BAT FOR LASHES
Interview by Cameron Cook
Images by Audree Lau
Natasha Khan, the visionary soul-searcher behind Bat For Lashes, is quietly seated a table at Soho’s Spring Street Natural, where vegan waffle platters and the like whisk around the crowded restaurant. It’s about 11am on a weekend, and Natasha stands out. Not that she looks out of place, but rather more composed, more serene then her bustling surroundings. Her face is elegantly framed in a long, silky curtain of chestnut colored hair. Her signature gold headband is missing, but her wrists are adorned in little tattoos, like bat wings and peacock feathers. Her large, brown eyes seem constantly set to “contemplate”, and she doesn’t even break a sweat when I pronounce my digital voice recorder clinically dead about five minutes into this interview. She simply fidgets with it a little and fixes it, to my great relief.
The conversation veers quickly towards her “vision” – one of wonder and mystique that is prevalent throughout her debut LP, 2007’s Fur and Gold. She says that the album’s opener, “Horse and I”, came to her in a dream, and that fantastical quality carries songs like “The Wizard” and “I Saw a Light” into a Kate Bush-like realm of songwriting. While BFL’s sound recalls a few other female singer-songwriters, from Björk to Tracey Thorn, it remains totally singular.
Once she had revived my recorder, Natasha and I spoke of her childhood spent in Pakistan, her flagship single “What’s a Girl to Do?” and her current home of Brighton, England.


Do you think your heritage affects your music?
Well, whose doesn’t? Because my father was such a mystical, religious kind of person, although I’m not religious now, it definitely sets up your imagination to communicate in certain ways. So because when I was a kid, it was all about storytelling, healing and miracles and all those types of things, when I came to write music I was attracted to artists like Nick Cave and PJ Harvey; people who tell stories. Lou Reed, all those people really influence me. I also think that coming from Pakistan, in terms of landscape and culture, colors and atmosphere, when I write music, I have quite an eclectic range of tastes. Things come together as I’m trying to pull polar opposites and conflicting things together.
One of the things I’m always noticing when I read about you, is the readiness people have to compare you to other female artists like Björk and Cat Power. I wanted to ask if you think that being a woman, people expect that sort of sound from you. Do you think it’s sometimes harder for female musicians to be perceived as original?
The thing is to use your feminine power, and that power is very much about intuition and more unseen things, like sensitivity, emotion, sexuality, nature, all of that. If you’re going to delve into that part of your power and use it, then there’s a very limited palette of artists who have done so in the past. So you inevitably get: ‘Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, Björk, et cetera.’ I think it’s mainly because there is such a small pool. When the next guitar band comes around, you can compare them to so many more bands, but on the female side there’s so little. There wasn’t anyone doing what they did before that.
When I saw you live, I kind of understood where the comparisons to Björk and especially Kate Bush came from, not so much musically but because you create your own sort of fantasy world, for lack of a better term, and I think those artists create a similar world.
It’s a universe. It’s a vision. When I’m writing music, I have a visual process that happens, I can see all the characters. What I’m trying to do with the live shows, illustrating the artwork for the album and singles, making the videos, is to represent that same vision. So that’s totally right. The types of artists that I love, including male artists from David Bowie to Lou Reed with his New York thing, Andy Warhol – there are people who create universes who interest me.

Your “vision” is so present in your work, even in the way you dress onstage, with the headbands and the feathers and such.
I think that in terms of the headdresses and things, that’s just my thing, collecting trinkets and little symbols, things that hold a certain history. In terms of the performance, when I went to Pakistan when I was younger I’d get henna on my hands and decorate them in beads, wear golden necklaces – there’s a real tradition of adornment and iconography there, which then feeds into my love of Egyptology, and all the beautiful ways that people have traditionally embellished their power. I think it’s really important to find a natural way to elevate people. They say that when you wear a headdress in symbolism, it means you’re opening your mind up to the muses. You’re inviting an elevated demeanor.

It’s funny that you said that you collect trinkets and things, because your music uses so many diverse instruments, like the harpsichord and autoharps and bells and so on, that it’s almost like you’re collecting sounds as well. You take that same passion and apply it to your songs.
I think it’s very child-like in a way, like ‘Oh I like this, and that one and that one!’ It’s even slightly a clumsy or naïve thing to want to just use everything [laughs]. I go through obsessions with loads of different things, and I just want to incorporate them all. It’s quite instinctive. Also, it’s my first album, and when you get into the studio there are all these instruments, and you can use whatever you want. It’s open and you can just play with stuff, and I wanted to play with everything. I think it’s natural, but of course in time I’ll refine a bit more. I like mixing up old, medieval, ancient things with modern things, and to bring things together that don’t necessarily fit easily.

How did you start your label, She Bear?
She Bear was this small imprint that Echo Records helped me create to release my album. I released my first few vinyl singles on it, and later on when I’d like to sign other people to it, and release film soundtracks on it and stuff.

It’s just when I heard the name of the label I thought ‘That’s so Bat For Lashes’. She Bear…
[Laughs] I know, ‘Oooooh!’
The video for “What’s a Girl To Do?” has become something of a runaway hit, how did the idea for it come about?
I got the idea from all these ‘80s films that I love, and from E.T. to The Goonies, and later on Donnie Darko, there’s always a scene where the kids go out on their bikes, and leave behind their suburban homes and move out into communing with something terrifying, like ghosts or pirate
ships or aliens. It’s a great symbol for moving out of your comfort zone into a place that takes you on a mission, and that’s my philosophy on life, I suppose. It’s so magical and enchanting and eerie, and visually it was exactly what I wanted [for the video]. So Dougal Wilson, the director, came up with this simple treatment and I was like, ‘Perfect’. And then I added a few things, like the car wreck.
This might just be my personal interpretation of the song, but I feel like it’s quintessential Bat For Lashes. The lyrics and the tone sort of anchor it. The rest of the album is kind of sparse, whereas “What’s a Girl to Do?” seems to be the epitome of the vision we’ve been talking about.
So do you think it’s different from the other tracks, or that it’s the most fulfilled version?

Yeah I think it’s the most complete version of all the ideas of the album. Not that the other songs are lacking, but it ties everything together.
I think it’s the most produced track on the album. It’s the one that has the most layers and production and mixing. It was kind of a difficult beast, because you’ve got the hip-hop drum beat and then the harpsichords and stuff. A lot of weird things are coming together. And the theme of falling out of love and not knowing what to do. It’s a brave decision to finish a relationship, when some people would rather go along feeling awful.

Tell me a little bit about Brighton, there seem to be loads of cool bands from there.
I don’t know if there’s a “scene” though, as all the bands are very different. It’s very artsy. Everyone is in a band. I think it has something to do with coastal towns for some reason. Living by the sea breeds a sort of creativity. It’s very colorful there. There’s a huge gay scene. It’s sort of like San Francisco in some respects. You get off of the train in Brighton and it’s like [sighs] “Mmmmmm”. You know?

artist=Bat For Lashes
interviewer=Cameron Cook