Things move slowly in the world of beloved New Zealand band the Bats. 2012 will conclude their 30th year as a group, although they're not likely to be in any rush to celebrate that fact. After all, this is a group that took five years to release its debut full-length album (Daddy's Highway) and is only now issuing its eighth record, Free All the Monsters. The long gaps in the Bats' catalog can partly be attributed to singer/guitarist Robert Scott's presence as bassist in the Clean and his intermittent work as a solo artist, including his excellent 2010 album, Ends Run Together. Remarkably, despite long periods of inactivity, the band's original lineup of Scott plus singer/guitarist Kaye Woodward, bassist Paul Kean, and drummer Malcolm Grant remains intact. So too does that dreamy, disconsolate feeling that settles in whenever the Bats' best music takes hold and nimbly seeps under your skin.
This relatively swift follow-up to 2008's The Guilty Office reunites the group with Flying Nun for the first time in over a decade, during a time when the legendary Christchurch label is celebrating its own 30th year in the business. It may be a stretch to imagine that realigning of forces caused the Bats to up their game, but this feels like their best record in years, possibly ever. Free All the Monsters simply consists of a set of plaintive songs that draw on all the stylistic cues this band has worked hard to establish in the past (a Byrds-ian jangle, a touch of Velvets-style dissonance) and tightens everything up a touch. Parallel feelings of warmth and longing criss-cross through much of the material, with songs like "Long Halls" and "On the Bank" bedded down in Kean's warmly looping basslines, while the vocals cut through the glow with a whole heap of self scrutiny.
Most bands that put in the kind of time the Bats have accrued, either in their natural lives or through reunions, are trading off past glories by the time they hit this awkward middle-age stage. The language of rock simply doesn't lend itself well to concerns that arise once temples start thinning and paunches start widening-- with a few notable exceptions. Scott, it seems, is one of those irregular musicians, someone who has grappled with the aging process and managed to filter his thoughts and feelings on it into compelling material. It helps that he's able to fasten his wistful mindset to a broad base of musical ideas, whether it's in the lilting pop of his co-vocal duties with Woodward on "Free All the Monsters" and "Fingers of Dawn" or through the meditative exhaust-fume growl of "In the Subway". On the beautifully barren instrumental "Canopy" there's no need for words, with the Bats overlapping, keening guitar lines that perfectly sink into the pensive undercurrent of the rest of the album.
The nostalgic "Spacejunk" works as a précis of the unusual place the Bats find themselves in, with Scott hinting at his malaise ("direction is hard to find") and indicating how he gets over it ("time is the healer"). That notion of using time to overcome, to iron out kinks, not to rush into resolution or hasty decision-making is why this group has an album on their hands that effortlessly builds on everything that came before. It's an old-fashioned approach in the internet age, but it's better to think of the Bats as a band that's completely out of time, operating in a space (and at a pace) of its own volition. On Free All the Monsters, that place is full of familiar concerns-- woebegone angst, rumination on a life that could have turned out differently, the brutally quick passage of time. It's a bittersweet corner of the world that the Bats have patiently chipped away at over their long history, but on this record it feels like they're gaining a head of steam instead of resting on any laurels.
