Live review written for the Cambridge News 6/10/09: www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_lifestyle_reviews/displayarticle.asp?id=454456
Bat for Lashes returned to Cambridge last night on wave of bells, beauty and some bloomin’ big drums, setting the tone for their show which ricocheted from ballerina elegance to driving tribal beats.
The night was an exercise in extremes, flipping between the male and the female, the gentle and the tough, from simple acoustic sections to heavily synthesised walls of sound. Fitting then that singer Natasha Khan drew from two albums and sang out pitch-perfect between the falsetto and the deep down low. She even made room for Pearl, her alter-ego, who duetted on The Big Sleep via a flickering video played out on a lumbering old TV.
Whilst Bat for Lashes is Natasha Khan’s moniker, the fact that fans refer to BfL as both she and they is testimony to the slick collaboration between Natasha and in her words, her amazing band.
Tracks from both albums were juxtaposed in a way that although there was little new in the way of song arrangements, the jolt from the melodic latticework of Fur and Gold to the 80’s crunch of Two Suns meant that the audience was held rapt. We even had to hold steady against the tsunami-threat that was Sarah Jones’s relentless timpani assault during Siren Song and Two Planets, not that it dislodged the composure of the rest of the band who rotated perfectly between guitars, strings and intriguing medieval instruments.
At the end, Natasha whispered Good Night in the smallest voice. I’m still braced for the inevitable howling ambush to follow.
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