Natasha Khan has always been partial to theatricals.
On her fourth album as Bat for Lashes, the Brighton singer-songwriter goes the full Miss Havisham (perhaps with half an eye on the Kate Bush of Wedding List) and directs a crepuscular melodrama on a marital theme.
Over the spangly autoharp strums of I Do, she introduces her dream-lorn heroine, whose dashing husband-to-be — spoiler alert! — unfortunately dies in a beach-side car fire on his way to the altar: “To leave me here / In this church to cry,” as she laments on In God’s House. Then on Honeymooning Alone she begins her self-rediscovery: “I can’t speak because I don’t have you by my side / I must be the girl who was denied.”
Khan makes the most of her lovely English vowels, swooping into her upper register on the ballad Close Encounters, whispering erotic metaphysics on Widow’s Peak. On Sunday Love, she provides a coolly propulsive single in the vein of Daniel.
The concept may be a little contrived, even overdone — but you don’t have to follow the story to be caught up in her doomful cinema.
(Parlophone)