Caroline Weeks AKA Ginger Lee of Bat For Lashes/Joanne Robertson/Laish/Conrad Vingoe
Date: Friday 21st November
Venue Address: Redroaster Coffee House, 1d St James's Street, Brighton, BN2 1RE
Phone number : (01273) 686668
Tickets ￡5 adv / ￡6 on the door Available from Rounder Records 01273 325440/ Resident 01273 606312. You can also purchase tickets from Redroaster and you won't have to pay a booking fee! 01273 686668.
Doors : 8pm
Curfew: 11.00pm

Caroline Weeks
Caroline Weeks AKA Ginger Lee of Mercury Nominated band Bat For Lashes plays solo, performing her enchantingly minimal and off-kilter folk including songs from Caroline's debut Ep "Five Songs" (Minimal Vinyl Records). In 2008 Caroline covered 'The Drowning Man' for a tribute album to the Cure which includes covers by Kaki King, The Dandy Warhols, XU XU Fang and Bat For Lashes.

http://www.myspace.com/carolineweeks

Joanne Robertson
After a stint as a member of noise band, I Love Lucy, which boasted fans such as Franz Ferdinand, Joanne formed the art collective Blood ‘n Feathers with Lucy Stein which met with critical acclaim including the prestigious Becks Futures show 2006. Now solo and part member of MEMEME, Joanne's debut album "The Lighter" (Textile Records) has been described as "a collection of intimate interior portraits, reminiscent in spots of Sybille Baier, Barbara Manning, even Hope Sandoval, but all performed with an addictive off-kilter grace that suspends time in a very special way." Byron Coley .

http://www.myspace.com/jorobertsonblood39n39feathers

Laish
Laish's (Daniel Green) music has been described as a journey into lo-fi experimentalism with an eerie folk angle. Daniel's music is tinged with melancholy and simplistic yet, effectively beautiful guitar arrangements,  drawing comparisons with British folk star Adem.

http://www.myspace.com/laishmusic

Conrad Vingoe
Influenced by classic singer songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake and more recent Americana and folk scene contemporaries like Iron & Wine and Josh Rouse, Conrad’s compositions are fresh and intelligent, with a timeless relevance.
“Vingoe's super-power lies in his voice, which is glorious”
The Stool Pigeon

http://www.myspace.com/conradvingoe

Confirmed Artists Include:
Caroline Weeks AKA Ginger Lee from Bat for Lashes
Joanne Robertson (Textile Records)
Laish (Toy Soldier Records/Willkommen Records)
Conrad Vingoe (Crazy Beard Records)

For more info check out: http://www.myspace.com/typemusicpr

Future Shorts, the film label behind Rock'n' Roll Cinema and Secret Cinema , as well as global distributor of short films, has released its first DVD, a bit of a greatest hits called Adventures in Short Film - Volume 1. They chose well for their inaugural compilation.

As with a short story, short films can do great things with a hint of strangeness. It works for Henry James in The Turn of the Screw and John Wyndham in Consider Her Ways (please do click on the links and read them when you can, especially the second one), and it works for a number of shorts on this DVD.

Short films don't necessarily need to have an iron-clad story arc or a decisive conclusion, but must create an atmosphere that, briefly, transports you to another world.

[Original over on Netribution, or you can read it here after the jump...]

The standout film in this collection, which achieves just that atmosphere, is La Vie d'Un Chien, an affectionate parody of Chris Marker 's 1962 short, La jetée. The latter is the sort of film you [ought to] tell people you've seen even when you haven't, it's such an unusual, beautiful and seminal work (for one thing, it was the inspiration for Twelve Monkeys ). Never fear, though, all 20-something minutes of it can be found on YouTube: right here.

Chien uses the same methods of black and white still photography, silent characters and sombre voiceover that La jetée does, but there is a greater disjunction between form and content here. Whereas La jetée gives us a tragic, time-travelling tale set before and after the devastating Third World War, Chien takes a lonely scientist's love for his dog Sylvie to absurd extremes. Happily, in this version, our somewhat strange protagonist gets away with it.

