By Imogen V. Shahrazad
I’m entirely convinced Bat For Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) recorded her sophomore album Two Suns in an evergreen forest, after dark, in the space between midnight and a thunderstorm. Indeed, I get the impression that Bat for Lashes herself splits her time between dancing in the moonlight and prowling the banks of slow-moving rivers.
The gentle, folky curves of her voice mask something deep, an instinct for human rhythms. Elements such as the hand-claps in “Two Planets” become body as instrument, and one almost forgets that sounds other than those coming out of the musician herself exist on the album. It’s a dream vision, a call to ancestors, an ear to the ground.
That said, Two Suns is not a wishy-washy, faux-hippie, part-time goddess worshipping “I was inspired by a weekend retreat to Allegheny National Forest” album. This is a serious work of art.
Bat For Lashes makes music for the bare bones of the soul, and we hang our hearts on the deep breath of her vocals, nestled like cubs. Despite her instinctual grasp of something fundamentally nature-made, the theatrical final minute and thirty seconds of the album (the end of “The Big Sleep”) could be a swan song—one imagines a dancer spinning slowly off the stage in a fading spotlight, the audience holding its breath.
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