| Bat For Lashes — The Haunted Man (2012) |
Bat For Lashes ∫ The Haunted Man
Birthname: Natasha Khan
Nationality: British
Born: October 25 1979
Location: Brighton, England, Great Britain / Instruments: Vocals, piano, bass, guitar, synthesiser, autoharp, percussion, xylophone
Album release: October 22, 2012
Record Label: Parlophone
Duration: 51:50
Tracks:
01. "Lilies" 4:48
02. "All Your Gold" 4:33
03. "Horses of the Sun" 5:00
04. "Oh Yeah" 4:56
05. "Laura" 4:26
06. "Winter Fields" 3:43
07. "The Haunted Man" 5:16
08. "Marilyn" 4:36
09. "A Wall" 4:02
10. "Rest Your Head" 4:04
11. "Deep Sea Diver" 6:22
Website: http://www.batforlashes.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/batforlashes
Description:
∫ Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan s highly anticipated third album, The Haunted Man. The first track from the new album Laura was named BEST NEW TRACK by Pitchfork. com will be followed by All Your Gold. Natasha Khan, Bat for Lashes first captured hearts back in 2006 with a set of distinctively haunting and rich, darkly phantasmagoric songs ripe with magic realism. Her sensual and gilt–decorated dream world was opened up in two Mercury Music Prize nominated albums, the atavistic, reverb–drenched Fur and Gold (2006) and 2009 s more electronically poppy Two Suns. The latter featured the irresistible Daniel which won Ms Khan an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song and was recorded in London and across America. Bat For Lashes toured with Coldplay in 2010, collaborated with Beck to write a song for the Twilight film, Eclipse, headlined two sold out shows at the Sydney Opera House in June 2011 and covered Depeche Mode s Strangelove for Gucci s Guilty campaign. / Live band line–up:
Members:
• Ben Christophers
• Charlotte Hatherley
• Valentina Magaletti
Past members:
• Sarah Jones
• Abi Fry
• Caroline Weeks
• Katherine Mann
• Alex Thomas
• Lizzy Carey
Awards and nominations:
• 2007 Mercury Prize Fur and Gold Nominated
• ASCAP Awards Vanguard Award Won
• MTV Europe Music Awards MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video (“What’s a Girl to Do?”) Nominated
• 2008 Brit Awards British Breakthrough Act Nominated
• British Female Solo Artist Nominated
• 2009 Mercury Prize Two Suns Nominated
• MTV Video Music Awards Breakthrough Video (Daniel) Nominated
• Best Art Vinyl of 2009 "Two Suns" Nominated
• 2010 Brit Awards British Female Solo Artist Nominated
• UK Asian Music Awards Best Alternative Act Won
• Ivor Novello Awards Best Contemporary Song (Daniel) Won
BBC Review:
An impressive third LP from Natasha Kahn, but somehow lacking heart.
Wyndham Wallace 2012–10–01
∫ With age comes maturity, and there’s no doubt that Natasha Khan’s third album under her chiropteran pseudonym, Bat for Lashes, sees her addressing adult themes in an adult fashion amidst adult surroundings. It’s something that’s helped by the fact that with silver and gold albums come bigger budgets, and The Haunted Man sounds very expensive indeed.
• The signs were there with Laura, the first song to be revealed earlier in 2012. A poignant piano ode to a suffering friend, its melody lingers long enough to erase the chorus’s clumsy lyrical climax: “You’re the train that crashed my heart / You’re the glitter in the dark.”
∫ Co–written with Justin Parker — who also worked on Lana Del Rey’s Video Games — it suggested Khan was prepared to show an elegant but more vulnerable side, something reflected by the album’s cover, which features an artful nude portrait by Ryan McGinley.
∫ Elsewhere she calls upon other celebrated names: Beck appears on Marilyn, Portishead’s Adrian Utley guests on Horses of the Sun and PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis is also in evidence.
∫ But The Haunted Man settles more for sophisticated sonics rather than songwriting: David Kosten’s production jettisons the mild claustrophobia of Two Suns for a more expansive sound, and too often the gloss sparkles more than the songs themselves.
∫ Lilies opens with ominous bass synths rumbling in the background before swelling with the kind of theatrical arrangements favoured by Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain, while Winter Fields offers conspicuous kettle drums and ballroom strings for added melodrama. And yet there’s an emotional detachment, a sense that Khan is merely a great actress signposting moods rather than sharing them.
∫ The stuttering rhythms of Horses of the Sun are more engaging, a sinister edge giving way to a buoyant chorus, and Oh Yeah manages to combine her gothic tendencies with male choirs, sparsely programmed percussion and piano flourishes for a grand, swirling climax.
∫ But while The Haunted Man is an impressive record, one heavy with earnestness and polished sophistication, it’s more like The Tin Man: somehow it lacks a heart.
Biography:
∫ 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.
∫ 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.
∫ With the word–of–mouth spreading on her live shows in the UK and the album garnering rave reviews from the likes of The Guardian, Mojo, Dazed & Confused and The Times, Bat For Lashes introduction to the US came at 2007’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Gracing several stages over the course of four days Bat For Lashes made an indelible impression on all who witnessed her. Her live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” providing the most spine tingling moment of the week.
∫ She was barely on the plane home before the Stateside excitement began, the video she had made for “Prescilla” — filmed at the actual bat cave from the Adam West TV version of Batman in Los Angeles by Andy Bruntel — started cropping up on music and video websites across the country.
