Whether they know Christchurch from Cleveland or were alive in 1987 when Daddy's Highway made small but far-reaching ripples, indie rock fans have been absorbing strains of the Bats' and fellow "New Zealand sound" evangelists such the Clean and the Chills via osmosis for a couple of decades. The chugging, scrappy, Velvets-indebted aesthetic is so finely woven into "classic" indie rock's DNA (thanks largely to 90s uber-fans like Pavement and Superchunk), that it's easy to take a new album from one of the key Kiwi bands for granted-- even to write it off as quaint and anachronistic.
So inevitably, nostalgia nags The Guilty Office, the Bats' first release since 2005's At the National Grid, their respectable but underwhelming return from a decade-long hiatus. Despite introducing a few upgrades over the years-- actual sound engineering, a greater vocal role for guitarist Kaye Woodard, and the occasional harp-- the band hasn't tinkered with its signature chiming guitars and surging straight-ahead rhythms. But why fix a formula that works? From melodic, bobbing lead "Countersign" to bucolic closer "The Orchard", Office is a comfortable, comforting listen, wonderful in its very familiarity.
Even as the band sticks to the path of least resistance, it skirts the MOR sandtrap that sinks so many indie rock acts that manage to last a quarter century. The Bats' feet aren't as fleet as they used to be; nothing on Office hurtles with the reckless abandon of classics "United Airways" or "The Law of Things", and there's a higher ratio of slow-to-fast tempoed songs than there used to be. But a tune like "Crimson Enemy" locks into enthusiastic, even danceable grooves. And although lead Bat Robert Scott has always harbored a hint of despair in his almost-comic frog-throated croak, he's positively ebullient dueting with Woodard on "Steppin' Out". Even on less-sunny songs like the title track or "Broken Path", the dude sounds like he's smiling, like he's (get this!) happy to be there.
The record's midsection is a tad soft and somewhat skippable. I'm a sucker for a good ending, though, and orchestra-enhanced "The Orchard" is a knock-out, as pretty and plush as a middle-period Belle and Sebastian track, with a unison-sung chorus that suggests the whole room, including the sound guys, are chiming in on "here we go a-wassailing around the apple trees again." Charmingly giddy as that is, you actually have to return to track one, "Countersign", for the album's essential lyric: "We want you back here/ You've been too long away." Agreed.