Some of the weaker shorts on the disc show that celeb involvement is no barrier to missing your target. I Just Want to Kiss You, starring Martin Freeman, and La Barbichette, with Vincent Cassel on his usual scary form, fail to engage, and probably made it in based on star quality. Freeman and Cassel don't do bad jobs in these two shorts, but they're given precious little work with, unfortunately.

The two British music videos included on the DVD are complete contrasts. Dougal Wilson's video for Bat For Lashes' What's a Girl to Do, captures perfectly the spookiness of the song's beat, which is at odds with the fragility of Natasha Khan's voice and the sad lyrics. She was fairly new on the scene when this video was made last year, and it does a good job of introducing her to the listening public, with her singing directly at us. The riders in animal costumes, hopping about on their bikes in time to the music, add just the right note of comedy. It's all a bit eerie, like most of the Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Fur and Gold .

The Faithless video for I Want More , on the other hand, is made on an epic scale, showcasing some incredible choreography, involving huge groups of people. Director Dan Gordon's task here was more one of editing than shooting, as the footage comes from his 2004 documentary, A State of Mind. The film follows young gymnasts training for the 2003 Pyongyang mass games, which emphasise "group dynamics rather than individual prowess." It is impossible not to take the film as an indictment of the involvement of children in events of political proganda. Who knew a mere music video could say so much?

The sheer amount of animation in this collection shows that budding filmmakers are happy to take on greater challenges and work on something a little different. Six of the 16 films involve animation in some way, with Procrastination showing the artist's pencil at work, Park Football imbuing pixels with character in less than three minutes, and Jojo in the Stars playing out a tragic tale with what look like cute robot bunnies.

The most complex use of animation, though, is undoubtedly in the Swedish Never like the first time!, the winner of the 2006 Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale. Using a mixture of action and animation, director Jonas Odell lets four brave people talk us through their first sexual experiences,with their words illustrated onscreen by cartoon figures. Each segment uses very different animation, with the best seen in the fourth part, where an elderly man recalls losing his virginity in 1927 Stockholm. He and the lady in question are drawn like old newspaper cartoons in 20's fashions, and, in a lovely touch, their clothes are shown as newspaper cut-outs drifting to the floor.

Is it telling or just a shame that the stories of the two men are triumphant, and focus much more on their happiness afterwards, whereas the stories of the two women end in disappointment and even - horribly - fear and violence? Nevertheless, Odell's film extracts some very candid story-telling from the narrators, well-matched with the various animation styles, to give us an insight into things people don't talk about openly.

This motley selection of shorts should keep you entertained for a fair while. The DVD is on sale from 22nd September.

For more information, please see the Future Shorts site.

To contact the author: suchandrika@netribution.co.uk

Original over on Netribution.

Ah, La Jetée. Here's the one sentence you need to know about its maker:

Chris Marker lives in Paris and does not grant interviews. When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers a photograph of a cat instead. His cat is named Guillaume-en-egypte.

How divine!

Just been watching La Vie d'un Chien on the Adventures in Short Film DVD from Future Shorts (out yesterday, guys!) Had to watch La Jetée again. Chien is an affectionate homage; a piss-take, in a way, but a nice one.

The DVD also features the Bat For Lashes video, What's a Girl to Do. Love this song.

$193 in prepaid credit expires in a week, and i could tell you so, so many stories with that amount of credit, and it will never grow old; we will never grow old- for as long as the night is in the colour of the sky and there is nothing to break the lingering of your whispers in my ear we are free. This is my truth and the truth won't save me now, i know.

What truth is there in the story, morning glory? I wish i could find meaning, remnants of a deeper purity in the blissful oblivion of our giggly lives. There has to be something more than the scribbles over lecture notes in that cool new erasable pen or trying hard not to make it obvious that we are talking about Fringe Guy even though he is only 3 classes down and starts to fix his Fringe the moment we start discussing it-

There is an old sex in this place, and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh.

