Bat For Lashes

Bat For Lashes, the project of English multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan, debuted with Fur and Gold (Echo, 2006), produced by Faultline's David Kosten. The martial, lush arrangement of Horse And I introduces a humbly versatile and calmly emotional singer in the tradition of Sinead O'Connor and Jane Siberry. The scared-child performance of that opener segues into the sinister singalong over a swampy beat of Trophy. Anchored to a tinkling harpsichord, her vocals in Tahiti are stretched to bridge both ecstasy and agony. And What's A Girl To Do echoes the romantic angst of Phil Spector's girl-groups of the Sixties. These initial songs account for an impressive range of options. The jazzy falsetto refrain of Sarah (with the most electronic arrangement) adds another creative impersonation to the cast. When she takes herself too seriously as a writer (which means that she does not have enough musical substance), the effects are devastatingly tedious (like in the most pretentious Broadway show tunes), but the melodic talent is undeniable in tunes such as Prescilla, with piano, harpsichord and handclap helping her Tori Amos-ian chant (but the harpsichord notes are stolen from the Yardbirds' For Your Love).

Two Suns (Parlophone, 2009), that is ostensibly a philosophical concept, took more liberties with her tunes, mainly adding bombast to the fragile melodies. The catchy Daniel is propelled by a pounding techno machine. The equally disco-enhanced Pearl's Dream evolves into a polyrhythmic shuffle. Glass relies almost entirely on a sophisticated layout of beats. The astral lament of Two Planets drifts through a plethora of percussion instruments. The arrangement of Siren Song screams louder than the vocalist. The voice and the heart are protagonists (like they were on the first album) only in the piano lullabye Moon And Moon, that coincidentally evokes Tori Amos, and in the solemn gospel Peace Of Mind, that evokes Patti Smith. The Big Sleep, a duet with Scott Walker, A rare moment of balance between the old and new style is represented by Sleep Alone, a Celtic hoedown during which her lament evokes ancient Greek melodrama. All in all, the first album had better melodies and more magical settings.

The Haunted Man (2012) is an eccentric hodge-podge of styles, from the pounding and operatic All Your Gold in a falsetto reminiscent of the disco era to the mildly anthemic piano elegy Laura via the lavishly orchestral Winter Fields and the agonizing melodrama of Lilies. She manages to fuse the disco diva, the intellectual/ confessional artist, the chamber composer and the vulnerable girl next door in one monolithic persona.

Bat for Lashes' fourth album The Bride (2016) was quite a departure, a dark and mysterious journey into the psyche of a woman built around the concept of a a woman who embarks alone on her honeymoon after her fiance dies in a car accident just before their wedding. The story is best carried by the funereal lullaby Joe's Dream, by the ethereal and suspenseful Never Forgive the Angels and by eerie soundscapes like Widow's Peak, but too much of the album is taken over by mediocre melodies and beats like in Sunday Love.

Relocated to Los Angeles, Khan concocted an album that sounded like a tribute to synth-pop of the 1980s, Lost Girls (2019), via facile dance ditties like Jasmine, The Hunger and So Good, drenched in lush bombastic production.