Nominated by: Wozza
Music club: Wander to Wozza's
Highlight: Out Of Bounds
This was my first taste of The Bats. I have often found that the first taste of an artist is the one that lingers in a special way - Neil Young's Tonight's The Night; Beatles' Hey Jude compilation; Dylan's Blood on the Tracks are three such moments.
So, I especially love this one because I grew to love them from there.
First track isn't really a track - it's a lead in to Afternoon in bed (which perfectly conjures up that afternoon in bed feeling). A bit like the bit before Locomotive Breath. Just a lead in.
Work It Out is one of my favourite tracks - all sinewy twists and turns.
The reason why I love this record is because of the comfortable Flying Nun sound - I never connected with all the really Velvet Underground inspired darkness that surrounded a lot of that FN sound. It's the pop smarts of The Bats that I really enjoy. I find Couchmaster very pop oriented in the same way that I find Kevin Shields' stuff pop based.
Train. Hahaha. The band has a sense of humour or else it's an atmospheric interlude - depending on your pov. I like the way it's just there.
Shoeshine is wonderful! Love that guitar sound and her vocals are terrific. Again reminds me a bit of My Bloody Valentine.
'Unique' is a difficult concept in music. Don't all bands borrow and put their spin on things? The Beatles and Dylan started as cover artists taking American pop and American folk/blues respectively as their starting point and launching from there. Who is unique then, ever?
I love it that our favourite songs are all so different - Out Of Bounds is the only common song between us!
For The Ride is another of my favourites - sounds like a single to me!
What I love about this as an album is: the variety on offer - I don't get bored and I don't know what's coming next; the sludgy sound around the vocals like early REM and the Stones - I love making up my own half heard lyrics; the brevity of the songs - nothing outstays its welcome. Succinctness has its virtues - although I'm a mass of contradictions - I love a good lengthy noodling guitar solo I do; there are rewards and surprises each time I listen to it - a song like It's Happening To You didn't appeal that much the first few times because it seemed too derivative of Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning and then it grew on me the more I heard it; as the album progresses there doesn't appear, to me, to be any slackening of quality - 17 tracks, call it 15 without Outside and Train, may appear quite a lot - one of my beefs is how the CD age made bands quite indulgent as quality control was often lost in a rush to fill up 70 minutes of CD. So 15 feels like a good old solid LP with roughly 7 tracks per side. Out Of Bounds (also a possible single) is the second to last track!!; the strong finish - the last two tracks are strong finishes to the album in different ways.
So there we have it - Couchmaster. A kiwi klassic for my money.
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