I've been everybody's girl, I wonder when it's time for me to start being my own.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.

I had been dressed in a coat of armor.
they called a horse out of the woodland.
take her there, through the desert shores

O Bat for Lashes é uma das bandas que eu mais escuto ultimamente. Nunca sei definir com precisão o som feito por Natasha Khan. No myspace (confiram a ótima A Forest) da banda, ela diz que a sonoridade do Bat For Lashes é parecida com halloween when you're small, dreaming by the sea, pine trees, UFO's, children's choirs, broken heart, harpsichords, big marching band drum, electric guitars, strings, autoharp, dark nightime lovemaking... Resumindo: algo incomum. Essa definição é coerente em relação ao som do primeiro álbum de estúdio da banda, Fur and Gould.

Fur and Gold traz composições lindas, marcadas por letras melancólicas - And when he asked me: do you still love me?'/I had to look away - e instrumentos inusitados, que constroem uma sonoridade misteriosa, mágica. O melhor, entretanto, é que essa mistura de instrumentos e a voz marcante de Natasha Khan são ainda mais impactantes ao vivo.  As melhores do álbum, Horse and I, What's a Girl to Do, Trophy e Prescilla, são perfeitas para ouvir em um ambiente intimista,  entre um sorriso, várias idéias e alguns cigarros.

1. Adele

Born: London, England
Influences: Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Aretha Franklin
Albums: 19
Notable Songs: My Same, Right as Rain, Hometown Glory, Chasing Pavements

2. Duffy

Born: Gwynedd, Wales
Influences: Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield
Albums: Rockferry
Notable Songs: Mercy, Warwick Avenue, I'm Scared

3. Corinne Bailey Rae

Born: Leeds, England
Influences: Norah Jones, Billie Holiday, India Arie, Ella Fitzgerald
Albums: Corinne Bailey Rae
Notable Songs: Put Your Records on, Choux Pastry Heart, Like a Star, Trouble Sleeping

4. Joss Stone

Born: Kent England
Influences: Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, Angie Stone, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys
Albums: Mind, Body & Soul, The Soul Sessions, Introducing Joss Stone
Notable Songs: Tell Me What We're Donna Do Now, Don't Cha Wanna Ride,
Super Duper Love (Are You Diggin' On Me)

5. Lily Allen

Born: London, England
Influences: Blondie, Shaggy, Prince
Albums: Alright, Still
Notable Songs: Smile, Everythings Just Wonderful, LDN

6. Kate Nash

Born: London, England
Influences: Regina Spektor, Carole King
Albums: Made of Bricks
Notable Songs: Foundations, Merry Happy, Mouthwash

7. Bat for Lashes (aka Natasha Khan)

Born: Brighton, England
Influences: Janis Joplin, Bjork, Steve Reich, Susan Hiller
Albums: Fur and Gold
Notable Songs: What's a Girl To Do, Prescilla, I'm on Fire, The Wizard

8. Estelle

Born: West London, England
Influences: Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Santogold
Notable Songs: American Boy, You Are, Shine, 1980, Freedom
Albums: The 18th day, Shine

Perhaps it’s because I’m getting major thigh envy by watching the Japan - Venezuela volleyball game during d’Olympics, but I’m getting a strange hankering to get my flabby derriere back to the gym. I’m also partly spurred on by Fatmammycat’s ‘motivational’ workout posts (she says she was in Belgium recently, but I’d sooner bet she went to Beijing...she’s in that gym like a fucking mad yoke!).

Like the wee Duracell bunny chubster that I am, I need some decent tunes to help me ‘break through the wall’ (that’s fitness speak, as far as I can tell. Ask a friend). All bets are off if I can’t bop along to a beat or two, and I get seriously irritated by my gym’s euro-disco-Lionel-Richie-ballad-madeover-with-a-techno-beat bollocks. So here is the latest workout rocking my iPod and (hopefully) shrinking my thighs...

