical/cultural removal to feel connected. This, in a sense, came to symbolise the spawning of a vibrant Kiwi scene in the wake of punk; an insular community that was as influenced by each others’ music as by anything coming from the outside world.
‘‘Because we were stuck down the bottom of the world, it was very much our own take on the music we were hearing,’’ Scott says.

In 1977, he formed his first band, Electric Blood. By 1980, he was bassist in the Clean, the band for which the Flying Nun label was founded and which would put the ‘‘Dunedin sound’’ on the map. In 1982, when the Clean ‘‘pretty much stopped’’ (though not, it turned out, for good), Scott formed the Bats as his own band.

This placed Scott at one of indie music’s most mythologised times; the jangly guitar-pop of his bands — as well as the Chills, the Verlaines and others — went on to influence a whole generation of American alternative acts such as Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices and Pavement.

‘‘At the time it did seem special and unique, a really strong, interesting movement that we were all a part of,’’ Scott recounts. ‘‘We definitely were proud of what we were doing but we would never have entertained the thought we’d be still doing this 25, 30 years later.’’

Now, 27 years after forming, the Bats are back in Australia for their first headlining tour since 2003. In that time, they’ve released their sixth (2005’s At the National Grid) and seventh (2008’s The Guilty Office) albums. It’s a revitalised time for the band, considering the 10 years prior didn’t produce a single Bats release.

‘‘We never broke up, ever,’’ Scott asserts, of that decade of downtime. ‘‘Occasionally people have written that we’ve ‘got back together’ but we’ve never actually stopped. We’ve had some long breaks where we haven’t played shows for a couple of years, or not done albums for, sometimes, five years, sure. But it always feels like we’re working towards something new.’’

From Mess + Noise magazine:

Mess+Noise Icons

The Bats

Ahead of an Australian tour, The Bats’ Robert Scott talks to RENÉ SCHAEFER about the makings of the “Dunedin Sound”, balancing rock’n’roll with day jobs and what it’s like holding onto the same line-up for 27 years.

It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of Dunedin stalwart Robert Scott to New Zealand music. After founding one of the country’s most influential and beloved bands, The Clean, in 1978 with David and Hamish Kilgour, the bassist soon discovered his own prodigious and prolific songwriting talent.

Scott contributed a plethora of memorable songs to the Clean’s oeuvre and was present at the inception of the Flying Nun record label, whose early releases by such artists as The Chills, The Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings and Look Blue Go Purple defined the “Dunedin Sound”. Taking advantage of the sporadic nature of The Clean’s existence, Scott branched out with his own group The Bats in 1983. It soon became clear that this was a band of considerable originality.

The Bats’ intricate, yet muscular, sound is built around the juggernaut rhythm section of drummer Malcolm Grant and bassist Paul Kean (ex Toy Love). Robert Scott’s signature guitar style consists of an up-tempo electric guitar jangle, eschewing cliched effects and distortion for the pure electricity of his steadily propulsive strum. Guitarist Kaye Woodward contrasts this electric storm with sparse, yet highly melodic, lead lines that soar and swoop like high-spirited birds across the grandiose vistas conjured by Scott’s songs.

This unique sound was probably best captured on The Bats’ classic albums Daddy’s Highway (1987) and The Law Of Things (1988), which perfectly melded Scott’s melancholic musings with the band’s exuberant post-punk folk-rock on songs such as ‘North By North’ and ‘Smoking Her Wings’.

Flying Nun’s burgeoning international reputation in the late 1980s, fuelled by rave reviews in independent music zines and crucial exposure on American college radio, allowed The Bats to take their music far beyond the parochial hubs of Dunedin and Christchurch. Still, they steadfastly returned to their home base. Through this, and taking lengthy periods off to concentrate on other projects, they have maintained an enviable longevity as a band and a close friendship as individuals.

While never having transcended their cult status, they still consistently deliver strong albums that can easily hold their own next to their early work. Indeed, The Bats have never delivered a “bad” or lackluster album and their latest release, The Guilty Office (out in Australia through Mistletone), is as musically and emotionally charged as could be expected from a group of musicians who still love playing and writing together in the third decade of their collaboration.

The Bats are one of the few bands that I can think of who’ve had the same line-up for their entire 27-year career. It seems like each element is indispensable to your sound. Is the band more than the sum of its parts?
Yeah, I guess it is. We each have our own role and fill it well. We have learnt to cope with each other’s shortcomings and foibles very well [laughs].

