The Bats
The Guilty Office
12 Track, LP (2009, Mistletone Records)
Related: The Bats.
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
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Really good review!
At first I found it a bit bland compared to the early stuff but It's grown on me heaps.
It's still growing on me now. Funny how that happens.
I only know 1 Bats song 'Smoking Her Wings' cause I randomly picked it up at a record fair.
I love it but couldn't work out why, then I realised it's pretty much the same song as 'Gun Clubs' The House on Highland Ave.
I DJ'd em back to back the other day, no one comented though.
as opposed to my bang bang eche comments, the bats still have the goods. ah, something about them is so perpetually unhip, so completely now.
perhaps melody and talent never goes out of style...
is m+n now accepting nz content?
This album is a real grower. Didn't like it at first but I'm loving it now.
++db said 2 minutes ago:
is m+n now accepting nz content?
No
soliciting, p'haps
So you can't even answer the question yourself?
There's a NZ band featured on mess and noise and you ask are mess and noise accepting Nz content. Well fuck me who knows. I guess if you think about it they probably are.
buscemi, i always thought there was a pointed avoidance of overseas content in m+n's live reviews. figured they had some 'australia only' content policy. the bats articles appear to be an exception ...
Batrider? Where does that sit.
The Arias are going mental anyway.
hmm, so nz and australia aren't that close now?
geezus, does it really offend australians if a nz album is reviewed every now and again given our predilection to release and tour aus frequently? or is some rampant xenophobia at work --db?
think of it this way - if the band is great it's another opportunity to claim them as your own!
Yes, we also review NZ artists. Obviously.
Bachelorette is from NZ too. What an outrage!
not offended at all timmydodgers, quite the opposite.
i thought it could have been the m+n content policy, if such a thing exists, that was xenophobic. batrider lived here for a few years and australia loves claiming nz'rs as their own. due to lack of interest, i didn't notice the bacherlorette articles, my mistake. i found the bats articles, and thought frankie might have snuck them in because he's such a fan.
i'm glad to see its not a one-off, and no patriotic blinkers are in place. i'm for a more international perspective, 'i think its crazy to act otherwise 'cause its a small world and always getting smaller.
when i saw some smaller international bands brushed over in live reviews, such as this one, - my apologies for using yr article as a reference point again, frankie - i thought it was possibly the result of some sort of anti-OS content policy. that's why i asked about nz content being acceptable. where is the line drawn, nz, asia-pacific, south asia? where are the borders of these regions? india, russia, the americas? who the fuck cares.
it can be hard for a diy-sorta band to make it to australia, to tour with only a few major few cities to play in (and i'm including canberra and hobart as major cities), to get people out to yr shows and not loose a shitload of money. there are small-diy bands coming here from all accross the world, and i think these bands deserve equal footing/inclusion as anyone else.
ok, so nz is in the fold. that's good. what next.
I'm not really sure if there is an editorial policy - josejones might be able to answer this. But it IS an Australian music site first and foremost. My take on OS bands is that they generally get covered elsewhere or discussed in threads. Personally, I find it quite satisfying to read all about the great local acts rather than something imported. It may sound blinkeredly patriotic, but I think our local scene is just as strong (if not more so) than OS. In the case of NZ, the way I see it is that their market is even smaller than ours, so when a NZ band, especially one of the caliber of The Bats, comes over here or has a new release, it's worth writing about. Likewise, I'm excited to hear about stuff that happens in Australian cities other than Sydney and Melbourne, which seems to happen a lot more on here these days. It's all good I reckon and enriches people's understanding of ''local music''.
amen and amen. i think it's safe to say we're not going to outnumber australians on either the release calendar or the discussion board anytime soon! =)
mistletone and low transit are releasing some of our best albums so there's definitely crossover... plus i'd like to think we're all one big whanau despite the what most may say!?
Oh, yes! I'd completely forgotten about this trans-Tasman connection. There ya go - mystery solved!
Xenophobic? No. Supporting our locals scenes (including NZ scenes) that may not be covered elswhere? Yes.
Every other music magazine in the land covers international bands, often to the detriment of Australian and NZ ones, particularly those with lower advertising budgets. Evening out the status quo.