Representative Albums: "Thousands of Tiny Luminous Spheres," "Daddy's Highway," "The Law of Things"
Biography
Yet another outgrowth of the seminal Clean, the Bats were an institution on the New Zealand music scene, their melancholy jangle-pop sound and infectious melodies consistently defining the kiwi-rock aesthetic at its very best. The Bats were formed in Christchurch in 1982 by ex-Clean bassist Robert Scott, ex-Toy Love bassist Paul Kean, singer/multi-instrumentalist Kaye Woodward and drummer Malcolm Grant; with Scott adopting lead vocal and guitar duties as well as serving as the group's chief songwriter, they issued their debut By Night in 1984, the first in a series of EPs which also included 1985's "And Here Is 'Music for the Fireside'!" and 1986's Made Up in Blue. (All three were subsequently collected as Compiletely Bats.) The Bats finally released a full-length album, the stunning Daddy's Highway, in 1987; soon after the group went on hiatus, with Scott participating in a Clean reunion tour and Woodward giving birth. The quartet came back together in 1990 to release The Law of Things, another critical favorite which received almost no commercial interest. Fear of God appeared in 1991, and two years later the Bats resurfaced with Silverbeet; an intermittent series of EPs (including Live at WFMU and Spill the Beans, the latter recorded with Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan on guitar) followed as Scott again focused much of his energies on another Clean reunion, but in 1995 the group returned with a new LP, Couchmaster. The Bats drifted apart soon after the release of the album. Scott spent time in the Magick Heads and working on solo project, Woodward recorded with Roy Montgomery in Dissolve and Kean and Grant formed Minisnap in the early 2000's. In 2003 the Bats began working on new songs at the National Grid studios in Christchurch and once they had the basic tracks down, moved to Woodward and Kean's home studio for overdubs and mixing. The result was 2005's At the National Grid, released on Magic Marker in the States and Flying Nun in New Zealand. The album doesn't pick up where Silverbeet and Couchmaster left off, it goes back to the glory days of Daddy's Highway and The Law of Things and is their best work since then. ~ Jason Ankeny & Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
The Bats are an influential New Zealandrockband formed in 1982 in Christchurch by Paul Kean (bass), Malcolm Grant (drums), Robert Scott (guitar, vocals) and Kaye Woodward (lead guitar, vocals, other instruments). Though primarily a Christchurch band, The Bats have strong links to Dunedin and are usually grouped in with the Dunedin Sound bands that emerged from that southern city in the early 1980s.
The quartet released two EPs (By Night and ...And here is Music for the Fireside) before releasing their first full-length album, Daddy's Highway, in 1987.
The band took a break, with Scott joining his former band The Clean on a reunion tour, while Woodward gave birth. When the band resumed recording, the result was 1990's The Law of Things, which saw the quartet joined on violin by Alastair Galbraith.
Scott is a prolific musician, and The Bats have suffered to some extent from his many musical commitments. As well as The Bats and The Clean, he has also been involved with several other bands, notably The Magick Heads, and for this reason, albums and tours by these bands have been organised largely on a rotation basis. Primarily due to this, the other members aside from Robert Scott are in a side-project band, Minisnap.
1991 saw the band switch labels, to Mammoth Records, and then release the full-length Fear of God. Other albums and an EP have followed: Silverbeet (1993), Spill the Beans (EP, 1994), Couchmaster (1995), and two retrospective compilations, Compiletely Bats (which collected most of the tracks from the band's two early EPs and several singles) and Thousands Of Tiny Luminous Spheres. At the National Grid, was released in September, 2005 on Little Teddy Records in Germany, Magic Marker in the US and Egg Records in the UK.
The Guilty Office was released in NZ on 1 December 2008 through Arch Hill.[1] It has since been released in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia.
