Bat for Lashes
Have you heard… Bat for Lashes?
Everyone likes Bat for Lashes… you see throngs of them at Natasha Khan’s live gigs videoing her thoughtfully. Taking influence from 70’s film soundtracks, weather phenomena, childhood Halloween parties and a David Lynchian vision of suburbia, Bat for Lashes will take you on a very strange journey indeed…
- Musical style: Haunting alternative weirdness
- www.batforlashes.co.uk (official site)
- Bat For Lashes create an intimate, cinematic world, reminiscent of the nocturnal wanderings of Kate Bush and the heartfelt prayers of Cat Power. Natasha composes songs that rise out of a dark, heartbreak wilderness and take you on a journey in to the light. Taking influence from 70’s film soundtracks, weather phenomena, childhood Halloween parties and a David Lynchian vision of suburbia, they occupy the tenebrous space between innocence and a loss of innocence and come straight from the storyteller’s heart.
- Bat For Lashes is the work of British singer/ songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan. Born in 1979, yet combining influences that span decades, Natasha’s work dwells in the elemental, emerging in timeless forms.
- Bat For Lashes’ music is bold and vivid. Her live shows, with accomplices Ginger Lee, Abi Fry and Lizzy Carey, are made up of thunderous marching band drums, desert guitar, ballet school piano, harpsichord, sub-bass snarls, hand-claps and naive beats, with the women fluidly switching and swapping their instruments between songs. There are also interludes of exquisite heartbreak; the piano ballad ‘Sad Eyes’ has on more than one occasion left audience members in tears. Her debut album Fur and Gold is a very special record, a cohesive collection of songs so haunting and mesmerizing it makes a striking impression on all who hear it.
- It was whilst working as a nursery school teacher, following her university degree in film and music, that Fur and Gold album opener ‘Horse & I’ came to Natasha in a dream. Inspired by tales of Joan of Arc, Natasha is woken by a black horse at the window and sent on a fateful quest. This extraordinary dream became the muse for the songs that now comprise Fur and Gold.
- Recorded in London and Brighton, Natasha co-produced the album with David Kosten (Faultline). Recurrent themes of natural forces and animal kingdoms, rugged English cliff tops and engulfing oceans – highlighted on the lament ‘Seal Jubilee’, are juxtaposed by the energy of rough urban living, teenage bedrooms and the freedom of California highways. Josh T Pearson (Lift To Experience) guests, adding guitar and vocals on three tracks – the brooding live favorite ‘Trophy’, ‘Seal Jubilee’ and the finale ‘I Saw A Light’, adding the kind of hymns and chaos that only the son of a preacher could provide.
- Bat For Lashes played her first big show in London supporting CocoRosie at the Scala at the end of 2005. A year later almost to the day, Bat For Lashes headlined a sold out Scala, where the likes of Bjork, Nellee Hooper and Brett Anderson were to be seen in the sold out crowd. Other fans include Devendra Banhart, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke (who chose ‘Horse & I’ for his iTunes Top Ten Playlist, saying “I love the harpsichord and the sexual ghost voices and bowed saws. This song seems to come from the world of Grimm’s fairytales, and I feel like a wolf.”)
- Having spent parts of her childhood in Pakistan, Natasha Khan now lives by the sea in England.
- Natasha Khan comes up with song lyrics based on her dreams! I mean, look at her! Why are we not surprised?
- Natasha Khan seems to keep changing her mind as to whether Bat for Lashes is a group, or is actually just her, with talented musicians who come and play with her.
- Blondie has stated she officially likes Bat for Lashes.
- Bat for Lashes are pretty damn big – but they still play fairly small venues. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… tell no-one. Tell everyone.