Having spent parts of her childhood in Pakistan, Natasha Khan now lives by the sea in England, where she regularly follows her dreams.
| Bat For Lashes — The Haunted Man (2012) |
Birthname: Natasha Khan
Nationality: British
Born: October 25 1979
Location: Brighton, England, Great Britain / Instruments: Vocals, piano, bass, guitar, synthesiser, autoharp, percussion, xylophone
Album release: October 22, 2012
Record Label: Parlophone
Duration: 51:50
Tracks:
01. "Lilies" 4:48
02. "All Your Gold" 4:33
03. "Horses of the Sun" 5:00
04. "Oh Yeah" 4:56
05. "Laura" 4:26
06. "Winter Fields" 3:43
07. "The Haunted Man" 5:16
08. "Marilyn" 4:36
09. "A Wall" 4:02
10. "Rest Your Head" 4:04
11. "Deep Sea Diver" 6:22
Website: http://www.batforlashes.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/batforlashes
Description:
∫ Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan s highly anticipated third album, The Haunted Man. The first track from the new album Laura was named BEST NEW TRACK by Pitchfork. com will be followed by All Your Gold. Natasha Khan, Bat for Lashes first captured hearts back in 2006 with a set of distinctively haunting and rich, darkly phantasmagoric songs ripe with magic realism. Her sensual and gilt–decorated dream world was opened up in two Mercury Music Prize nominated albums, the atavistic, reverb–drenched Fur and Gold (2006) and 2009 s more electronically poppy Two Suns. The latter featured the irresistible Daniel which won Ms Khan an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song and was recorded in London and across America. Bat For Lashes toured with Coldplay in 2010, collaborated with Beck to write a song for the Twilight film, Eclipse, headlined two sold out shows at the Sydney Opera House in June 2011 and covered Depeche Mode s Strangelove for Gucci s Guilty campaign. / Live band line–up:
Members:
• Ben Christophers
• Charlotte Hatherley
• Valentina Magaletti
Past members:
• Sarah Jones
• Abi Fry
• Caroline Weeks
• Katherine Mann
• Alex Thomas
• Lizzy Carey
Awards and nominations:
• 2007 Mercury Prize Fur and Gold Nominated
• ASCAP Awards Vanguard Award Won
• MTV Europe Music Awards MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video (“What’s a Girl to Do?”) Nominated
• 2008 Brit Awards British Breakthrough Act Nominated
• British Female Solo Artist Nominated
• 2009 Mercury Prize Two Suns Nominated
• MTV Video Music Awards Breakthrough Video (Daniel) Nominated
• Best Art Vinyl of 2009 "Two Suns" Nominated
• 2010 Brit Awards British Female Solo Artist Nominated
• UK Asian Music Awards Best Alternative Act Won
• Ivor Novello Awards Best Contemporary Song (Daniel) Won
BBC Review:
An impressive third LP from Natasha Kahn, but somehow lacking heart.
Wyndham Wallace 2012–10–01
∫ With age comes maturity, and there’s no doubt that Natasha Khan’s third album under her chiropteran pseudonym, Bat for Lashes, sees her addressing adult themes in an adult fashion amidst adult surroundings. It’s something that’s helped by the fact that with silver and gold albums come bigger budgets, and The Haunted Man sounds very expensive indeed.
• The signs were there with Laura, the first song to be revealed earlier in 2012. A poignant piano ode to a suffering friend, its melody lingers long enough to erase the chorus’s clumsy lyrical climax: “You’re the train that crashed my heart / You’re the glitter in the dark.”
∫ Co–written with Justin Parker — who also worked on Lana Del Rey’s Video Games — it suggested Khan was prepared to show an elegant but more vulnerable side, something reflected by the album’s cover, which features an artful nude portrait by Ryan McGinley.
∫ Elsewhere she calls upon other celebrated names: Beck appears on Marilyn, Portishead’s Adrian Utley guests on Horses of the Sun and PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis is also in evidence.
∫ But The Haunted Man settles more for sophisticated sonics rather than songwriting: David Kosten’s production jettisons the mild claustrophobia of Two Suns for a more expansive sound, and too often the gloss sparkles more than the songs themselves.
∫ Lilies opens with ominous bass synths rumbling in the background before swelling with the kind of theatrical arrangements favoured by Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain, while Winter Fields offers conspicuous kettle drums and ballroom strings for added melodrama. And yet there’s an emotional detachment, a sense that Khan is merely a great actress signposting moods rather than sharing them.
∫ The stuttering rhythms of Horses of the Sun are more engaging, a sinister edge giving way to a buoyant chorus, and Oh Yeah manages to combine her gothic tendencies with male choirs, sparsely programmed percussion and piano flourishes for a grand, swirling climax.
∫ But while The Haunted Man is an impressive record, one heavy with earnestness and polished sophistication, it’s more like The Tin Man: somehow it lacks a heart.
Biography:
∫ 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.
∫ 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.
∫ With the word–of–mouth spreading on her live shows in the UK and the album garnering rave reviews from the likes of The Guardian, Mojo, Dazed & Confused and The Times, Bat For Lashes introduction to the US came at 2007’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Gracing several stages over the course of four days Bat For Lashes made an indelible impression on all who witnessed her. Her live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” providing the most spine tingling moment of the week.
∫ She was barely on the plane home before the Stateside excitement began, the video she had made for “Prescilla” — filmed at the actual bat cave from the Adam West TV version of Batman in Los Angeles by Andy Bruntel — started cropping up on music and video websites across the country.
Having spent parts of her childhood in Pakistan, Natasha Khan now lives by the sea in England, where she regularly follows her dreams.