Bat For Lashes – ‘Prescilla’

Not exactly a gym-centric stomper of a track, but channelling one’s inner Natasha Khan while doing weights is never a bad thing. The testosterone in my weights area would lift the feckin’ eyebrows clean off you, so I need some gentle female company while I’m in there.

Battles – ‘Atlas’

Seven and a half minutes of strangely hypnotic music with a fairly good tempo; get stuck into this and hey presto, half your time on the treadmill is taken care of. Thankyee, Battles.

Do Me Bad Things – 'Time For Deliverance'

How this now-tragically-defunct English band didn’t become bigger than God, I shall never know. Pitched somewhere between Beyonce and AC/DC, this upbeat track is perfect for when you feel the need to pedal like fuck on the stationary bike. Or, if you’re a gym-phone, dance around to it at home; you’ll lose about 126,375 calories before you even get to the chorus. Yes, it’s that good.

Futureheads – ‘The Beginning Of The Twist’

Another high energy maniac of a song, and ideal for the elliptical trainer (if it’s on a criminally low resistance). Just don’t make the mistake I did of mouthing the chorus under your breath; the sight of a sweaty bird grunting ‘I can feel it/I can feel iiiit’ does no favours for anyone.

The Go! Team – ‘Bottle Rocket’

I’d gotten tired of working out to ‘The Power Is On’, so switched to the similarly kinetic track above. I adore its retro trumpet bit, and it’s just to darned uplifting. On the iPod for feelgood factor alone.

Kylie Minogue – ‘Come Into My World’

Frankly, this ‘pop pixie’ (arf) melts the jaw off me. Quelle headwreque. Still, I do like this disco/pop number, and not just because the heroic genius that is Michel Gondry directed the video.

Rocket From The Crypt – ‘On A Rope’

I should have a strained relationship with this song – for my 18^th birthday I went to see them in the Mean Fiddler (now the Village) and proceeded to puke mightily all over my object of desire. Anyway, the song, still brilliant after all these years, is under three minutes long, so you can bump up the resistance on the bike and go like the proverbial clappers. Bye bye, saddlebags.

Sonic Youth – 'Chapel Hill'

I always like to have a slice of Sonic Youth in the gym; ‘Drunken Butterfly’ was a workout playlist staple for a long time. It’s an angry track though, so I’m pretty sure that I would have had, as my mother would say, a right neb on me whenever I played it in the gym. Once those beefy guitars kick in, you really do end up putting your back into whatever you’re doing.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Tick’

A few weeks ago, when my romantique life was in something of a jocker (of which, more later) I was playing this song non-stop; it just seemed to match the mad, frantic, helpless mood I was in. Anyway, it’s also a great track for a short sharp burst on the elliptical. One day though, I was going so crazy on the machine that the whole thing started to edge near the wall. No mean feat, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Girls Aloud – ‘Something Kinda Ooh’

Arguably the only decent song that shower of perma-tanned knackbags ever put out. But seriously, this track is an inspired slice of sexy pop/disco. Another great one for the weights room, as I find myself inadvertently pouting like Nadine Coyle while lifting the paltriest of dumbells. Go me.

 Because I’m the type who gets bored too easily, I estimate that I will probably get bored of this playlist by Tuesday (that’s factoring in one visit, but probably no more than two if I’m being honest). So if you have any workout tunes that you swear by, I am - as always - open to suggestion...

download
-sadatay.

Dear friends,

Day three begins... even though everything seems to be veeeeeery slow in Paris in August... Last night... well... actually very early this morning, we made a first shot for the video... on the balcony... eighth floor. The sunrise was beautifull. I will post some pictures soon.

Love,

Ivan

- It annoys me that I have missed the Newport Folk Festival four years in a row. I'm going next year, damnit! Stereogum has pictures.

- Best iPhone app: I am rich. It costs $999.99, and doesn't do anything but display a glowing red ruby. Genius.

- Today's horrifyingly stupid product: Eyelid jewelery! Yes folks, now you too can dangle miscellaneous things from your contact lenses.

- Hey hipsters: How about this for vintage? A pair of Levi's from the 1890s.