Tell me about The Bats’ songwriting process. Do you all get together and jam? How do you decide which songs become Bats songs and which are more suited to other projects, like Minisnap, or Robert Scott solo albums?
We do get together and jam in the studio, and that’s how songs like ‘The Guilty Office’ came to be. Most of the songs on the new album I had written about a year or so beforehand. I usually start with the chords and a vocal melody. I give it to the others and they work out their parts, then we fine tune it when we get together for album rehearsals. We sometimes write together during soundchecks. That can be quite fun and a different vibe too. We got a few songs together like that in Amsterdam recently. There are a few Bats songs that could go on a solo album and vice versa, but I’m not sure about that for Minisnap.

How important are the lyrics in The Bats? Are there particular themes running through your songwriting?
Whoooo … tricky! I think there are themes but I don’t know what they are until later when someone tells me. Overall it’s dark observations on the human condition with a bit of twisted beautiful landscape thrown in for good measure. I try and vary what I do and I hope I don’t repeat myself too much.

You have a strong fanbase in North America, as a result of Flying Nun records finding their way there in the mid- to late-’80s, and bands being able to tour there on the back of that exposure. Do you think The Bats would have lasted this long if you hadn’t ventured outside of your country?
Good point. I don’t think we would still be going if there was no interest outside of NZ. It gives us a great boost to know we are appreciated around the world; it does give us something to aim at. It does seem as though our music comes across as being a bit different from the norm. Maybe it’s the isolation, being stuck down here, that gives us the South Pacific/Antarctic sound: warm yet cold.

“Overall it’s dark observations on the human condition with a bit of twisted beautiful landscape thrown in for good measure.”

Why do you think New Zealand bands are so reluctant to tour Australia? I’m thinking in particular of The Clean here, but it appears to apply across the board.
For a long time Australia was seen as a difficult place to tour, even though a lot of great bands came from there. The feedback was a little slow in coming to our ears and we were all busy listening to what Europe and the US was saying about us. Also there hasn’t been a lot of record company help to make the tours happen. Over the last few years it has been much better of course, and we always have great shows when we make it over. Also with Hamish [Kilgour] being in New York, The Clean don’t tour that much. Now that both bands have local record companies, you will be seeing more of us.

The Bats have maintained a very distinctive signature sound over the years, which is still very much in evidence on your new album, The Guilty Office. Was that consistency deliberate?
Not really. We usually operate within our own comfort zone. We tend to not take too many chances. This could be seen as a weakness too. So overall our sound is consistent because we do approach a lot of the songs in the same way, for example, chords with a lead figure over the top with bass and drums. We like to have songs that are easy to play live and not dependent on machines. We intend to change the formula for the next album.

Out of the many many songs you’ve written, do you have any favourites or particular ones that you are most proud of?
No, not really. Whatever is the most recent and getting good reviews, or a good response from the crowd. New ones like ‘Countersign’, ‘Stepping Out’ and ‘Two Lines’ went down very well on tour, and I think ‘Castle Lights’ is a well put together tune.

It’s often perceived that there was rivalry between the proponents of the “Dunedin Sound” and the more experimental or noisy bands, to some extent identified with Bruce Russell’s Xpressway label. The Bats always seemed to have a foot in both camps though, working with violinist Alastair Galbraith, Robert playing with The Dead C’s Michael Morley in The Weeds and having Brent McLachlan from Bailter Space co-produce The Law Of Things. So was that rivalry just a beat-up or did it really exist?
It was a beat-up, I think, and it makes for a nice story too. Maybe there was a little looking down one’s nose going on here and there between the camps, but there were also some good collaborations too. The scene is a bit too small to have that kind of thing going on, but I guess that didn’t stop the Norwegian Death Metal scene from not getting on.

When you guys aren’t playing together, how do you occupy your time? I’m guessing none of you would be able to make a living purely from music.
True. I am a teacher aide doing music with kids aged five to 12, here in Port Chalmers. Paul organises events for the Christchurch city council, Kaye teaches English to foreign students and Malcolm works for [non-governmental organization] the IHC. So, yes, we enjoy escaping into the scruffy world of rock‘n’roll.

