Bat For Lashes
With her dazzling second album, Two Suns, Bat For Lashes is set to assume the mantle of the most dynamic and intriguing pop performer in the UK right now.
Natasha Khan’s debut Fur And Gold was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize, and earned two Brit Award nominations for Best Breakthrough and Best Female in 2008.
The album’s blend of spooky childhood reveries and magical piano balladry caught the imagination of everyone and not just in the music world. Natasha was feted by the fashion crowd, appearing everywhere from Vogue to Dazed & Confused and she recently collaborated with Alexander McQueen’s McQ label on several one-off pieces featured on the Two Suns artwork.
As if that weren’t enough, Bat For Lashes has inspired the making of a fantasy film-musical based on the songs from Fur And Gold.
Natasha went on to be chosen by The Guardian as one of 2007’s women of the year – the only musician to appear on their list that year. Bat for Lashes was also asked to support Radiohead on their European tour last summer at the band’s personal request, where she assembled a new live band to explore fresh musical forms, before heading out to New York and the Californian desert to write what has now become Two Suns.
A very ambitious record, both musically and conceptually, Two Suns delves into the philosophy of the self and duality. Metaphysical ideas about the connectedness of existence are also close to the album’s heart.
From the dustbowl psyche-rock of ‘Travelling Woman’ to the twisted Las Vegas wedding organ on the dark love song ‘Good Love’, Natasha has taken influence from disparate places.
Written and recorded around the world, from the stark landscape of Big Sur and the Joshua Tree desert in California to the city sprawls of New York and London, it is kinetic and immediate, yet so intriguing sonically and lyrically that it demands time to be properly absorbed.
Two Suns sees Natasha exploring her creative personas and the world around her in a very different way. Envisioning herself as two separate yet ultimately attached beings, we discover her inner character Pearl, the destructive blonde femme fatale that represents one extreme of her personality.
Pearl’s troubled obsession with childlike escapism and self-absorption opposes the wild and mystical desert being who represents Natasha’s more spiritual self. Through the songs on the album, Natasha and Pearl take us on a journey as they intertwine and overflow into each other’s realms, struggling to reconcile with each other, love and the forces of the outside world.
Natasha is joined on several tracks by Brooklyn’s finest psychedelic experimentalists Yeasayer, who provide bass and beat programming. The legendary Scott Walker also performs a duet with Natasha for the heart-wrenching torch song and album closer ‘The Big Sleep’. As with Fur And Gold, Natasha chose to co-produce Two Suns with David Kosten (AKA Faultline).