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

not feeling the cover for the moment

from the tracks i have listened to so far, Bat for Lashes may well win the Mercury Music Prize this year

the track Daniel reminds me of Fleetwood Mac - Sara

This fucking album

not feeling the cover, loving the record

daniel, siren song, yeah

she is totally mining kate's 80's sounds, no?

the cover photo looks like david lachapelle and the logo looks like America's Best Dance Crew

cutty, i saw in yr aim status that you were listening to this. it's totally your type of music. def sounds like kate bush

cover looks stupid. take her and the logo and maybe i'd be into it.

^^^ take her and the logo out ^^^

the cover freaks me out a bit, mainly because she looks like she's covered in massive bruising, like she's been in a car accident. Not really a good look.

Heard one song on the radio last night, and have high hopes for it!

I've been playing this quite a few times while on hols - it is def. more hard work than the previous one and still sounds a bit samey after 4 or 5 spins - and yet, I have no doubt that it's gonna be one of my favorite albums of 09

You people are bonkers! That cover rules. The "Daniel" single cover is even better:

http://stereogum.com/img/batforlashes_daniel.jpg

That cover is awesome! She's absolutely gorgeous.

Daniel cover indeed awesome. Keeping up with the SoCal Fleetwood Mac vibe

LARUSSO?

"Daniel" reminds me a lot of The "A Forest" by The Cure. I guess it's the same bassline. And I love the cover too!

Her cover of "A Forest" is about the only thing worth a damn on whichever one of the Cure tributes it's on.

cover looks like a photoshoot. if it didn't look like a photoshoot it would be great (colours are nice). kinda weirdly flatly centred too.

LARUSSO?

― cutty, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 23:38 (4 days ago)

i've listened to "moon and moon" roughly 100 times since first hearing it yesterday.

I really don't like this - her aesthetic is terrible and the production is so shiny and polished it kind of kills any feeling of intimacy. I want records like this to be creaky and dusty with the sound of instruments creaking in the background, like White Chalk or that Grouper album from last year. This just sounds a bit hollow and empty.

i don't know if this is worth my time or not

nope

she can basically be dismissed with the words "you, sir, are no kate bush"

whew, thx. i suspected.

basically, you can tell exactly what kind of music she wants to make, and it's the sort of music which is GREAT when done well, but she has no personality or spirit in her voice and her songs are meandering, aimless, poorly things. and she thinks she's a lot crazier than she is.

dang lex you don't hold back

i like "daniel" it just seems unfinished to me, like it's really missing a MOMENT + i have to imagine that it's just a misguided attempt at being "understated" and "ethereal"

really i may never be able to get over seeing her live, way before any hype, at a night in an art gallery that a friend had curated, and i was like "aw, i should approve of her out of loyalty to my 15-yr-old self, who would have considered a trip-hop tori amos the very pinnacle of pop music, but really she's a bit shit". and then she paused and asked the audience to "howl like wolves" along to her song, at which point i think i just fled in horror to the room with the booze in it.

Two Suns now on Spotify:
http://open.spotify.com/album/7cj1dERc5yhFBqtxlRYGSe

I'm liking it. Not loving it... yet.

bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahaha

xp

plus points, i guess, for coming from a famous pakistani squash dynasty though

lol squash

liking this so far

for a second I was like "I thought squash were only native to the americas"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/arts/music/05play.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Bat%20for%20Lashes&st=cse

She tells the NY Times about what she's listening to: Telepathe;D M Stith; Cat Power; Cut Copy; Antony

record is turning out to be better than I expected after several random radio spins.

not getting much love, i see. i really quite like the new album. i don't think it's likely to reveal much more on future spins, but i kind of like how her voice seems to reconcile and bring together all the different sounds we hear from the instruments. not a massive step up from the album before, but it's got something going on.

Exactly. Also, "The Big Sleep" is all kinds of awesome.

Both the problem and the brilliant thing with artists like this is that the bar is set very very high. When it's done well it's genius, otherwise it can sound pretentious and a bit embarassing and Bat For Lashes falls well short of genius.

^OTM

the drums on this record are fantastic. who is it?

She certainly isn't getting much love from her record company here in the States, been to four stores this week and no one seems to be carrying it. I'll probably buy it online this weekend.

Well, I agree that she's not yet at the level of Kate Bush or Tori Amos or Bjork, but if you hold all new music to the standard of the best existing music with which it has any common elements, then you'll never like much. I thought the first Bat for Lashes record had some great moments, and I think this one lives up to its ambition more consistently. Ignore anybody who seems emtionally invested in belittling you for liking this (or anything). Their issue, not yours or hers.

I heard "Daniel" first, so maybe something else will displace it in time, but for the moment it's still my favorite song here. Like some great alternate-history drum-machine demo for Rumours...

this lady is some coffee shop shit

xpost

Well, I agree that she's not yet at the level of Kate Bush or Tori Amos or Bjork, but if you hold all new music to the standard of the best existing music with which it has any common elements, then you'll never like much.

I'm not holding it up to a standard, I'm just saying that this sort of thing is very very difficult to do well and those who do tend to be pretty spectacularly talented.

this lady is some coffee shop shit

kind of a tense atmosphere for your herbal tea drinking time, isn't it?

btw, two suns is way much better than fur and gold

the drums on this record are fantastic. who is it?

― cutty, Friday, April 10, 2009 12:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Chippendale, I'm told.

ha, srsly? most melodic playing i've ever heard from him.

Lost Girls likely to be more your thing than the Bride, which is more impressionistic (ie: yes it's less memorable, I like it a lot though)

Cool! I just scanned The Bride's tracklisting and the only two tracks I can vaguely recall are Close Encounters (which I must've put on some playlist back then) and Sunday Love (which was on the radio). I'll give Lost Girls a listen tomorrow and perhaps come back to The Bride later.

I haven't revisited Two Suns since it came out, but I really enjoyed it at the time. Her subsequent albums struck me as vaguely pleasant and little more. I should probably give them all another spin.

Lost Girls is heavily underrated at large

hmm turns out fur and gold is excellent, feel dumb for overlooking it for years

it's all underrated and it's so weird we don't have a thread for her.

. Had I been working in the 1960s or 70s I would have ridden a wave of avant garde work into the mainstream

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/24/were-losing-sight-of-how-valuable-music-is-im-trying-to-carve-a-new-path-bat-for-lashes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMO6HHfsdM

i like this

oh wow, I had pretty much given up on new music from her