Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Bats - Raw Eggs (Egg, 2006)

Though they could boast the rare luxury of having virtually all of their albums and major releases issued in the US, New Zealand's jangle-rock maestros The Bats, never caught on with a wide-scale American audience, even amongst indie/alt rock types. Their initial run spanned the mid-80s to about 1995, but in 2003 the band reconvened from a lengthy hiatus with their sixth proper studio album, The Bats at the National Grid. While not quite the stuff of their halcyon era, which produced such striking albums as The Law of Things (1989) and Fear of God (1991), At the National Grid was still recommendable. In 2006 the group stormed the North American shores for a brief tour. That's where Raw Eggs comes in. Sold in a limited run of *gulp* 100 copies at US shows, the 18-track CD was comprised of demos, outtakes and alternate versions from the National Grid sessions. By popular demand, the tour-only CD, was made available for online mailorder through the C86-friendly folks at Egg Records. It appears to be completely sold out at this point. You can read a review of the album here.

The Bats released a new album, The Guilty Office in December 2008 in their native Kiwi-land, with a Stateside and European release to follow hopefully later this year.

01. Don't Rise
02. Western Isles
03. You Don't Belong
04. Up to the Sky
05. Face Inside the Sun
06. The Rays
07. The Birds and the Bees
08. Hubert
09. Crazy Crowd
10. Horizon
11. Mir
12. Things I Can't Leave Behind
13. Pre-war Blues
14. That's How You'll Find Me
15. Rehash
16. Single File
17. We Do Not Kiss the Ones We Kick
18. The Bells Are Ringing

Hear

6 comments:

Just8 said...

Raw Eggs is not sold out - You can order it here:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/thebats/
Click on 'T'shirts, CD's
STUFF FOR SALE' in the left bar and scroll down.

spavid said...

Could have sworn I checked that page out before making this post. To anyone reading this, if you like what you hear, give the Bats some of your hard-earned $.

Count5 said...

Thank you so much for sharing this. I own almost every Bats album, but I have never heard this. I am glad they are still around. I hope they tour sometime in the near future for the new album. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing them in concert. Thanks again!

Rev. Dave said...

Rapidshare has blocked this one, so "liking what you hear" is not an option.

youti said...

Please, You can up this albun again?? tks!!!!!

Palm Beach said...

Any chance you could post this? I'm a big fan, have bought all their albums (some on multiple formats) and seen them live a couple of times, but I've only just heard of this CD.