Augustines

This Is Your Life

NATASHA KHAN’S fourth album under the moniker Bat For Lashes is reassuringly old-fashioned. With a nod to ’70s and ’80s fascination with reinvention, Khan sings in character on what is essentially a concept album. These 12 tracks (13, if you count the bonus track, Clouds) are meant to be listened to as a piece, in one sitting, the soundtrack to an as-yet-unmade movie. The music was two years in the making and the final sessions were in Woodstock with her co-producer Simone Felice. There is, therefore, a folksiness and intimacy to the sound that is the perfect backdrop for Khan’s quite often stunning vocal set pieces. The Bride’s narrative arc is relatively straightforward: a couple are to be married; the groom dies in an car accident yet the bride decides to continue the journey to their intended honeymoon. The first half of the album, then, is an epic tragedy. The opener, I Do, sets the pace of emotional intensity; tomorrow, on her wedding day, “all of the sorrow will drop away.” Yet as early as track two, Joe’s Dream, there’s an injection of gothic morbidity, a premonition of death and despair: “I’m falling in love to say goodbye,” her groom calls out. Next is In God’s House, with its synthdriven beat, the only song on the album with the commerciality of Daniel or Laura, yet the narrative is deadly – the bride stranded in front of the congregation as her man dies. Meanwhile Honeymooning Alone is all noir-ish Portishead shadings as the bride makes her escape (“your empty seat by my side.”) The mid-point songs drift somewhat, perhaps a little too formulaic musically, although the startling narrative of Close Encounters seems to imply some sort of sexual connection with the dear departed. The reverie is well and truly broken by Widow’s Peak, an abstract collision of a song, big tympani and ghostly wailings, a musical and emotional breakdown (“I can’t get home, I can’t get home”). The final songs on the album seem to take as a theme one of Khan’s favourite films, The Wizard Of Oz; the idea that love and contentedness was there all along. I Will Love Again claims “I will turn it back round”, while In Your Bed longs for the touch of another. Interestingly, despite the intimacy of the album, there is almost no hint of the carnal; this is an exploration of sensibility rather than sex. The songs also beg the question whether the album’s creator is sublimating her real life hopes and fears in epic fantasy form. Is the album a plea to find lasting love? There is a single-minded intensity to the writing and the production which makes The Bride a very strong proposition indeed.