Bat for Lashes

The 2006 album Fur and Gold by Brighton-based Bat for Lashes made the shortlist for the 2007 Mercury Prize, causing a 185% spike in album sales.

In Trophy, singer/songwriter Natasha Khan's Björk-textured vocals sing:

creatures of mercy
shoot shoot shoot
shoot them down
set me free

On Horse and I Khan's nursery-rhyme harpsichord-synth graces an album that allowed her to quit her nursery-school job. While her Bruce Springstein cover I'm on Fire features real harpsichord and finger-picked viola.

The enchanting fairytale verse/chorus of Bats Mouth is fleshed out with piano and strings, then upstaged by a long magnificent bridge buildup that firmly establishes the title. Lyrics are dense with imagery of dark forests and constellations.

For certain songs, Khan told Wikinews that she may "gather images and take photographs and make notes and make collages and start looking to photographers and filmmakers to give me a more grounded sense of the place that I'm writing about..."

profile @ myspace
video @ youtube (horse and i - bat for lashes)
video @ youtube (interview on flasher.com)
video @ youtube (interview on the culture show)
video @ youtube (moon on moon - bat for lashes)
video @ youtube (the stick)
video @ youtube (trophy - bat for lashes)
video @ youtube (what's a girl to do? - bat for lashes)
review @ metacritic
interview @ wikinews
interview @ imposemagazine
home page @ batforlashes
encyclopedia @ wikipedia