Development hell has many circles, into one of which fell the sequel to Joel Schumacher’s classic 1987 teen-goth film The Lost Boys; despite several attempts by Schumacher and others, The Lost Girls never appeared.
Enter Natasha Khan, the UK’s premier purveyor of musical spookery, who thought she’d have a bash at making her own version of the film. Somewhere along the line, the songs she’d been working on as the film’s soundtrack took over, and Lost Girls became an album instead. Not development hell this time, but a heavenly accident: inspired by a wider 80s film nostalgia, these narrative songs conjure intimate, urgent dialogue and the eruption of the supernatural into the everyday.
It’s familiar territory in our retromanic times, but who could resist the dark, gothic pulse and veiled shimmer of The Hunger, or the clash of Cure guitar and wild sax in Vampires? There’s adventure, too, in the dark disco of Feel For You and the Lynchian backmasking of Peach Sky, and love interest in the soft-glow synths of Kids in the Dark and the widescreen swells of Safe Tonight. The only regret left for The Lost Boys aficionados is that there isn’t a track called Death By Stereo.
