Just the other month David Kilgour released his End Times Undone so it makes total sense that fellow Clean player and Bats frontman Robert Scott would be in a solo frame of mind these days as well. As a result fans of Flying Nun Kiwi pop can enter The Green House a more reserved effort than you might expect from such a jangle-minded vet.
Following his work on The Bats’ 2011 Free All the Monsters LP and his last proper solo outing 2010’s Krautrock-dabbling Ends Run Together Scott’s The Green House marks a definite change for the New Zealand songwriter as he’s stripped his plaintive pop songs bare often to just voice guitar and swaths of reverb. It’s an intimate approach to say the least with Tiny Ruins (a.k.a. Hollie Fullbrook) often upping the record’s pretty factor further via her down-soft vocal appearances.
Still it’s the handful of upbeat fuller-band tracks that emerge as the album’s strongest moments (see the stunning “Your Lights Are Low”) strangely making the quieter moments feel a bit forgettable in comparison. Scott’s songcraft has always been heavy on the melancholy and in a good way but The Green House is often too understated for its own good.
