Album Review: Bat for Lashes – The Bride

 

There is a somewhat otherworldly feel to Natasha Khan’s latest venture as Bat for Lashes. The Bride is an impassioned concept album detailing what should have been our eponymous storyteller’s wedding. The fairy tale setting is firmly in place on the album’s opening track “I Do,” which as the title suggests, features the narrator proclaiming her everlasting love.

 
Only our bride never marries the man of her dreams. He tragically dies in a car crash en route to the church in “Joe’s Dream,” leaving the bride devastated. In place of a blissful future, we are left with the crushing reality of heartbreak.

 
This is Khan’s forth album as Bat for Lashes, and by now, you’d better believe she knows what her strong suit is. It’s hauntingly beautiful vocals laced with eerie synth backdrops, in case you were wondering.

 
In a recent interview, Khan was quoted as saying that “marriage is the greatest journey of all.” Listening to The Bride desperately mourn the halcyon days spent with her love on “Honeymooning Alone” you’d be inclined to agree. After an introduction of screeching tyres on tarmac, she lives out her plans solo whilst staring longingly at the now vacant passenger seat.

 
“Never Forgive the Angels” is also worth mentioning as a stand-out track. It features an ethereal choir overlapping Khan’s enchanting vocals whilst she curses the heavens above for snatching away her groom.

 
“Sunday Love” offers a stark change of pace in the form of deceivingly uplifting electro rhythm. The track is reminiscent of her earlier work and initially feels lighter compared with the rest of the album. Listen carefully and you’ll realise the outlook is still unashamedly bleak. The Bride is shattered dreams and coping mechanisms, but it never promises to be anything else.

 
The most memorable track on the album is “Widow’s Peak” which is more of a spoken word poem. It works though, Khan’s voice ominous and reverberating as she describes the void that love left behind.

 
Despite all its pining, The Bride draws to an anticlimactic finish. Instead of ending in the devastating crescendo it was surely destined for, the album never quite reaches that height. Perhaps unconvincingly, she promises “I Will Love Again” and fades away quietly. Overall The Bride is consistently good with moments of brilliance but one can’t help but feel that Khan could have concluded with a little more conviction.

 

 

By Laura Somers