Friday, February 23, 2024

Labour of love

"This is the manifesto of the album. It's like a spell being cast. It's the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether. This is me calling on her soul. It's about going up into the stars and down into the underworld simultaneously, how celestials and deep guttural sounds can come together, how that reflects the journey I went on. It's about what happens when you're stretched physically, mentally, even vaginally! I think it's just humbled me, too, becoming a mother. It's made me feel more vulnerable than I've ever felt before. But I feel more human, more embodied. I can't escape my life by making beautiful things as much as I did. But there's a sort of beauty to my mortality now."

Suffice to say that Natasha Khan's description of the new Bat For Lashes single 'The Dream Of Delphi' - the title track from her forthcoming album - is so on brand as to be practically self-parody.

Scoff all you like (and there's admittedly a part of me inclined to do so), but I do have a soft spot for artists with idiosyncratic vision who are sufficiently self-assured to leave themselves totally exposed to ridicule. And, as those of us lucky enough to be at her Llais show at the Millennium Centre last autumn will recall, the song is a cracker and served as the perfect opener to her set. The album promises much.

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