BATHERS - Pandemonia

After reissuing the three albums recorded for Marina Records and bringing back the brilliant debut “Unusual Place To Die”, the Scottish band Bathers completes the restoration of their catalogue with the release of “Pandemonia”, the last album by Chris Thompson's group before their return to the scene more than twenty years later with the excellent “Sirenesque”.

Released on vinyl for the first time, this new version of “Pandemonia” is once again a genuine restoration of the original, with plenty of material added to the original recordings, some of it already familiar from the 2016 director's cut. Nothing here alters the band's signature sound, which alternates delicate, hazy acoustic ballads (“Trocadero Girls”) with romantic, jazz-noir odes, trumpet included, framing a poignant romanticism (“The Belle Sisters”).

Bathers' baroque-pop is refined and lush (“Last Night I Loved You”), delicate and rarefied (“Dreamless”), melancholic (“Sundown & Longing”), poignant (“Tequila Mockingbird”), introverted (“Yellow Crombie”) and permanently steeped in that Mitteleuropean decadence (“Something Precious”) that relegated the band to the cult status which eventually convinced Chris Thompson to make a fortunate return to the scene.

The new edition of “Pandemonia” further reshuffles the tracklist. Some tracks have been reworked and shortened (“The Belle Sisters”) or stretched out (“The Phantom Sonata”), and there's no shortage of added vocals and instruments that weren't present in the original. The title track is split into three parts, with structural changes that extend the song by a full two minutes, serving as an introduction to a previously unreleased final track, “Perhaps Even Easy”, a languid ballad for piano, guitar and voice that fits well within an album confirming the Scottish band's remarkable stature, even if it leaves a bittersweet taste for those hoping for a straightforward reissue of the original album.

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31/03/2026