bat for lashes
BAT FOR LASHES IS LOOKING TO THE PAST IN ORDER TO MOVE FORWARD.
After 10 years of back-to-back albums and touring, you’d forgive Bat for Lashes – real name Natasha Khan – for wanting to drop off the face of the Earth for a bit. Sail around the Bahamas. Dabble in wine-making. You know, some regular celebrity stuff. But somehow Natasha’s exit plan (leave her native London to go paint, read and explore Los Angeles) quickly became fuel for another album. “It’s almost become a joke with my inner creative child,” she says of her newest record, Lost Girls. “I pretend we don’t have to go through this whole cycle again; that we’re just going to enjoy life. Then she’s like, ‘Oh, but I want to make something now.’”
To be fair, Natasha is loving LA. When she arrived, she had a ball dancing until dawn and driving around the city at night. The makings of an album only emerged when she began writing a song as a possible soundtrack for a Netflix series. In the process, she met producer and songwriter Charles Scott from the TV production company Bad Robot, and together they made the track “Kids in the Dark” – all in one day. “I was like, ‘Wow, if I made another record, it would sound like this’,” Natasha says. The song didn’t end up making it to Netflix, but Natasha and Charles wrote nearly the entirety of Lost Girls together. There’s a new lightness to the album, and the sound – heavy on 1980s nostalgia – is a specific reaction to the cynicism, doom and gloom Natasha sees in our current world. An ’80s kid at heart, she drew on some of her favourite films and music from the era, and the childlike innocence bundled up in those memories. “I’ve been brave enough to be simple and not worry too much,” she says of the tracks. “Some songs are just about having fun.”
Leaving her record label has been liberating, too. In the past, she’d felt the expectation to turn out something commercially successful – even so, she only ever made what felt truthful to her. (“I always tried to protect that creativity,” she says.) And now that she’s flying solo? Ironically, she’s making some of her most playful, dance-y, poppy tracks ever. “It’s not like I was purposefully not doing that before,” she says. “But it’s funny, having no one on my back has released the pop goddess inside of me.”
Before the album happened, Natasha had been working on a film script – a vampire girl-gang story with a heavy ’80s vibe. She’d also been travelling out to the desert, filming dance videos and reading up on the Desert Transcendentalist painters. (“They’d do séances, then paint visions they had,” she explains.) As things progressed, it felt more like she was writing the film’s soundtrack than the movie itself. In the end, she channelled her theatrical ideas into video clips for Lost Girls songs, some of which she shot or directed herself.
“I love being behind the camera, looking after composition, colour and light. Just being the queen of ceremony,” she says. “The next thing I want to do is direct a feature film or theatre production, so I’m slowly building up my skills.” That’s the plan for the next couple of years, though.
For now, she’s looking forward to reaching her 40th birthday. It might not look like it from the outside, but Natasha’s in hibernation mode. She’s happy living a super-suburban lifestyle in LA, taking her dogs for walks, peeking into grand old houses and feeling like she’s living in a movie. “The world is crazier than ever,” she says. “I just need to come home and nestle and cook spaghetti bolognese, man.”