- Skip business school and earn the "personal MBA" by reading the books on Josh Kaufman's 77 best list. Sweet. Seems I'm already on that track. Oh wait, Pitchfork's News and Iris Murdoch aren't on Kaufman's list?

- Horrifying chart showing how much Americans have changed the daily diet since 1970. [NYT via kottke]

- Cool music video from Bat for Lashes [thanks, mikefro]

- Perfect performance of Blue Ridge Mountains by Fleet Foxes, if you can stand Letterman's terrible introduction:

Blurb from Pitchfork and they have a free download of the Cures 'The Forest'...

You hear the phrase "Bat for Lashes covering the Cure's 'The Forest'" and you think to yourself, "Yeah, that could be good." As heard on the upcoming Perfect as Cats: A Tribute to the Cure, the combination is indeed organic, as Natasha Khan sounds right at home inside the spooky confines of the dark new wave tune. She swaps out some of the pulsing guitar of the original for the clanging sound of an autoharp, which works terrifically, and though the tempo is slightly slower, she keeps the insistent propulsion of the track's rhythm.

MP3:> Bat for Lashes: "A Forest"
[from Perfect as Cats: A Tribute to the Cure; due 10/28/08 on Manimal Vinyl]

Just a pic from her MySpace of her in the Joshua Tree desert...not quite a forest to tie in with the cover but a damn fine pic all the same!

Bat For Lashes - A Forest (The Cure cover)

[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/2/1941055/Bat%20for%20Lashes%20-%20A%20Forest.mp3]

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/themummers

Naj Peterson is a contributor for Ottawa Street Style.

A friend sent me this music video last week, and after countless viewings on You Tube, I have yet to tire from its haunting beauty and tapestry of sounds. The video for ‘Whats a girl to do?’ by British-born vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Natasha Khan, more famously known as Bats for Lashes, is brazenly stylish and utterly captivating.  Director Dougal Wilson perfectly captures the song’s sinister and entrancing nature, as eerie mascot-headed bmxers pop, wheelie and clap hands in sync with the electronic beats and ghostly strings of this dark fairy tale.

mystery jets - two doors down

the kooks - down to the market

be your own pet - becky

bat for lashes - perscilla

a nice sunday playlist

- Ani's new album makes 20
- China still mad at Björk
- Karen O unveils new side project
- Bebo soap opera to star Amy Winehouse and Girls Aloud?
- new album from Land Of Talk in October
- another tribute to The Cure on the way 

* * *

If your life is in need of a righteous shot in the arm, perk up, Ani's back! And she's gone all funky again! The wee workaholic releases her latest album – her 20th since 1990 – Red Letter Year on September 29th with the promise of much exuberance and cheer. After opening with a double helping of political rallying to get her into her stride, DiFranco inevitably has more personal matters to attend to with songs like 'Present/Infant' and 'Landing Gear' referring to her young daughter. 'Way Tight', a staple of recent live shows, also makes an appearance, as do horns, synths, piano and strings (possibly not all on the same song). Ani comes to Europe at the end of October.

Red Letter Year
01 Red Letter Year
02 Alla This
03 Present/Infant
04 Smiling Underneath
05 Way Tight
06 Emancipated Minor
07 Good Luck
08 The Atom
09 Round A Pole
10 Landing Gear
11 Star Matter
12 Red Letter Year (reprise) 

* * *

Making the Dixie Chicks backlash look like a playground spat, the Björk vs. The People's Republic of China uproar that happened in March has taken a dramatic twist with the Chinese Ministry of Culture imposing tough new restrictions on foreign performers. Reuters report that a statement on the Ministry's website effectively warns that any outburst that threatens China's sovereignty will result in the culprit being slapped with an outright ban from performing in the country. Firmer still, anyone known to have engaged in such activities in the past is unlikely to be allowed to cross Chinese borders. Even people who are allowed to perform will need approval for everything they do – even encores must be predetermined.