THE BATS: A SELECTED DISCOGRAPHYBy Night
EP, 1984

And here is…’Music For The Fireside’
EP, 1985

Made Up In Blue
EP, 1986

Daddy’s Highway
Album, 1987

The Law Of Things
Album, 1988

Completely Bats
Compilation of early EPs, 1990

Fear Of God
Album, 1991

Silverbeet
Album, 1993

Courage
EP, 1993

Spill The Beans
EP, 1994

Couchmaster
Album, 1995

Afternoon In Bed
EP, 1995

Thousands Of Tiny Luminous Spheres
Compilation, 2000

At The National Grid
Album, 2005

The Guilty Office
Album, 2009 (Mistletone)

bats

From Beat magazine:

THE BATS
by PATRICK EMERY

In the early 1980s Robert Scott, bass player with New Zealand band The Clean, was looking for something different to do with his music energies. A seminal ingredient in what became known (with some degree of liberal association) as the ‘Dunedin Sound’, The Clean was a rock band with an overt punk pop edge, soon to become the subject of cult interest in various sub-cultural musical communities across the world. With The Bats, Scott focused initially on creating a more overtly guitar pop sound. Like The Clean, The Bats have spent the last 25 years swanning in and out of active existence, in between the competing professional, musical and domestic activities of its membership.

