Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

01. Glass
02. Sleep Alone
03. Moon and Moon
04. Daniel
05. Peace of Mind
06. Siren Song
07. Pearl's Dream
08. Good Love
09. Two Planets
10. Traveling Woman
11. The Big Sleep

Mythic songstresses these days seem about as few and far between as needles in haystacks. Yet flying the dreamy, hallucinatory flag for the British Isles stands Natasha Khan, defiant. Whilst Klaxons’ ‘myths of the near future’ may have fended her debut off from the fabled Mercury Music Prize, two years into the near future Khan’s myths appear to have blossomed into reality. Whilst organic alternative gems of genius Prescilla and What’s A Girl To Do fit comparatively conventionally into the most sober of daytime playlists, Two Suns sweeps emotion over swathes of sonic beauty worthy of National Trust protection, playing minimalism off the back of Khan’s haunting vocals encrusted with enchanting mystery.

Khan can hardly be said to have strayed from her path of wonderment she’s been plotting over the past few years since quitting her job as quite possibly the most thrilling teacher a nursery school has ever come across and comparisons with quintessentially great British eccentrics are as rife as her festival appearances are sure to be following Two Sun’s release come April. Yet when Kate Bush chimerical harmonies meet off-kilter broken pianos and static-driven synths the odd PJ Harvey reference can be dusted off like bats from an uninhabited mansion on a moonlit hill. Opener Glass paints an audio landscape of late nights and early mornings in misty, deserted forests as powerful as any Monet whilst single Daniel subtly rocks, ebbs and flows into the amalgamation of impeccable harmony, where 90s Casio tones whirr off the back of haughty string sections.

As if Khan’s work weren’t audacious enough to prick the hairs on the back of the coldest of necks, the tenacity of drafting in a gospel choir on Peace of Mind opens the gate to a field inhabited solely by a certain Jason Pierce. The icing on the cake? Closer The Big Sleep, a track that betters even the most subdued, touching moments of Fur and Gold, as Khan seems to have conjured a duet (featuring the endlessly prolific and wondrously offbeat Scott Walker) worthy equally of airtime on Classic FM as Radio 1, where breathtaking composition meets astounding execution.

Bat for Lashes defies conventionality and perhaps rationality yet the result is a record devoid of time and space and where Khan flies occasionally terrifyingly close to the sun, Two Suns is as compelling a release as you’ll find from these shores in 2009...www.virgin.com