Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 11/09/06
Label: Echo

Bat For Lashes puts on a great live show. We use the singular form because Natasha Khan, to all intents and purposes, is Bat for Lashes. For a start she looks beautiful, what with the war-paint and the headgear and the exotic jewellery. Her voice is a spooky, hypnotic thing. And she's a master of quiet stagecraft, leading the audience in collective hums and handclaps and putting everyone at ease with her droll charm. Big question is: can she capture her song's fragile mysteries on record?

"Fur And Gold" delivers the answer: an emphatic "Yes". Witchy folk songs with a sexy, gothic twist are Khan's stock in trade, and this debut album's opening track "Horse And I" plunges us deep into Kate Bush territory with a dream-inspired tale of a night-time visitation by a black horse. Khan's a Brighton resident, and she plainly spends more time on Sussex Downs than in seafront clubs.

Throughout "Fur And Gold" the name Bjork is never far from your mind, with Khan's trills and inflections evoking the Icelandic chanteuse to an almost eerie extent. However, hers is a less contrived persona, seemingly powered by genuine eccentricity rather than rehearsed kookiness or avant-garde pretension. Certainly the songwriting is consistently more in step with Kate Bush's, being preoccupied with the subconscious mind and narrative-driven female sexuality. Also, though melodic, it adheres to a far different sonic template from that of standard pop, deploying electric pianos, violins, harpsichords and all manner of percussive toys.

Again like Bush, Khan is aware that, while ethereal flights of fancy are all well and good, you're going to need realistic starting points if you want to take the listener with you. Hence, alongside her more elliptical musings, there are references to doing dishes, making dinner and combing kids' hair in the morning. Fortunately, she stops short of penning a tribute to her washing machine, and for this we should be thankful.

Don't be put off by the F word mentioned earlier: Bat For Lashes' music may have undeniably folky trappings, but it sounds more like the work of a scary pagan cult than some guys playing "Kumbaya" round a campfire. Khan also eschews folk's slavish stereotyping of gender roles, endorsing powerful goddess figures on "Priscilla" and "Sarah" while revealing a vulnerable side on "Trophy" and "Sad Eyes".

"Wizard", seemingly a satire of Christianity, serves as the album's centrepiece, but its indisputable highpoint is the closing track "I Saw A Light", a terrifying and beautiful song that finds Khan screaming "I saw a light coming through the trees" in such frenzy that you'll never walk alone on Sussex Downs again.

Bat For Lashes, then: great live show, great records - and cool as folk.

    by Niall O'Keeffe