The Guilty Office

Notes

Personnel: Robert Bruce Scott (vocals, guitar); Kaye Woodward (guitar, background vocals); Katrina Thomson (harp); Alan Starrett (strings, accordion); Malcolm Grant (drums); Paul Kean (background vocals). Audio Mixer: Paul Kean. Recording information: Longfellow Street (08/2007); Masonic Lodge, Port Chalmers (08/2007); The National Grid, Heathcote (08/2007). After a couple years with no follow-up album, the Bats returned to action in 2005 with AT THE NATIONAL GRID, which seemed like it might be a one-off occurrence, and that they might choose go back into the hibernation they had been ensconced in for ten years. Thankfully for fans of their jangling, melancholy sound, the band re-grouped and returned with THE GUILTY OFFICE in 2009. Though they have a new label (Hidden Agenda), the band's seventh album sounds as if it could have been released anytime in the past 25 years the band has been making brilliant music. Sure, the sound is cleaner than on their earliest records, but the fundamentals are all still there. The propulsive drums, twangling basslines, crisply strummed rhythm guitar, and the plangent lead guitar form the backdrop for Robert Scott's autumnal songs that he and Kaye Woodward sing in sweetly fragile and human terms. It may be too much to ask, but the Bats could keep making records like this every couple years for another 25 years, but really there's no reason they shouldn't. Their sound will never grow tiresome; it only gets better with repeated use.