The delights of a new The Bats track are akin to seeing the first buds on a tree in Spring after a particularly gruelling winter. And it certainly has been a horrible six months that have been leavened by the little sparks of music that have kept us all going. News of an imminent album and a new single from one of New Zealand’s finest exports warmed the heart in August and this joy is compounded by the release of another brilliant new single ‘Another Door’.
There is a gentle lilt to this track that encapsulates all that I love about this band: an ambience, a shimmer, a sense of poetry and an elegance. The crystalline unadulterated guitars sparkle and shine under singer Robert Scott’s melancholic and expressive vocals with beautiful harmonies that mesmerise and uplift. Scott says of the song:
This song is wee ditty about opportunities both missed and taken. It came together really quickly with the band.
The accompanying video was shot near where the forthcoming album ‘Foothills’ was recorded: there is a bucolic, pastoral air with constant movement of trains, cars and camera contrasted with the band playing in a small room – the band that has played together for 38 years with the same lineup. Perhaps this represents the band as a symbol of constancy in changing times or a desire to travel and escape after being isolated for so long:
‘Foothills’ was recorded in Spring 2018 at a country retreat pop-up studio. At that time, 15 songs were recorded in the Canterbury foothills of the Southern Alps, Aotearoa (New Zealand). The dramatic landscape a fitting tableaux from which to work from.
You can download/stream ‘Another Door’ here or through the link below and preorder the album, out on 13 November 2020, here, through the iconic Flying Nun Records.
Foothills Track List:
1.Trade In Silence
2.Warwick
3. Beneath The Visor
4. Scrolling
5. Another Door
6. Red Car
7. Field of Vision
8. Change Is All
9. As You Were
10. Smaller Pieces
11. Gone to Ground
12. Electric Sea View