In 2006, The Bats regrouped to begin recording what eventually became the band’s ninth studio album, The Guilty Office, released in 2008. To coincide with the album’s Australian release on Mistletone Records, The Bats are returning to Australia for the first time in ten years. “At the time I formed The Bats I didn’t think too deeply about making different music to The Clean,” Scott says, when asked if The Bats were intended to be a conscious break in style and sound from his previous band. “I don’t think I thought too deeply about it. The Clean had finished, and The Bats were trying to find their own sound. But I suppose in the back of my mind I knew I had to make a clean break from The Clean,” he says.Scott assumed guitar duties with the fledgling Bats line-up, with Paul Kean (whom Scott knew from the local independent music scene) playing bass. Kaye Woodward (guitar) and Malcolm Grant (drums) rounded out the line-up. “I’d been flatting with Kaye around that time,” Scott begins, “and then Malcolm came along later on”. Like The Clean, The Bats came lumped in with the ‘Dunedin Sound’, a collective term used to describe the various bands notionally based in the New Zealand city of Dunedin and featured on the Flying Nun label, including the Abel Tasmans, the 3Ds, the Headless Chickens and The Chills. Like other geographically constructed genres (Manchester, Seattle to name but a couple), the Dunedin Sound was less a strictly defined sound, and rather a convenient reference to a healthy artistic community. “It depends on how you look at it,” Scott replies, when asked if, in his opinion, there was such a creature as the Dunedin Sound. “It depends on how you look at it. Yes there was, in the sense of the DIY approach of the bands – making posters, doing the artwork and the approach to recordings,” Scott says. “There wasn’t a lot of outside help. And it’s true that musically a lot of the bands were listening to similar types of music like the Velvets, Suicide, Wire, Buzzcocks, so there were similarities there. And there was definitely a sense of healthy rivalry,” he adds.Independent of the integrity of the label, there’s no doubt the New Zealand bands of the 1980s punched above their parochial weight. “I was surprised by how big [the Dunedin scene] became,” Scott says. “And I think people overseas were also surprised at how New Zealand produced so many good bands”.As for the ingredients in that success, Scott points to the local academic influence as significant – and basic economics. “It’s probably just circumstance that can enable that to happen,” Scott says. “It was a cheap place to live, and it was a university town. My dad is a Zoology Professor, and there were a lot of people who also had ties to the university,” he says.While the guitar pop edge that characterised The Bats’ earlier recordings can be heard throughout The Bats’ recorded output – and in The Guilty Office – Scott says he has consciously tried to encourage an evolution in the band’s sound. “It’s something I pay attention to,” Scott says. “The early stuff was more bright and bouncy, but over time we’ve tightened things up a bit and made it a bit darker.”One aspect of the band that has remained absolutely consistent is its line-up. In fact, there aren’t many bands of twenty-five years’ standing that can boast maintaining the original line-up. Has The Bats’ sporadic live and recorded activity contributed to the band’s longevity? “Yes, I suppose so,” Scott acknowledges. “A band needs a certain level of activity to make things happen, and it does seem a heck of a lot of time that The Bats have been together,” Scott says. “But we’ve had breaks for jobs and for family, and other commitments.”The Bats have tended to emerge from hibernation when Scott’s other musical commitments have allowed. “It’s cyclical, in terms of one band’s touring, and then another,” Scott explains. “That’s something we try and juggle. We take a lot of time to find the right time to record and tour. But right now it’s a bit tricky, because there’s new records for both The Bats and The Clean,” Scott says. The decision to regroup in 2006 was simply a consequence of logistics. “There was no real catalyst,” Scott reveals. “It’s always the case that it takes us a while to get together.” Now living in different parts of New Zealand, Scott began sending his Bats colleagues song ideas for consideration. “Some of it was just me messing around with a guitar, and them choosing which bits they liked, and coming up with their own parts and then taking it from there,” Scott says. While Scott remains the dominant song-writing force, he’s content to both deal with intra-band criticism and to investigate different musical territory. “I try and go into different areas at different times,” Scott says. “And I try and be a bit more critical of myself. It’s a tricky one – everyone has a style, and I don’t want to go away from that too much. But I also feel like [writing songs] is a growth process,” he explains.Earlier this year The Bats were invited to travel to Spain to perform at the Primavera Music Festival in Barcelona. For a band whose touring commitments have tended to remain south of the equator, playing Primavera was a shot in the arm. “We were on earlier, so there wasn’t a giant crowd,” Scott says. “But we got a great reaction. We hadn’t played in Spain before, so it was really encouraging, and it gives us a good impetus to keep working hard”. And finally, what chance of a Clean tour of Australia? “It’s quite possible,” Scott replies. “We’re just working out which label to put our record out [on] in Australia. We’d love to come over, but I do find the summer months tough to deal with,” he laughs.
bats
From Inpress magazine:
THE BATS
By Doug Wallen
How reassuring is it that the Bats are touring Australia behind a new album in 2009? Considering the band formed 27 years ago and has only released a handful of albums, we can’t really take anything for granted. And yet the influential and roundly beloved New Zealand quartet, which hasn’t altered in lineup over the decades, is towing the refreshing new The Guilty Office, an album that stands up well against their early, Flying Nun-released classics. That it’s coming out on the Melbourne indie label Mistletone is simply one more cause for celebration.
The Guilty Office is the first Bats album since 2005’s At The National Grid, which itself marked the band’s return from a 10-year hiatus. Its members weren’t twiddling their thumbs all that time, though. Singer-guitarist Robert Scott was busy with the occasional tour and album with his other famed Flying Nun band, the Clean, as well as doing solo recordings and working as an artist. There have also been family obligations all around, and guitarist/singer Kaye Woodward, bassist Paul Kean, and drummer Malcolm Grant have spent time pursuing the band Minisnap, based around on Woodward’s songs.
“It’s not like I’ve been resting on my laurels,” observes Scott. “We’ve been doing the Clean. We went over to the States and did some shows and writing. And then we started the [new] Clean album, so we were working on that at the same time [as The Guilty Office]. It’s been quite a bit of activity.” Mister Pop, the Clean’s first new album since 2001, is arriving in September on Merge Records. Even older than the Bats, the Clean formed in 1978 and have maintained the lineup of Scott and founding brothers David and Hamish Kilgour for the bulk of the band’s on-again, off-again career.
Of the Bats’ steady lineup, Scott says, “That’s the only thing we know. It doesn’t seem unusual, but I think from the outside it may, because so many bands may last a few albums or five years. We’ve obviously been going a lot longer. But that seems normal to us. We don’t need much motivation to get things happening. We’re quite strongly motivated each time we get together to do as good an album as possible.”
All the while, the Bats haven’t tinkered much with their musical formula. From the quintessential early single Block of Wood straight through to the new album, there has been lots of pristine yet relentless strumming, a crisp rhythm section, and Scott’s soft, melancholy vocals. Yet that regularity didn’t keep the band’s ’80s and ’90s albums – Daddy’s Highway, The Law Of Things, Fear Of God, Silverbeet, and Couchmaster – from helping shape the sound of cornerstone indie bands like Superchunk and Versus.
“Some people say we sound a bit too similar on each album,” admits Scott. “That’s a fair accusation, and we do go for a certain style that we’ve already got well developed.” He notes, however, that The Guilty Office’s title track was written more democratically than most Bats songs have been, and that strings were added to the album to enhance that familiar sound. “But overall,” he adds, “the songs do operate in a similar zone.”
The Bats aren’t one-note by any means, though. There is an almost eerily meticulous quality to the band’s playing as well as Scott’s vocals and lyrics, and a growing effect of wonderment creeps up on listeners over time. Also, 1995’s Couchmaster proved a more expansive and somewhat raucous detour from other Bats albums. “With the earlier and mid-period [albums],” says Scott, “we were touring more and those were songs we’d gotten together on the road, so they tended to be faster and more aimed at the audience. With Couchmaster, we had had a break, so we came into the studio with stuff that hadn’t really been tested live. We can probably only play about a third of those songs live, I think, or choose to.”
Aside from At The National Grid and of course The Guilty Office, many Bats albums are out of print, due to Flying Nun’s uncertain status in recent years. Once home to the likes of the Clean, the Chills, Tall Dwarfs, and the Verlaines, the famed New Zealand imprint has been owned by Warner Brothers since 2006. But Scott says the label is in the process of being sold by Warner, which should free up the back catalogue for some much-need reissuing.
“Hopefully that situation will be rectified in the next wee while,” he says. He also confirms that the Bats are playing songs from all of their albums on their current tour. “We play stuff from as far back as the second EP,” he declares. “People that come and see us have obviously got their old favourites. We try to please as many people as possible.”
Thanks to word-of-mouth over the years and more recently the Internet, the Bats’ legacy has grown considerably beyond the band’s record sales. “It’s easier for people to find out about our stuff with the Internet,” agrees Scott. “Things evolve at a faster pace. We noticed that when we were in Europe last month. There were a lot of people that had seen us previously, and there were other people who’d just read about us online. So we had quite a few new punters along as well.”
The pattern should be similar when the Bats play Oz for the first time in six years. It also can’t hurt that the band’s old song North By North is now being used as the theme for the ABC series The Hollowmen. “Australia’s always been really good for us,” recalls Scott. “When we started in the early ’80s, Australia was seen as not a place to go, because it was mainly home to hard-rock acts. We were getting a lot of positive feedback from Europe and America, so we concentrated on that. But we had a very good time in Australia every time we’d gone.”
He continues, “Obviously the market’s changed a lot. We should have been over there more than what we have been. We’ve got to try and rectify that by getting there now. We’ll be over quite a bit more often, I’d say.”
How about a visit from the Clean as well? “Possibly,” he says. “It depends on whether David and Hamish feel motivated to do some shows. I don’t know whether we’re in that mode or not at the moment. I’d like to think we would be coming across, but I couldn’t say for sure.” With a chuckle, he adds, “Fingers crossed.”
 
