ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Bat For Lashes
TWO SUNS PARLOPHONE 6.4.09 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
Getting Scott Walker to sing on your album, as he does on the album closer, The Big Sleep, is quite a coup. Hell, he didn’t even really sing on his own last album, preferring to declaim and slap pieces of meat around. It contrasts with the image of Bat For Lashes as a Bjork-lite. Both views are correct: Natasha inhabits a world of pretension, worked and multi-tracked vocals, dreamy bits and crunching dance beats. It’s that same soundscape, and kooky individualism that veers between forced novelty and punchy winners, like Pearl’s Dream. Natasha Khan loves pretty things and shiny surfaces, hence her excellent note-perfect Shangri-Las pastiche (What’s A Girl To Do) on her debut. Natasha plays up the kooky angle and she needs to – the competition from female acts with keyboards (La Roux, Little Boots et al) is pressing this year. She’s invented two personas and sings songs in the character of one or the other. Well, it worked for David Bowie…… She has different voices – the little girl lost one of Good Love, the dreamy hippy one of the same song, a high pitched keening, a breathy, careful expression, a close-to-the-microphone back of the throat sung whisper. Songs like Two Planets belong very strongly in the Bjork camp – vocals that have something to say but become an instrumental drone in this reviewer’s head, stretching over a drum backing with fussy detail and colour providing a painted backdrop. Others like Travelling Woman head slightly towards Enya territory in effect. Opening track Glass goes down the Icelandic elf road of carefully phrased vocals and rattling drum patterns. Sleep Alone fails to distinguish itself whilst being strident – I guess it just reminds me of a lot of other things. Siren Song drifts along but convinces and she does seem to be singing it just to you until she breaks out the Kate Bush voice and echo and it becomes an exercise in style over emotion. Moon And Moon wanders off up a road behind Kate Bush’s last album and washing machine songs. Daniel is, as you’ll have heard on the radio, a bit of an anthem; the sequencers quietly throbbing and propelling it into a hypnotic place. And the Scott Walker closer we mentioned? It’s full of amazing texture – a high pitched colour around the keys that is almost uncomfortable, a strange buzzing pulse that sounds like your fridge is on the blink or a turned down MRI scan, a keening performance from Natasha and Mr Walker’s inimitable baritone. As a whole, the set works as lovely coloured settings for your home, an aural decoration. Closer listening reveals individual gems and tracks that don’t quite grab, though the overall sound is nicely unified in conception. The result is something to stack next to your Bjork records. www.batforlashes.com |
