Album review: Bat for Lashes: Two Suns

Published on Sunday 5 April 2009 20:09

BAT FOR LASHES: TWO SUNS THE ECHO LABEL, £10.76 * * * *

NATASHA Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, has lamented the loss of quirkiness in pop music – though it is definitely there once you shove Kings of Leon and Duffy to one side and go for a stroll round the fringes of the mainstream. Khan herself may even have played a part in opening the door for the offbeat likes of fellow singer/pianist Polly Scattergood, following the exposure she received for her Mercury-nominated album Fur and Gold.

With that audacious debut, this Hove-dwelling, part-Pakistani, 29-year-old daughter of a squash champion was hailed by the illustrious likes of Bjrk, Thom Yorke – who likened Fur and Gold to Grimms' fairytales – and this follow-up album's special guest Scott Walker.

Despite the inevitable move to a major label after making her initial splash in 2006, Khan has cleaved to her auteur roots, orchestrating all her sound and vision. If anything, she has run a bit wilder this time round, borrowing from all over the shop to create a powerful image, daubed in body paint, anointed with head-dresses, and surrounded by woodland-inspired stage sets. She has even had some help from Alexander McQueen with her costume designs. The results are not dissimilar to Alison Goldfrapp if she were styled by the Mighty Boosh.

Khan is happy to indulge this hippy-dippy ragbag impression in a short promotional film, called Joshua & The Bat, which introduces some of the tracks from Two Suns and features footage of Khan cavorting in a diaphanous smock in the Joshua Tree desert. It all means something – there is plenty of bumf about duality in the accompanying literature – but it would be thoroughly ridiculous and pretentious if the music weren't so compelling.

Glass sets the tone of the album by channelling the free spirits of Bjrk, PJ Harvey, Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard and the Mother Earth of them all, Kate Bush – all magnificent role models to nuzzle up to, and Khan comes closer than most. Behind the fanciful references to "a thousand crystal towers, a hundred emerald cities" is a lament of being alone in a crowd, inspired by Khan's mixed experience of living in New York while she was making the album, which is driven along by tribal percussion from Brooklyn oddbods Yeasayer and garnished with a beautiful falsetto chorus.

The electro-folky Sleep Alone stays on this road with a bewitching dervish of a chorus about the emptiness at the eye of the social whirlwind: "Last night's parties and last night's horror show, smiling and whirling and kissing all I know."

Khan is happy to lay it on the line autobiographically, even naming Moon and Moon after her Brooklyn-based former boyfriend's band. Here, she really unleashes her inner Kate Bush, sucking the listener into her yearning as she gets lost in a plaintive reverie at the piano. She returns to the piano balladry later on Siren Song, which starts softly enough with a gentle entreaty to a possible lover ("I'll be good, I think I could"), then builds in intensity, augmented by crashing drums and unruly strings, as her longing becomes more urgent.

The considerably less intimidating Daniel was probably chosen as the first single for its Fleetwood Mac floatiness, sighing, echoing vocals, radio-friendly beat and pizzicato strings. Shame about the pseudo-torrid imagery of darkness, fire and storms. Khan is an accomplished musician and arranger – check out the way she consummately teams Eastern instrumentation with a gospel choir on Peace of Mind – but her lyrics can be clichd, like an angsty teenager's whimsical scribblings.

For this album, Khan has created an alter ego called Pearl, her New York party self, who is depicted on the back of the sleeve by Khan in a blonde wig. As affected as that may sound, the character's song, Pearl's Dream, is one of the standout tracks, boasting a pagan mantra-like chorus which is strongly reminiscent of Hounds of Love-era Kate Bush.

There is some musical slack in the form of Good Love, which is basically insipid Dido breathiness dressed up with slightly more exotic instrumentation. Two Planets, meanwhile, tips the balance into hippy drivel.

But she claws it back with closer The Big Sleep, a spectral, tremulous duet, featuring a rare outing by the reclusive and abstruse Scott Walker in the role usually filled by Antony Hegarty. Though Walker's presence will be the main reason for some folks to tune in, Khan actually outsings her partner in an almost sacred evocation of a fading star taking her final bow which radiates the eerie beauty of a David Lynch soundtrack.