Bat For Lashes – Two Suns

Bat For Lashes (Natasha Khan) released her new album, Two Suns, today.  Like her first album, Fur and Gold, this one is full of haunting vocals and mystical music.  However, as an indie artist, Khan said she wanted to make a pop album this time.  Usually when I hear this from a great indie artist, I cringe.  It typically means that they want to sell out and make more money because indie albums just don’t hit the mainstream and get them fame or big sales.  But Khan didn’t just want to make a regular pop album, she wanted to save pop music.

She says, “I love all my kind of unusual and avant-garde music, but at the same time I love pop music, and I love groundbreaking and unusual pop music especially.  And I think we’re kind of lacking in that a bit.  So, on this new album, I wanted to focus on writing pop songs, because I was trying to get back to that kind of place, to the amazing pop songs I used to hear on the radio as a child.”

Two Suns does combine more aspects of pop music than her first album.  It’s a little more focused with more steady beats — not as far out there as Fur and Gold.  I still wouldn’t exactly call it a pop album, but I do think that it will appeal to a wider audience than the first, and it does bring some elements of classic pop artists (such as Kate Bush or Tori Amos) to her unique artistry, creating a sort of folk/indie/pop.

Khan’s first album was an unexpected hit for her.  She had been working as a school teacher and writing music about everything that inspired her.  “I was just living my life and observing things and I had time to reflect and develop the work, and if you don’t do that, you’re kind of cheating yourself a little bit,” she said.  She also said that most of the music from Fur and Gold actually came from her dreams.  She would dream a song and then wake up and write it.  Her new album still holds that dreamlike quality that makes her music so surreal and beautiful.

Two Suns was recorded in various locations, not just all thrown out at one recording studio like most albums.  Khan gets inspiration from her settings, and recorded in New York, California, and England.  Most of the music was written while Khan was on tour, and the title refers to the two sides of her personality that she felt came out during her time on stage and off.

The first single from Two Suns is called “Daniel,” and Khan says that it’s “the most frightening song on the record for me, because it’s the most straightforward, naive, and purposely simple song I’ve ever done.  It’s about teenage escapism and love and how simple things can be when you’re a teenager in love, or how intense and beautiful it can be.”

Click Read More to see the music video for “Daniel.”

And here’s a video of Bat For Lashes at Joshua Tree National Park with clips of some of the songs from the new album: