The Bats: At The National Grid

Herald rating: ****

It's been a good decade since the Bats delivered a studio album and frankly they haven't been much missed. After their heyday as the least dangerous band on Flying Nun in the mid-to-late 80s, it felt as if they petered out naturally, having chimed primitively but melodically through five albums and many a show here. Their toe-tapping songs had a habit of turning student unions across the country - and abroad - into happy clappy saunas.

And since 1995's Couchmaster, the four have been getting on with other things like life, family and other projects - the Christchurch-based Bats of Kaye Woodward, Paul Kean and Malcolm Grant have been playing as Minisnap while Otago-based Robert Scott has had a solo album, time in Dunedin's Magick Heads and occasional returns to his first band the Clean.

So it would be easy to dismiss At the National Grid as the work of a bunch who have never exactly extended themselves artistically. After all, on first listen it sure sounds like a Bats album that could have been recorded at any time in their career - the word "jangle" appears in my notes next to half the tracks, while the phrase "bold new direction" has gone unused once again.

Except ... well, it's just good. Cosy yes, but as good and infectious and non-threatening as any of its predecessors. And it adds up to something cohesive, curiously fresh and oddly in tune with the times.

Its songs do the usual Bats things - the semi-acoustic slow mope with harmony (Western Isle, Bells), the dreamy droney pop song (Rays, the Woodward-sung Mir) and the galloping stomp with extra fuzz (Flowers and Trees, Single File, the bass-led Things).

Add a couple of sighing instrumentals and a hidden track that does lovely things with backwards guitars and the result is a Bats album that sounds good enough to last us another 10 years.

Label: Magic Marker/Rhythm Method

* The Bats play at the Dog's Bollix, Newton on Friday November 4, and Bar Bodega on Saturday November 5.