Gig review: Bat For Lashes, HMV Picturehouse, Edinburgh

By DAVE POLLOCK
Published on 20/10/2012 01:17

Although the emergence of her debut album came in 2006, three years before that of Florence + the Machine, the latter’s Florence Welch has since outstripped Bat For Lashes.

London-raised singer-songwriter Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, following the career intersection where they were both nominated for (and both lost) the 2009 Mercury Prize. It’s not like a great rivalry has developed between them, but each has come to be representative of a fiercely contemporary sound, that of the female pop artist, who owes an equal debt to Kate Bush and to the singularly euphoric dynamic of modern electronic dance music.

On this evidence, a new tour to promote her three-years-in-the-making latest album The Haunted Man, Khan has committed herself to gradual but steady advancement. After three records she has built a set of richness and quality . Her band were tight yet unobtrusive, Khan looked strikingly elegant in a black and grey gown and a black Louise Brooks bob, and her voice as an instrument proved remarkably similar to its recorded incarnation on tracks like frosty piano ballad Laura, ghostly club anthem Rest Your Head and the sinister hum of the new album’s title track, it’s backing vocals crackling through an old transistor radio held to the mic.

With the encore and the giggled question “are you ready for a bit of a dance?”, what had been a powerful and occasionally breathtaking display of bittersweet and mature songwriting opened up into something approaching a real Friday night party, with Khan leading the dance through A Wall’s buoyant electropop, her signature track Daniel and the upbeat Pearl’s Dream. All were defined by a sense of easy-going ability coupled with an absolute and remarkable degree of control.

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