Bat for Lashes, livestream review: no 'mum brain' here, just a searing hour of gorgeous live music
It was typical of Bat for Lashes’s Natasha Khan to skip Valentine’s Day and instead devote a random Friday in April to an evening of love songs.
But of course these were no mass-produced odes to undying devotion. Since materialising in the darkest days of landfill indie, Khan has doggedly charted her own course. The melodramatic dirges she performed at this live-streamed gig were the equivalent of bouquets of roses with the thorns on display. They were beautiful but with a sting
With no album to promote and without any real purpose other than connect with fans, Khan – who adopted “Bat for Lashes” as a stage name because “it conjured up Halloween-y images, and it sounded metal and feminine” – was free to indulge. Her instinct was to unleash the doomed romantic within, albeit with material that owed more to the undead lovers in Twilight than Romeo and Juliet.
The 41-year-old did so sitting behind a keyboard and installed in a statement shed adjoining the Los Angeles home the Hertfordshire-born artist shares with her partner, model and actor Samuel Watkins, and their 10-month old baby daughter.
The bijou cabin was outfitted with tasteful lighting and classy cushions: any old paint pots or half-dismantled bikes were firmly out of camera shot. With the shutters down, there was sense of womb-like claustrophobia only partly offset by Khan’s sky-blue dress dappled with cloud patterns.
Yet not even the dazzling soft furnishings could not distract from the aching punch of Khan’s vocals. Her gorgeously baroque pitch was the perfect delivery mechanism for the gothic folk of her early records and the vampire-themed Eighties pop that defined her most recent album, 2019’s Lost Girls.
She opened with All Your Gold, a power ballad about messy break-ups and the struggle to reassemble one’s shattered self-worth. Emotional devastation was a theme throughout the 60 minutes, whether Khan was saying goodbye to a long-term boyfriend (What’s a Girl to Do?) or wondering if she’ll ever meet Mr Right (Lilies).
That song had her in tears. As a new parent she explained she had a bad case of “mum brain” brought on by sleep deprivation. Having not sung in public in more than a year, she also felt “nervous and rusty”. But the self-deprecating patter failed to take the edge off a searing hour that registered somewhere between Tori Amos, Anne Rice and the Bront? sisters.
After fumbling briefly with her notes, Khan finished with Deep Sea Diver. It was a tune about love and redemption and finding your way through difficult times. There was a crack in Khan’s voice as she crooned. Even as a happy young mother and adored cult artist, it was as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe in happy endings.
Bat for Lashes's livestreamed gigs are available to watch until midnight