From Time Out Sydney:

The Bats

The New Zealand indie rock stalwarts return - and not before time. Singer/songwriter Robert Scott reveals why.

By Andrew P Street

The BatsHow’s the day treating you? Good. I’m doing some painting, because I’ve got an exhibition starting tomorrow.

Um, isn’t that leaving it a little late? Well, because I was away in Europe [with legendary NZ band The Clean, for whom he plays bass], I had to try and do as much as I could before I went – but when I got back I realised I didn’t have quite enough pieces for the show. But they’re water-based acrylic paints, so they dry in a couple of hours. It’s fine.

The Bats - The Guilty OfficeSo you’ve got an exhibition, a Bats tour, a new Bats album, and a new Clean record coming out… Well yeah. Both The Bats and The Clean projects were started quite a long time ago, but now they’re coming out sort of close together. So that’s kinda funny.

Is that inconvenient for touring? Slightly, yeah. It doesn’t usually happen this way, usually there’s a good couple of years’ gap. One’ll come out and then the other band will have one coming out, and for whatever reason they’re coming out a bit close together. It’s mainly getting time off work and time away from the family that’s the trickiest thing. It’s a bit of a juggle, but it’s fun enough to be still doing it after all this time. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it.

Of course, in Australia you’ll always be known as that band that did the song from [ABC series] The Hollow Men. That’s true [laughs]. And that [’North by North’] is a very old song of ours.

One lovely thing about new album The Guilty Office is just how much it sounds like The Bats. That’s good. I think it’s good to sound like yourself because a lot of bands out there could be anyone, in a way. If you’ve got a sound or a style you’re happy with yourself, I think it’s good to go with it and stick with it. We do get accused as well of sounding too much the same – I don’t wanna be one of those bands that constantly change, but it’s a bit of a fine line. I mean we’re not gonna suddenly try and start playing reggae.

That said, I hear that reggae’s huge in New Zealand. Yeah, it’s pretty popular, actually. Bob Marley came here in the 70s and turned a lot of people on. Now it’s gotten incredibly popular here.

I have to confess, whenever I think of the lazy summer rhythms of reggae, rarely do I think of Dunedin… [laughs] Well, reggae is not quite as big down here as it is up north, but actually it’s still pretty popular.

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