The Chinese government had threatened these drastic steps to silence would-be political protesters in the immediate aftermath of Björk's concert in Shanghai where her brief chant of "Tibet! Tibet!" at the end of 'Declare Independence' was said to have "broken Chinese law and hurt Chinese people's feelings". She refused to apologise, saying that the song was "about humanity". 

A passing monk had this to say: "om mani padme hum".

* * *

From one Far Eastern country to another, Karen O has announced she is to unveil her new side project, Native Korean Rock & The Fishnets, at two intimate performances in Brooklyn on Monday. Writing on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs website, Karen describes the project as "a body of love songs written over the last two years" and is quick to dispel any doubt that this is something quite separate from both the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the so-called K.O. At Home solo demos leaked to file sharers in 2006. Hark at five of K.O.'s new songs over on Myspace. While you're there, get wiggy with the babytoupee.com link (or just click here for literally minutes of fun).

* * *

Amy Winehouse and Girls Aloud are rumoured to be among a host of big name acts set to appear in a brand new online soap opera, 'The Secret World Of Sam King', that will air on social networking site Bebo. Apparently Bebo members will get to influence the plot, which has the central premise of a teenager (Sam King) secretly setting up his own record label he runs from a stationery cupboard at the offices of Universal Records. Other Universal artists set to make a cameo appearance include Razorlight and Bloc Party. As if that's not enough of a disincentive, you'll have to sign up to Bebo to watch it too.

* * *

Having spent what seems like forever on the road touring behind their critically acclaimed debut Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss, One Little Indian signings Land Of Talk will release their second album proper on October 6th. Recorded in Montreal with man-of-the-moment Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Some Are Lakes plugs back in after last year's acoustic detour with Lizzie Powell's "raspy coo and vocal conviction" jostling with "roaring guitars" to bring you "a warm, bracing and assured second album". The album will be preceded by a single of the same name.

Some Are Lakes
01 Yuppy Flu
02 Death By Fire
03 The Man Who Breaks Things (Dark Shuffle)
04 Some Are Lakes
05 Give Me Back My Heart Attack
06 It's Okay
07 Young Bridge
08 Corner Phone
09 Got A Call
10 Troubled

* * *

A second mostly-star tribute to The Cure is being compiled by American Laundromat Records, the company who brought us the amazing High School Reunion tribute to 1980s teen flicks and the all-female Neil Young tribute Cinnamon Girl, due for release early next year. Participants look set to include Tanya Donelly, Dévics, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, The Brunettes, The Rosebuds, The Submarines, Elizabeth Harper and Joy Zipper among many others. Donelly's doing 'Love Cats'! Amazing. The full current tracklist for Just Like Heaven: A Tribute To The Cure is up on the project's Myspace page.

The equally amazing sounding Perfect As Cats tribute, featuring Bat For Lashes, Mariee Sioux, Sarabeth Tucek, Kaki King, Rio En Medio, Tara Busch and Caroline Weeks (among many many others), is released through Manimal Vinyl at the end of October. All profits will go to Invisible Children, a charity that raises awareness about child soldiers in Uganda. More info here.

Speaking of Rio En Medio, aka Danielle Stech-Homsy, her second album Frontier is released through Manimal Vinyl in September. A seven-song EP by Caroline Weeks (a member of the Bat For Lashes live band) called Songs For Edna is also forthcoming from the label.

* * *

Alan Pedder

i would have studied them with you. heard their beautiful color and touched their movements.

"Prescilla" - Bat for Lashes 

"Can't Go Back Now" - The Weepies

"Helicopter" - Bloc Party

"Erase/Rewind" - The Cardigans

"Frank and Ava" - Suzanne Vega

AND VIDEO: "Counting Down the Hours" - Ted Leo/Pharmacists (live in Paris)

Wij waren er in ieder geval bij en het was mooi om te zien hoe de band uit Oxford met z'n vijven glimlachend opkwam en er een magische show van maakte.

