The last album from Bat for Lashes, The Bride, was a haunting concept album about a woman left at the altar following’s her fiancé’s death in a car crash. Hardly cheery stuff, but Natasha Khan’s latest couldn’t be more of an about-turn.
Instead of spectral songs about heartbreak, Lost Girls marks her most romantic collection – never more so than the lovely, lush lead single Kids in the Dark, one of her most direct and accessible tracks to date.
Lost Girls was born out of a film soundtrack project that never came to fruition, and the cinematic aspects remain. The Cure – one of Khan’s long-standing touchstones – are invoked on the brooding synth-pop instrumental Vampires, which could be the theme for a lost Eighties horror classic. Desert Man – the album’s towering centrepiece – is just as evocative as her 2012 anthem Laura, or the gothic dancefloor-filler Daniel.
Khan has spoken about losing her way in the years between The Bride and this record, unsure if she would ever release another album. But this blissfully triumphant collection is the sound of an artist falling in love with their craft all over again.
