The Bats Free All the Monsters. " We have so little time to say the things we mean." Is it gauche, it is, unimpeachably, to quote Gus Van Sant movies as the heart of wisdom. But I will admit that I do like that contention. I do spend an inordinate number of words on this website not conveying much of what is inside of my heart. It is always what is in my head that spills out in among the pixels. Head or heart? Which is the more compelling? From the opening riff the Bats hit me in the heart. It is the tenderest Bats record ever. His voice, restrained, moved back farther into the mix, the sentiments gauzy and washed over and sweet. He's older, they're older, we're older. We are beyond the apogee of civilization. We need nostalgic reminiscences such as this to remind us of how beautiful life once was. When I was a child in the 1970s and we last had our existential crises I was too young to understand the decay and despair. I would watch Jimmy Carter parade incompetence in press conferences about changing the direction of the part in his hair and when I would walk home on my birthday I was super charged and energized and filled with joy and the world was dying. Now children are not allowed to walk home from school. They may not be allowed to listen to the Bats. And the world is dead. Why tempt them with hope and loveliness and joy. This world is going to slip into the abyss of John Mayer and 'Through the Wormhole' and Stephanie Meyer. The Bats will move on to another world, a better world...there must be. Second track, the track when we realize that Robert Scott has suddenly realized that Kaye Woodward has a voice and it is terrifically lovely. Was it as a result of a loyalty to Jane Sinnott that he seemed to have not noticed this previously? There's the incalculable bats jangle(is there an algorithm for the effortlessness that they convey with guitars). Do their riffs repeat? They are complex enough to disguise repetition. His voice, again, muted, hers tres super! And then a Kaye lead, ah bliss. The Bats writes songs about everything. They write songs about date rape, strangely cheerful ones about date rape actually, and political songs and songs about love and everything else important. Perhaps now that the end times are arrived the important things in life that have not yet bean sullied by bureaucratic intervention will come to the fore once more as a celebration of the traces of humanity that have not been crushed by the heavy hand of government. I was working on a municipal bid for our company this week and it is a minor contract, certainly in the face of our 4 trillion leviathan and yet the process of removing beetle kill trees in Summit County requires the oversight of nine different government agencies. At a minimum there are nine bureaucrats that we must be answerable to in order to use a chainsaw to remove dead trees. Madness. The current track is Free All the Monsters. They have been chained to desks by stifling federal mandates. Gamera not allowed access to restricted flight paths, Godzilla for not making his flame meshed breath safe for children's pajamas, Godzuki in violation of youthful curfews. It is all very depressing. It was such a rapid slide. It all began with bicycle helmets. I ride my bicycle to work, most days, when I am not lazy, but the scorn that is heaped upon me when I pull into the parking lot without wearing a bicycle helmet is immense. When did it become everyone slse's concern over the risks I choose to subject myself to? Robert Scott has children. I am sure, because his heart is pure and his soul unblackened by cynicism as mine has been, he makes his children wear bicycle helmets even though when he was a child he never wore a bicycle helmet. And he learned the limits of mortality. He didn't mature in a risk free society where you can choose all of the easy paths and feel entitled to a reward at the end. I work with a great number of first generation immigrants. They come from cultures of self-reliance and where the government was more likely to murder you than to suffocate by needless regulation and they have a spirit and vigor that has been nearly extinguished from the native population. But their children, their children are comparatively benign. Our overlords have nothing to fear from the children. They will Occupy Wall Street and demand more government oversight, more bureaucratic indifference, more state sanctioned mediocrity and inertia. Because it is safe. This is why indiepop music has stagnated over the past 15 years. Wealth, as ephemeral as it appears now, has blunted the rebellious instincts of pop music. There is only a retreat to isolation and narcissism worth commenting on. But this album? It's gorgeous. But they are not children. The Bats are old. The Bats are older, much older, than I am. They