De omstandigheden en locatie waren dan ook perfect; het groene en on-Nederlandse Westerpark werd getrakteerd op een prachtige zonsondergang tijdens diverse nummers van hun laatste album In Rainbows. Klassiekers als Lucky (I'm on a role, I'm on the dole …), Street Spirit en How To Disappear Completely kwamen voorbij naast tal van nummers die je tijdens zo'n concert 'ontdekt' (o.a. Reckoner).

Radiohead was ontspannen, grappig en goed bij stem. De (energiezuinige) lichtshow en videoschermen waren een geweldige aanvulling op de muziek.

Wat jammer dat een enkele bezoeker te druk was met ouwehoeren tegen zijn vriendin of constant aan het bellen/sms'en was. Jammer voor die bezoeker want de actie was op het podium en die jongen realiseert zich niet wat hij eigenlijk gemist heeft … met je vriendin kun je in de trein naar huis verder praten.

Het eindoordeel volgt waarschijnlijk over een aantal jaren maar voorlopig geven wij 4½ plussen. En dat ligt eigenlijk alleen aan de prijs van het kaartje (bijna 60 euro) en de drankjes (met dank aan Mojo).

(Afbeelding: spookaap @ www.flickr.com)

words in edgeways with natasha khan

If you haven't heard of Bat For Lashes by now then where on earth have you been? What the dickens have you been doing? Not reading Wears The Trousers, obviously, because we've been championing Natasha Khan, the lady behind the mysterious moniker ("it's kind of onomatopoeic in that it sounds like the music but doesn't really mean much"), for the last 18 months. She was one of our picks for 2006 along with fellow successes The Pipettes, The Organ (RIP), Tilly & The Wall and Joan As Police Woman, and even nabbed herself a five-star album review for her bewitching debut Fur & Gold.

2007 has been even kinder to Ms Khan. On signing to major label imprint Parlophone and completing her first UK headline tour with her all-girl band Caroline Weeks, Abi Fry and Lizzie Carey (and garnering no small amount of acclaim in the process), she was invited to take part in Vogue magazine's latest 'Women Who Rock' feature alongside Cat Power, M.I.A. and, of course, the ubiquitous Beth Ditto, cementing her position as one of our most visually arresting and interesting artists.

With an outward appearance inspired by eccentric jazz musician Sun Ra (he used to list his place of birth as Saturn), among others, and a style derived from countless influences and her fascinating formative years, Khan is exhilaratingly unique and, seemingly, in a constant state of artistic flux. Take her new single 'What's A Girl To Do', for instance; it's the third release from Fur & Gold and the second in a row to be retooled in the studio as Khan continues to blossom and develop her ideas. With tongue nestled sweetly in cheek, it's a triumphant nod to the '60s girl group genre complete with deeply thundering drums, foreboding synths and tambourines that shimmer and clatter beneath the spoken-word verses, nagging chorus and affecting coos of despair.

Professional cynics might accuse Khan of bandwagon jumping with last year's prominent revival in the girl group sound but she shrugs it off. "When I was making the album I don't think I was aware of what was going on outside, what was current. I think it was more about my mum bringing me up on Motown and the Shangri-Las and stuff like that. Especially the Shangri-Las. What got me into that was hearing Kim Gordon's version of their song 'One Little Girl'. That was her sort of tribute to the band and it made me inquisitive about them; those backing vocals, the claps, those Phil Spector-y drums and reverbs. It was more of a nostalgia thing."

Mary Weiss would surely be proud of Khan and co's carrying of the heartbreaking, under three-minute, teenage melodrama torch. Think of this sultry break up song as what might have happened if the leader of the pack hadn't died beneath the wheels of another, had got the girl, then, after a few months, bored her to tears with his overt masculinity and obsession with go-faster stripes. "My bat lightning heart wants to fly away," she sighs, and you're right there with her.

When I met up with Natasha in a Shoreditch drinking establishment we talked a little about what comes next. She's quite frank about getting the second album fear and feeling under pressure to match the success of Fur & Gold. "I want to take risks and...push the boundaries. So I might not fulfil everyone's needs to have a specific type of record but I think you just have to go with your honest desires. Basically, I will always remain true to what I want to make and I'm not going to stick to what I know."

