Why don't we have a thread on Bat for Lashes?

Recommend the Death Metal Disco Scene remix of Daniel. Came out in March but I've only just discovered it.You can find it on mp3 blogs like Ohh! Crapp - amazing DFAish bassline, Detroit string stabs and euphoric vocal loops.

every time I play this album, I like it more

ditto the first album btw

There’s no doubt, in my mind, that Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan is one of this year’s biggest breakout music stars. Her second album, Two Suns, has actually exceeded the massive pre-release hype and her image has proven to be much more integral to her authentic aesthetic than the marketing gimmick that it first seemed to me. Now that she’s earned the buzz, let’s hear what Khan has to say about a few other top artists.

As if I wasn’t jealous of Khan enough, she told the Guardian she saw Michael Jackson in concert at nine years old. She was thrilled with Michael at the time, of course, but not so much with this year’s mainstream pop obsession: “People like (Michael Jackson) just have a high voltage running through them and you don’t see it very often. Compare it now to Lady Gaga or whatever – the latest all-singing, all-dancing sensation – and it’s like, ‘No! Not happening.’ It’s just bollocks.”

I’ve read of a bunch of interviews with Khan where she was very careful not to step on anyone’s toes, but those days are over: “I’m getting fucking tired of people saying that I sound like Tori Amos just because I play the piano,” she said. “It’s just so shallow and weird and inaccurate.”

It's... not inaccurate, though, Ms. Tasha Fierce. I can think of at least five or six instances in which she directly lifts from (early, non-Stepford Wife) Tori in this recent album. Not a bad thing... but yeah, like lex said upthread, she thinks she's crazier than she is.

i finally heard this chick last night -- on KCRW, which makes sense. dunno if the song was typical of all her music, but it sounded like sarah maclachlan singing over a mediocre new order track.

― ultimate sushi baller move (get bent), Sunday, June 14, 2009 10:00 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^

Well, it's September and this is still the best album of the year. Which is a little bit surprising and disappointing.

yeah i get the feeling it's going to place a lot higher on my list than i ever would have thought. but it's a good record and a definite grower.

everytime i hear this girl i think "middling but good, but middling"

"you gotta admit, for a guy who posts 800 zings a day, I am seldom, if ever, actually funny"

― nabisco, Thursday, December 27, 2007 6:51 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

She's opening for Coldplay next month here in São Paulo. They are expecting 50,000 people Coldplay fans. Kind of risky, I guess

She's great live! Dunno about 50,000 people though.

Just saw she's done a cover of "Strangelove" by Depeche Mode for some Gucci campaign (Friendly Fires also did a cover of the same song last year). tbh it's pretty much the same treatment she gave "A Forest" by The Cure a couple years ago, but still nice I guess.

http://soundcloud.com/gucci-guilty/strangelove-mastered-4-5-10

New song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8U70ij87n0

saw her in SF last night, I think maybe the end of the tour? She was mindblowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ZV_pZZ_V8

Not one of her best, not one of his best. It's okay though.

something's afoot:

https://twitter.com/Bat_for_Lashes/status/633261217969238017

given everything going on in the US right now, that imagery not really hitting me in as positive a manner as it normally would

REDDITOR

okay lol

lol confirmed

lol

sexwitch!

lol. yes please.

I don't know what a sexwitch is, but I want to meet one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=287&v=3_bge44OBx0

idk

I would like this a lot more if the band wasn't called Sexwitch

Actually I take that back, I like this a lot despite the band being called Sexwitch

It's basically "Bat For Lashes and friends do Fever Ray pastiche" songwise, which I'm gonna make time for no matter what stupid name they give themselves

'Sexwich' would've been an improvement, for starters.

album is out today, liking it a lot so far

way more psych-rock than i would've expected. last track is even a skip spence cover

oh okay, it was recorded with the band Toy so that would make sense. only reading up on it now, maybe everyone knew that already

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/24/sexwitch-bat-for-lashes-natasha-khan-like-a-voodoo-exorcism-dan-carey-toy
is an article that was in the Guardian's G2 yesterday talking about the new project with Natasha Khan

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/sep/22/sexwitch-sexwitch-exclusive-album-stream
is the album being streamed from the Guardian site.

The single's marvelous: http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=18105

what's happened to her? I thought the Bride was quite good; but she never toured the US for it, as far as I'm aware; and she seems to have disappeared into ...something. she's been posting odd images on FB for a while that I thought might be a preface to something but now not sure.

what's happened, presumably, is sophistipop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxV4jpe55PY

YESSSSS

So this new album is pretty great, surprised it isn't getting more attention. She's gone down an 80s revival path not unlike Head First-era Goldfrapp, but with much better results. Feels less like pastiche, and more like a fully realized universe.

it's very good. all her albums are good. she is great.

Thanks for the tip-off, been listening to it quite a lot over the last few days.

it's really good, and on trend? I hope it does well for her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYvx4HYgqHU

Looking forward to seeing her in SF in February; though I've loved the shows of hers I've seen with bands this scaled down approach will be good too (I imagine that's a result of no longer being on a label). I really wish I'd been able to see some of the Bride shows which I don't think she ever toured in the US (she played churches?)

she's released a lot of good albums but this is the first one I've thought was truly great

was she dropped? jeesh.

gonna play this again right now!

“I think the label had high hopes that I’d be more commercial than I was,” she laughs now, “but I proved to myself and everyone else that I’m not.”

Khan’s second album, 2009’s Two Suns, was a concept album about a desert-born alter ego called Pearl. Her third, The Haunted Man, produced “Laura”, one of the best songs of her career, but only charted for a week. By the time she released her fourth, 2016’s The Bride, another concept record, this time about a bride-to-be whose fiance dies in a car crash on his way to the wedding, she could hardly wait to break free from her 10-year deal. And Parlophone weren’t exactly clamouring to keep her. The label’s initially high expectations, she says, “in the end started to work against me. It can be like a cloud that’s over you.”

Last year, the deal finally came to an end. Craving a change of scenery, the 39-year-old upped sticks to LA. She spent her days swimming, painting, going for sunset walks with her adopted dog Janice, teaching meditation to newly released prisoners, and going on long drives to forests with giant redwood trees. Though she says the city has a dark side – “The plastic surgery and the objectification of women that women are doing to themselves on Instagram” – when she stayed on its periphery, it suited her perfectly.

yeah it sounded like an amicable parting of ways. I'm sure it's a lot more work for her to be releasing stuff on her own now but she seems to also have the freedom now to do whatever it is she wants which is good; I hope she can afford to keep doing it.

I think every one of her albums is completely great, this one included. I absolutely love her.

My favorite thing she's done is the Sexwitch EP, utterly captivating. I wish she'd reissue it.

yeah, "Helelyos" is nuts. Reminds me to finish seeking out the original versions of those songs.