EP REVIEW: Batsch 'Collar' - GigslutzGigslutz

Rating:

With their second release, Batsch tune up the distinction in their “dark disco” tunes, or “gutter glamour” as lead singer and guitarist Mason Le Long defines it, and layer on the groove. Relative clarity, abstract alliteration and proliferation of a rhythm section however do not make an album. And luckily for Batsch, Collar is only an EP.

That’s not to say there aren’t elements of Batsch’s proficiency to be admired. The verses of opening track ‘Celina’ are wonderfully funky, and the little lead in to its ending plays like a fun spirited mid -song break down jam. Unfortunately the choruses do the rest of the song no justice, and it simply fizzles out, lesser than the sum of its parts.

‘22’ is a house built on Joe Carvell’s scuttling bass line, dancing between a suitably restrained drum beat, both of which are deserving of much more than the stunted vocals that unfortunately smother the successes not only of this track, but the majority of Collar. It is the big bad wolf of this record, coming to huff and puff and blow these songs down. It’s a silly thing to lose a record to; it’s a silly thing to not be able to get over. It’s a silly thing to weave into an analogy regarding the 3 Little Pigs, but that is what has just happened. And for the former, that’s what the case is. (I’m the guy who can’t listen to the majority of Joy Division’s output because Ian Curtis’ vocals sound like a badly tune strained bass playing a second bass line though, so what do I know, right?)

The EP peters out with a couple of Garage Band tracks, with a few added nice guitar turns in ‘Mirror Ball’, and falls away with ‘Can’t Tell’, again not without a few nice guitar turns this time escaping a clumsy rubble.

Despite the releases failures it’s not like Batsch are a hopeless cause. They have their strengths and their weaknesses, like any up and coming band, and EPs are the platform to distinguish each of these. Batsch have got funk, but it’s not enough.