She's a big fan of Joanna Newsom's Ys, calling it "classic" and a "masterpiece", and confesses to having a strong urge to write an album of epic songs that incorporate poetry but acknowledges that she first needs to travel a little further down the road of more conventional songwriting. Not too conventional of course. "I've always been about becoming a good songwriter first, about creating an amazing song in traditional song structure but adding something that then brings in a whole myriad of weirdness. I think songwriting and pop songs in themselves are very powerful things and you can make them creative and interesting. So I want to become that first and then maybe I would like to do film soundtracks and stuff like that. But I think the next album will still be epic, in a way."

As well as Newsom, Natasha has long professed an admiration for other proponents of the New Weird America 'movement' like CocoRosie (who gave Khan her first high-profile support slot in December 2005) and Devendra Banhart ("When I met him I felt like he was a kindred old spirit and that I'd known him for many lifetimes"). That these artists have patronaged Natasha to a certain degree and helped to raise her profile is something of an incongruous development in her career given that her music falls some distance outside of the alt-folk circles, a fact she's well aware of. "We're not in the same kind of music, no. It's just lovely to have support and family, especially when you're doing something that is a little bit on the edge or a bit different, maybe. It's good to be with like-minded people who are of the same ilk. It's a lovely family feeling."

She cites Judee Sill and Kate Bush among the more classic songwriters she admires, along with Neil Young, David Bowie and Lou Reed. As a film studies graduate, she's also heavily influenced by the sounds of cinema; The 'ET: Extra Terrestrial' soundtrack is one of her all-time favourite albums, with 'The Karate Kid' in hot pursuit. "The soundtracks are so nostalgic and evocative and heartstring-pulling, but in a quite earthy '70s/'80s way; those minor chords, the swells and suspense. All those films have dark undertones and sad and disturbing parts too, so it's always fully major. They have a twinkling mystical curiosity and it harkens back to the sense of wonderment you have as a kid, discovering worlds outside of your small microcosmic childhood world. 'Donnie Darko' and 'The Virgin Suicides' did the same kind of thing.

"I have my birthday very near Halloween so I think that fuelled my love of symbolism and surrealism. I love people like Daniel Johnston drawing funny monsters and fucked up superheroes and Chris Ware who does comic book drawings. Tim Burton, fairytales, Hans Christian Andersen; all of those things are part of folklore. It's about magic and imagination. Using monsters as symbols for the everyday, like bigger, more ferocious versions of what we, as humans, sort of fear. Cartoons do that all the time. You know Mickey Mouse has loads of surrealism.

"When I was growing up I really liked fairytales like 'The Princess & The Pea' and 'The Red Shoes', but as an adult I've gotten more into the original versions of fairytales that are more barbaric, like Angela Carter stuff with her bloody chambers. Oh, and there's a book called 'Women Who Run With The Wolves' that retells a lot of really old, archaic fairytale stories and brings in Jungian philosophies and their meanings. I love that!"

There'll be plenty of time for reading and watching films on the tour bus this summer as Bat For Lashes hits the festival circuit like never before. With a triumphant appearance at All Tomorrow's Parties already under her belt, she headlines the second day of this weekend's Homefires IV festival, topping a fantastic bill that includes Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, Andrew Bird and Basia Bulat. Later this month she'll be putting in an appearance at Glastonbury, followed by Latitude in July and Bestival in September, among others. Then there's Rock En Seine in Paris in August where none other than Björk herself personally requested Bat For Lashes as her opening act, having seen Natasha's recent live show and branding it "amazing". She is, understandably, rather chuffed by this but there's a part of her that is really looking forward to winding down this summer and "learning to be a human being again". And, of course, working on that second album. "I'm peeling back the layers," she adds as a slightly mysterious, faraway look steals across her eyes. I wonder what's inside.

Alan Pedder
originally published June 1st, 2007, as part of our Homefires IV special