The Bats
The Guilty Office

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Sound clips for The Guilty Office by The Bats: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Yesboyicecream, YBI12CD , £11.09.

What their label says...

The Bats are acknowledged legends of New Zealand music, standing alongside contemporaries The Clean and The Chills as lynchpins of the Flying Nun label and the Dunedin/Christchurch scene. April 2009 sees the UK release of The Bats’ 7th full-length studio album, The Guilty Office, a mere 27 years since they first got together and 22 years since their debut album, Daddy’s Highway, with the original line-up of Malcolm Grant, Paul Kean, Kaye Woodward and songwriter Bob Scott still intact. The Bats have always been better known - and bigger - in the US than they ever have been at home in New Zealand or in the UK and Ireland. In America, they’ve toured with Radiohead, made the front cover of Billboard, the Top 20 of the CMJ charts, and been name-checked by Pavement and REM (who also invited them on tour, tried to get them to sign to their friends’ label and insisted on playing Bats’ songs at full volume through their tour PA throughout a European Tour). The emphatic reaction of their domestic press to The Guilty Office and recent critical success of Bats’ side-project Minisnap shows that this might just be their time to break through into popular consciousness at home and in the UK. Certainly, if popularity is determined by the quality of craft, then The Guilty Office should bring Robert Scott and his merry bunch the success they deserve. But The Bats aren’t looking for retrospective plaudits. The 2008 4-track Don’t You Rise EP released in the US on Slumberland Records (home of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Crystal Stilts) is evidence of their continued relevance to another generation of indie pop kids. The Guilty Office is a mesmerising and moreish collection of pastoral folk pop and classic indiepop and a serious contender to be considered The Bats’ finest 45 minutes and best work. Fans of Belle and Sebastian and The Clientele should lap this up.

Tracklisting - 1. Countersign 2. Crimson Enemy 3. Broken Path 4. Like Water in Your Hands 5. Castle Lights 6. Two Lines 7. Satellites 8. Later On That Night        9. Steppin’ Out 10. The I Specialist 11. The Guilty Office 12. The Orchard