This is my absolute favorite band. Listening to their music is powerful, and something everyone should experience. Each song, from Treason, to Calm Before the Storm, and many others, has something special to offer. Quite amazing!

Hey Hamslam...Check out what Amazon has, you can buy most of thier stuff from there.

Hey Robert,
I bought a painting of yours years ago - I'm presuming it's of the Clean- it had big splashes of orange & red & it was once on the cover of Real Groove Magazine when it was still free ... just letting you know that it found a good home & I'm still enjoying it!!
from Gianmarco

:

The Bats' brand of power pop

SUNDAY , 18 DECEMBER 2005

The Bats are as cool as ever, despite a lukewarm reception locally, writes Grant Smithies.

Like wasabi, anchovies and hot mustard, Robert Scott's voice is an acquired taste. Some delicate souls can't stomach it. Others - myself included - just can't get enough of it. Fragile, wavering, often slightly flat, that voice is the perfect mechanism for the dark little songs Scott writes for pioneering South Island band The Bats.

Press play on The Bats' new album and that peculiar indecisive tone is the first thing you notice, straining to rise above a ragged jumble of jangly chords and primitive country-punk beats. At the National Grid is the first Bats album in nine years, but not because the band is lazy. Other projects have been taking priority - Minisnap, Dissolve, The Magick Heads, Scott's solo albums, The Clean reunion tours, young kids, day jobs.

Rehearsals have been a problem, too, as Scott lives in Port Chalmers, while bassist Paul Kean, guitarist Kaye Woodward and drummer Malcolm Grant live in Christchurch.

But even after a nine-year gap, this album sounds instantly familiar. Why? Because we've been listening to this band for 23 years. Yes, babies born the day The Bats played their first song are now graduating from university. In today's fashion- driven musical marketplace, 23 years is several lifetimes, yet this band carries on, with the same members it had on day one, sporadically knocking out collections of strangely poignant pop songs together.

Clearly they enjoy each other's company (especially Kean and Woodward, who are married), but even so, it's rare to see a band persevere for so long in the face of so-so sales and widespread local indifference.

"We do get quite a strange reaction in New Zealand," says Kean. "We have a much higher profile in the States than we do here. Over there we get really enthusiastic reviews in the press, and there's over 120 college stations playing this new album, but here at home our reviews are really strange. Local reviewers always seem to be confused about whether it's cool to like The Bats or not."

It's an odd situation, isn't it? Here's a band that's loved, ardently, by many thousands in the US, Europe and the UK, yet here at home they're mostly either patronised or ignored.

It's likely that some of the band's respect overseas is down to pedigree. Kean used to play bass in Toy Love, Grant played with Bill Direen and the Builders and Scott played bass for The Clean, our first underground band to make a significant impact overseas. All three bands had connections with Flying Nun, a much-respected label in indie rock circles worldwide.

"We've also played a lot in the States and Europe, especially in the late 80s and early 90s," says Kean. "And Flying Nun was great at getting our records out to the right magazines and radio stations in those days." So good in fact that The Bats ended up on the cover of huge US industry mag Billboard in 1987, and in England the song "Made Up in Blue" was declared NME's single of the week the same year. Later there was a US tour with Belly and Radiohead, and another with compatriots Straitjacket Fits as that band took its first serious crack at America.

All this exposure led to The Bats starting to receive high praise from other bands. Revered American indie bands Pavement and Guided by Voices began to name-check The Bats as a significant influence, and at one point another fan, REM's Michael Stipe, suggested they sign to a mate's new label in the States. Kean says the contract was "for the rest of time, for all sales in this universe and beyond" so they declined, but Stipe still hired The Bats to support REM at an Auckland Town Hall gig and went on to play Bats songs at punishing volume through the PA on REM's next European tour.

"All this groundwork means we're still pretty well respected in the States and Britain, but New Zealand often seems to want to forget we exist," laughs Kean. "Local reviews invariably contain snide comments about how our sound is always the same, but the musicians are the same, so that's hardly surprising. If you plant a peach stone, it will grow into a peach tree. Why would it suddenly morph into an orange tree?"

And why swerve off in some new musical direction when the existing sound is already so peachy? Scott and Woodward's trebly guitars and uncertain harmonies, Grant's spare but precise drumming, Kean's warmly melodic bass - these familiar things make each of their records sound pre-loved, agreeably rumpled, instantly comfortable, like a prime item of vintage clothing. And with the tracks ranging from gentle indie psychedelia and drifting drone- pop to frazzled folk and country ballads, At the National Grid is the best Bats' album since 1987's bloody marvellous Daddy's Highway.

"Our songs often sound like bouncy pop on the surface, but there's a darker underbelly to them. I agree that At the National Grid is one of our best records, but even so, here at home, we'll be lucky if it sells 7000 copies.

"We just aren't a particularly fashionable band here. A lot of local bands wear the right clothes and stand the right way when they play their guitars, but we never have. We just make good records.

"If you took us all individually and put us all through a musical proficiency test, we'd probably all flunk, but put us together and something special happens. It works! We're bigger than the sum of our parts."

The Bats play the Auckland Big Day Out on January 20.

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The latest album listed to the right is about 14 years old. We've since recorded Couchmaster, released a CD of greatest almost hits with extra songs, worked on side-projects like Minisnap and the Clean - at the end of 2005 we released a new CD "The Bats at the National Grid" that was playlisted and charted on 200 USA radio stations. The Bats toured USA earlier this year and in Novemebr 2006 released an animated video of a song called Flowers And Trees. Great on many levels - find one or two that suit you.

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