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Bats is a musical vehicle for the songwriting of Nashville-based writer, musician, and recording artist, Jess Awh. Back in 2020, Jess teamed up with Citrus City Records to release her debut album, There’s a river up high, a collection of lyrically-driven alt-country, which showed Jess’ ability to fuse traditional Americana with a more modern indie-driven sound. Last week Bats returned with a brand-new record, Blue Cabinet, a richer and more expansive offering, taking Jess’ songwriting to new heights.
The record opens with the scene-setting New Job, Jess’ reverberating vocals joined by a gentle strum of guitars, it seems to find the world spinning too fast for Jess’ liking, as she wistfully sings, “why can’t we just go to the mall, and get our old jobs and work across the hall from each other again”. Elsewhere there’s plenty of room for experimentation across Blue Cabinet, from the Elvis Depressedly-meets-The-Magnetic-Fields tones of We all miss football season through to the lo-fi country of spinnerbait, which sounds like the lost middle ground of Caitlin Rose and Kimya Dawson. Particularly wonderful is Pillow Street, a track that begins life as a classic Banjo-led folk song, before gradually ascending into a wall of fuzzy guitars, vocal samples and increasingly clattering drums, there’s even a touch of the Southern-tinged post-rock of Lift To Experience. An eclectic and intriguing collection, Blue Cabinet is a record that drives Jess’ sound forward while losing nothing of what makes her music so intriguing to start with, these Bats are ready to fly.