Batrider
Tara
10 Track, LP (2007, No Promo)
Related: Batrider.
Batrider are a difficult beast to pin down: just when you think you’ve got a song pegged, it lurches violently in another direction. Just when you’re used to Sarah Chadwick’s abrasive yet melodic vocals dominating a track, her voice is subsumed under a dark wave of guitar noise. Some critics have detected hints of Cat Power, others the emotional catharsis of John Lennon circa ‘Mother’. The swashbuckling nihilism of Junkyard-era Birthday Party could just as easily serve as a reference point, while the unpolished ‘Drought’ provides the missing link between guitar-heavy grunge and pop smarts.
If Tara is car crash art rock, thrilling but repulsive, then the acoustic bonus disc Pink Guitars, Yellow Stars is a far more conventional affair. Compiled of alternate versions and re-recorded earlier songs, its more minimalist approach provides less tension, less urgency and less of that hard to place paranoia which makes Batrider unique. It’s interesting, but unavoidably inferior, even if the droning ‘James Selwood’ is almost hypnotic in its slow, bare-boned insistence. Listening to ‘Thing’, one of three songs to appear on both records, you long for the Tara version’s disreputable racket. As a creative left-turn, only Magic Dirt’s recent pair of releases is comparable in recent memory, but Tara is definitely the pick of the pair – the triumph of the ugly sibling.
by Daniel Herborn
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