The Bats

The Bats arose from the influential Clean as a fixture within New Zealand’s music community, their introspective jangle pop textures and memorable hooks shaping the country’s rock sensibility in exemplary fashion. The Christchurch quartet came together in 1982, uniting Clean bassist Robert Scott, ex-Toy Love bassist Paul Kean, singer and multi-instrumentalist Kaye Woodward, and drummer Malcolm Grant. Scott assumed lead vocals and guitar while serving as principal songwriter. Their first outing, the 1984 EP By Night, preceded And Here Is 'Music for the Fireside'! in 1985 and Made Up in Blue the following year, releases later gathered on Compiletely Bats.

A full-length debut, Daddy's Highway, appeared in 1987. The group then entered a hiatus during which Scott joined a Clean reunion tour and Woodward gave birth, before reassembling in 1990 for The Law of Things. Fear of God followed in 1991 and Silverbeet in 1993. Intermittent EPs, among them Live at WFMU and Spill the Beans (the latter featuring Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan on guitar), surfaced while Scott again devoted time to another Clean reunion, yet the band issued Couchmaster in 1995.

After that album the members dispersed, Scott joining the Magick Heads and pursuing solo work, Woodward recording with Roy Montgomery in Dissolve, and Kean and Grant forming Minisnap in the early 2000s. In 2003 the Bats resumed songwriting at National Grid studios in Christchurch, later moving overdubs and mixing to Woodward and Kean’s home studio; the resulting At the National Grid surfaced in 2005 on Magic Marker in the United States and Flying Nun in New Zealand, recapturing the spirit of Daddy's Highway and The Law of Things as their strongest collection to that point. The Guilty Office arrived in summer 2009, followed two years later by Free All the Monsters.

Scott stayed active with Clean touring and released the solo album The Green House in 2014. The Bats reconvened to record their ninth album, The Deep Set, with producer Ben Edwards at his twice-earthquake-damaged studio the Sitting Room; Flying Nun issued the set in late 2016. Their tenth album, Foothills, was tracked in 2018 inside a temporary studio at the foothills of the Southern Alps and appeared on Flying Nun in 2020.