Michigan singer-songwriter Chris Bathgate has been living in self-imposed musical exile for the last few years. His new EP Old Factory is his first release since 2011’s Salt Year and we are certainly glad to see him back.
Maybe it’s just because I’m listening with this prior knowledge, but the opening track of Old Factory, ‘Big Ghost’, sounds like a man who’s ready to be back. The guitar is slick and electrified, the whole thing full of energy and life. Bathgate delivers lyrics about pumping hearts and ghosts emerging from throats like static before the song builds into a swirling clattering outro with a waspish droning background. Old fans of Bathgate will be delighted too with ‘Acorns’, a slice of the kind of superior folk rock that made his name, where a slammed drum beat eventually kicks the song into life, becoming its pulse, lingering even in the moments of near silence. SIngle ‘Calvary’ is slow and stirring, with additional vocals from Samantha Cooper, as well as piano and strings. Lyrically its something of a paradox, simultaneously hurt and victorious, wise and suspicious and joyously naive. I guess that’s something that can happen when songs are crafted over the course of years, things and people change, lines that held certain sentiments at the outset may take on another meaning altogether.
“Ain’t it good to be alive
with the wounds still in your side?”
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‘Wait’ is elegant and sombre, again with piano and violin and cello, before closer ‘Red Arrow Highway’ burns slow with lush and pretty instrumentation, the kind of patient and considered folk rock that sounds really good during the dawning spring.
Let’s hope that it’s not another half-decade before we hear more from Chris Bathgate. You can but Old Factory now via the Chris Bathgate online store or Quite Scientific Records. And if you haven’t already, why not dig into his back-catalogue? I promise you won’t regret it.