BAT FOR LASHES: THE HAUNTED MAN (2012)
1) Lilies; 2) All Your Gold;
3) Horses Of The Sun; 4) Oh Yeah; 5) Laura; 6) Winter Fields; 7) The Haunted
Man; 8) Marilyn; 9) A Wall; 10) Rest Your Head; 11) Deep Sea Diver.
Well, it looks like nobody was interested in
taking my advice and steering The Enchanted Lady of Pakistan in the direction
of lighter entertainment. Or, more likely, this is simply an impossible task:
The Lady has a will of steel, tempered by everything from severe childhood
experiences to a questionable, but firm taste in literature and other forms of
art. The Haunted Man — so haunted,
in fact, that all he can do now is rest, naked and lifeless, on Mother
Natasha's bare shoulders — is the generally predictable third volume of Bat For
Lashes' venture into the world of sensual romantic darkness, usually inhabited
by pseudo-intellectuals and con people, but sometimes visited by more demanding
visitors as well (by mistake or out of curiosity).
On that global level, nothing has changed.
Natasha Khan has not improved either as a musician or as a lyricist, and her
cherished «artistic vision» has not been expanded from the usual Freudian
muck. There may be a slightly deeper sexual subtext this time — as she grows
older, she gets less shy about letting it out in the open, starting with the
provocative album sleeve and ending with tracks like ʽOh Yeahʼ and ʽDeep Sea
Diverʼ, particularly the former which really sounds like an invitation to try a
new style of lovemaking if you are bored with the traditional stuff. But it is
still only part of the story — in her witchy world, sexuality plays an
important part, yet you do not reduce everything
to sexuality. Or, at least, much of the time you give sexuality another name.
On the local level, however, I was surprised: The Haunted Man is definitely a huge improvement over Two Suns in terms of individual song
quality — in fact, the lady had my attention hooked for almost the entire first
half of the record, letting it drop somewhere around ʽWinter Fieldsʼ but still
recapturing it with ʽMarilynʼ and, for a brief while, with ʽDeep Sea Diverʼ.
Basically, it all seems like a matter of being able, or unable, to exploit her
strongest advantages — a good sense of vocal melody, particularly contrastive
vocal melodies, and the skill of compensating for the technically weak
instrumentation with an assortment of «musical knick-knacks». Of course, I have
no idea how many of the «knick-knacks» Natasha happens to be personally responsible
for (there is like a million people altogether working on this record), but, in
the end, this is a «Bat For Lashes» album, not a «Natasha Khan» one — and who
could properly define «Bat For Lashes» and segregate it into individual
components?
The voice power is probably best illustrated
with ʽLauraʼ, a sparsely arranged piano-and-subtle-strings ballad that she
co-wrote with Justin Parker — the guy who, not coincidentally, was also
responsible for introducing Lana Del Rey's ʽVideo Gamesʼ to the world in 2011,
and the two songs do have a lot in common (sad piano ballads delivered by
femme-fatales with mystical auras and lotsa makeup). But where, as far as my
troubled ears are concerned, ʽVideo Gamesʼ remains a puffed-up nothing like 99%
representatives of the genre, ʽLauraʼ is a much better song — it rises, it
falls, it starts soft, it gets tense, in short, it lives and breathes. It isn't
much of an original composition, with verses sounding as if they were
appropriated from an old Dylan folk number and the chorus quoting from
ʽRemember (Walking In The Sand)ʼ (well, I suppose The Shangri-Las should be
quite a natural influence for Natasha), but even the stock phrases are screwed
together in a lively way — normally, I'd just walk away from something like
this in bored disgust, but here, I thought I felt a real spark. (Oh, and
naturally, the video for ʽLauraʼ has 1 million views on YouTube where the one
for ʽVideo Gamesʼ has 30 million — but I suppose it all has to do with the
seductive wonders of lip enhancement surgery).
Most of the other songs have «deeper» sounds,
unfortunately, way too often marred by an unhealthy fascination with drum
machines (does she have a Dead Can Dance fetish or what?), but salvaged through
great vocal parts — ʽLiliesʼ is a fine example, if you manage to disregard the
lyrics (about a magical milkman or something). But she is at her very best here
when she opens the tap on the «darkness» barrel — ʽAll Your Goldʼ and ʽHorses
Of The Sunʼ (never mind the titles, please!) rank with her very best stuff on
the early albums, or maybe even go beyond that level. ʽAll Your Goldʼ, in
particular, is a nifty synthesis of a Caribbean bassline, a traditional pop
vocal melody, dream-folk harps and chimes, and some grumpy treated guitar
chords that seem lifted from some faraway hard rock classic. ʽHorsesʼ is also
moderately haunting, mostly thanks to the great idea of singing the verse
melody an octave lower than her usual range, which then contrasts with the
happy-cloudy psycho-pop chorus in a memorable way.
The «tribal», «voodooistic» aspects of the
album that involve round-the-fire male choruses offering religious support
(ʽOh Yeahʼ; the title track) do not work nearly as well, because Ms. Khan is
always at her best when she is alone — it works much better when all these
«spirits dancing» remain in her (and your) imagination rather than try and make
an effort at materializing in the flesh. But it does not necessarily mean that
she always sucks when going for a louder, fuller sound — ʽMarilynʼ and ʽDeep
Sea Diverʼ both feature quite beautiful arrangements, even if they are a bit
too derivative of all that mid-to-late Eighties New Age scene. Not quite so
with ʽA Wallʼ, which was, for some reason, «blessed» with a danceable
percussion groove even though the melody itself is anything but catchy.
Cutting this short, The Haunted Man returns me back on the fence about Bat For Lashes,
where I'd already thought that Two Suns
would forever land me on the negatively charged side of it. I mean, ever since
Kate Bush invented this genre, for every person that used it with the properly
input mix of intelligence and creativity, there have been ten whose fascination
never went beyond silly clichés. With this lady, three albums into her career,
it is still hard to tell if she is just a mildly talented phoney, or a real prodigy
that is too hampered by childhood attractions and genre conventions to let her
gift shine properly. But there definitely is
artistic merit in The Haunted Man,
although it sure enough ain't in the sleeve photo. Thumbs up, with caution and
patience.
Check "The Haunted Man" (MP3) on Amazon
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