The Bats - Free All the Monsters (2011)

For over three decades, New Zealand rock pioneers The Bats have maintained their faith in simple, emphatic, guitar-based power-pop, crafting album after album of gauzy, melody-driven gems. This record is another winner, with a brace of alluring, half-droning, half-propulsive, kiwipop anthems, the kind of record that I, personally, enjoy cranking up to eleven, and letting the grooviness wash over me. Robert Scott's voice and the band's comfortable chorus, and especially the ease with which they collaborate and the clarity and simplicity of their songs... It's pure indiepop catnip! For a while there, a decade or two ago, the band got a little jittery sounding, but they have definitively retuned to the mellower, mystical, velvety hypnosis of their classic mid-'80s albums and with the exception of one woeful misfire, this record is another quiet masterpiece to notch on their belt. Skip track #5, pump up everything else, and you'll be in Batsy heaven.

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