That great band of the south The Bats are back to remind us how sweet, lovely and connective pop songs can be.

Though of course, The Bats never went away. They’ve just taken the occasional break in a career that goes back what, next year, will be 30 years.

Thirty years, eight albums and four Bats, the same ones since 1982 – Robert Scott (lead voice, rhythm guitar, keyboards), Kaye Woodward (vocals, lead guitar), Paul Kean (bass) and Malcolm Grant (drums).

On “Free All the Monsters”, their new album (that eighth one), they sound how they’ve always sounded – folksy, sweet and sad, fragile vocals and keening lead guitar lines serving simple, alluring songs.

Their music has grown deeper with age and somehow never become slick. Other long-run bands have to stretch to find themselves again with each album, while The Bats have simply stayed the same. All, their songs could still sit together without a bad word between them.

For “Free All the Monsters”, The Bats took themselves to the remnants of old Seacliff Asylum, north of Dunedin, with producer/engineer Dale Cotton (HDU, The Clean, Die! Die! Die!), settling in and soaking up the atmosphere and isolation and recording 17 songs which they trimmed down to the dozen tracks that make up the finished album.

And the abum’s a lovely thing, swinging between sweet, delicate folk laments like the gorgeous Robert/Kaye duet “Simpletons” and spooked psychedelia such as “In the Subway” and the instrumental “Canopy”.

It adds up to possibly The Bats’ finest full-length moment yet, which is saying something, given that stretch of wonderful recordings going back to the early ‘80s.

Maybe it’s their maturity, maybe it’s the simple fact of playing with the same other three people all these years, but “Free All the Monsters” reveals a Bats sound that’s even deeper, darker and more affecting than before.

To come up with an album as strong as “Free All the Monsters” at this (late) stage of their career seems some sort of quiet miracle.

But then The Bats have long been Flying Nun’s quiet achievers. They’ve toured America five times, guested with Radiohead and the Buzzcocks, had one of their songs on the soundtrack of a Kiera Knightly movie, charted in France, been on the cover of Billboard magazine and landed an NME Single of the Week (for “Made Up in Blue”).

All of which simply suggests that foreigners have good enough taste to love The Bats as much as New Zealand has all these years.

- Colin Hogg, 2011