can be reflective and ruminative and it sounds romantic and wistful rather than inhibited. In the Subway not, a bit of kraut rock-ish motorikness. A groove. Paul Kean is married to Kaye Woodward. They also have children. I am not sure if Malcom, the drummer, has children. He was once in the Bilders. With Bill Direen. Is he a fan of cabaret? His drumming is not flashy. What would happen if he came in with a load of Can records and a Jaki Liebezeit haircut and an assortment of cowbells with mention to his band mates that he had a song. Where would the Bats be then? In the Subway is also great, it isn't gentle and demure, well it is, they are desperately unable to shed their genteel natures, but it is insistent and basic and charming and my gosh I love the Bats. I am so glad that they have returned to us. They were banished for a short period. The Bats released two dreary, uninspired records. This record sounds more polished, as if it has been more expensively produced than the last few records. Next track, more double tracked vocals, there is a very strong Daddy's Highway feel to many of these songs, a Law of Things confidence. It's marvelous. My heart is sometimes shrouded by an inexpressive camouflage called my countenance. My heart sometimes has a muffled heartbeat. I only wish for the beats to be obvious to everyone I meet. How brilliant for a lovely stranger to meet you and to be charmed and beguiled because the pounding of your heart is obvious to them and to everyone in the room, I am so desperately happy to see you that my heart can not be contained within the realm of this dust and flesh. Devotchka songs express that feeling. The Bats are more the subtle tingling sensation that travels up and down your spine in an unconscious realization that although the world faces Armageddon that a smile could disarm nations filled with belligerents intent on your destruction or the crushing thoughts of inadequacy that assume primacy in more private moments. Space Dust now, beautiful, it's got pace, it has jangle, his voice distant and sparkling. Her voice just beneath. Are the Bats a democracy now? Has Robert Scott acceded to popular convention and allowed his band mates a say on the musical direction of the band? Hard to say. This is a Bats record, he is the Bats, but after 30 years, they are the Bats. And they are Minisnap. It doesn't sound like Minisnap record. Minisanp is more bouncy, effervescent, fey, insubstantial, this is all of those things but in a stable mixture that comes out uniquely their own. Big echoey vocals at the moment, thick guitar lead, his charming rhythm track. Wonderful. On the Bank. I had two musical childhoods. The first I spent in England. My friends were Morrissey and Ian Mccullough and Paul Heaton and other minor figures of great importance. I have Paul Heaton's heart in a jar in the side drawer of my desk. I would, if it was available for purchase on ebay. The second I spent in New Zealand. With Martin Phillipps and Robert Scott and the Kilgours and Graeme Downes and they, neither, had greater influence, they wove a tapestry of insecurity and obscurity. I am able to hide in fantasies of exotic Aotearoa and Cemetery Gates and be made to only briefly escape for gulps of air at the surface after a vigorous swim through the viscous fluid of my own indulgences. I met someone this week and admitted my love of cemeteries, of the dead, and their life's journey and my need to fill in the gaps and spaces in between the epitaph and the earth. I admitted that my first date was at a cemetery near my home. I did not feel self conscious or strange. I realize now I am destined to be eternally hopeful, with pop songs to accompany my loneliness and my faux narcissism. I write laments over this age of narcissism but is it not true that shyness and introspection is the most damnable version of this social malady. It is. I deem the world as it exists unworthy of my interest. I deem the world as it presented itself to Ikhnaton to have been preferable to our own even though it is unchanged, essentially the same, perpetually uninteresting and populated entirely with people more concerned with the quenching of appetites than reflection. This is why the Bats are one of the most important bands in the history of the world. When the four of them come together it's for the expression of joy. It's a timeless act of human kindness and they should have monuments erected to them in appreciation. Last track, the acoustic ballad. Charming and effortless. Magic, just as the song says. Graeme Downes has morphed into Ward Churchill, Martin Phillipps hasn't written anything I would admit to owning for 18 years, the Kilgours want to be 18 forever but Robert Scott has been Robert Scott since forever and it could be this world's great under appreciated charm.