Foothills (album)

Foothills is the tenth studio album by New Zealand band The Bats. It was released on 13 November 2020, through Flying Nun Records.[5]

Foothills
Studio album by
The Bats
Released13 November 2020 (2020-11-13)
RecordedOctober 2018
GenreIndie rock[1]
Length39:23
LabelFlying Nun
The Bats chronology
The Deep Set
(2017)		 Foothills
(2020)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic80/100[2]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Spectrum Culture72%[3]
The Sydney Morning Herald[4]

Background

The album was recorded over the period of week during spring 2018 at a pop-up studio in the Southern Alps of New Zealand.[5][6]

Critical reception

Foothills was met with "generally favorable" reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an average score of 80 based on 4 reviews.[2]

Writing for AllMusic, Fred Thomas wrote: "Over the course of Foothills, incredibly small production choices like these make a huge impact. Similar to the musical component, the lyrical content of Foothills is never too overt or heavy-handed. A band that's been active in relatively obscure circles for 38 years might be prone to tunes about growing older, nostalgia, or struggles with change, but if those expected themes appear, they come up more as emotional implications or nods to universal feelings instead of blunt statements."[1] Jennifer Kelly of Dusted Magazine said: "Foothills further distills this soft-focus, rueful vision, purifies it and delivers exactly what you expect from this band, only a little prettier and more touching than the last time.[7] At Spectrum Culture, Justin Cober-Lake noted: "The songs mediate between fanciful experiences, taking different routes but both suggesting the hopeful capabilities of active creativity. They play with a loose precision and a casual formalism that, even four decades in, continues to sound new, even if we can trace a lengthy musical history to it at this point."[3]

Track listing
Foothills track listing
No.TitleLength
1."Trade in Silence"3:16
2."Warwick"2:40
3."Beneath the Visor"2:50
4."Scrolling"3:54
5."Another Door"3:14
6."Red Car"3:13
7."Field of Vision"3:28
8."Change Is All"3:14
9."As You Were"3:17
10."Smaller Pieces"3:49
11."Gone to Ground"2:21
12."Electric Sea View"4:07

Charts
Chart performance for Foothills
Chart (2020) Peak
position
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[8] 13

References
  1. Thomas, Fred. "AllMusic Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  2. "Metacritic Review". Metacritic. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  3. Cober-Lake, Justin (17 November 2020). "Spectrum Culture Review". Spectrum Culture. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  4. Smith, Barnaby (27 November 2020). "Music reviews: The Smashing Pumpkins, The Bats, Andrea Keller and more". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  5. Hussey, Allison (21 August 2020). "The Bats Announce New Album Foothills, Share Video for New Song "Warwick"". Pitchfork. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  6. "The Bats Unveil 10th Full-length Album, Foothills". NZmusic.org.nz. 16 November 2020. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  7. Kelly, Jennifer (21 December 2020). "Dusted Magazine Review". Dusted Magazine. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  8. "Charts.nz – The Bats – Foothills". Hung Medien. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
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