Bat For Lashes on ‘The Dream Of Delphi’: “A cosmic, raw, maternal look at love”
Bat For Lashes has spoken to NME about how her upcoming sixth album ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ poses a “cosmic, raw, maternal look at love”.
Previous Ivor and Mercury Prize nominee Natasha Khan – AKA Bat For Lashes – was in attendance at the Ivor Novellos on Thursday (May 23) to present the award for Best Film Score which was won by Jerskin Fendrix for Poor Things.
“I love film,” she told NME on the red carpet. “I’ve made short films, I’ve got a film coming out next week, I’ve won an Ivor Novello for a BBC drama series soundtrack. As well as songwriting, it’s my other love: film, visuals, and sound.”
Said new film on the horizon is to accompany Khan’s new album ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ – which is released on Friday (May 31). Explaining the inspiration of the record, she said: “It’s dedicated to my daughter, Delphi – who was born in 2020 in the middle of lockdown. It’s sort of a cosmic, raw, maternal look at love.”
She continued: “It’s quite different stylistically to my other albums because it was mostly fully improvised. There’s a lot of arpeggios, harps, and strings. I just sat down and wrote songs in a day. I added basslines, beats, vocoders – then ran home to breastfeed! It’s definitely a potent, heightened, emotional record. There’s also a lot of space and soundtrack-esque, filmic music on there as well.”
Speaking of her upcoming live dates, Khan promised “some contemporary dance and performance art aspects”.
“I’ve been exploring movement with this album quite a lot,” she said. “It’s movement that incorporates domestic, mundane tasks into a kind of cosmic reverence and praise for life.
“The stage show definitely has some theatrical elements, but then I’m also playing with Charlotte Hatherley who was in Ash, and Laura Groves again – so the three women get to rock out again on stage, so I’m really happy about that.”
Khan also took to the time share her “Bruce Springsteen appreciation noise”, in honour of The Boss who was receiving the biggest award of the night.
“I have a crush on him from the ‘70s – I don’t know if it will be the same sort of erotically-charged sound,” she joked. “But I’m a huge fan of his music – he’s a legend.”
Check out the full list of winners from the Ivor Novellos 2024 here. Other highlights of the night included Bruce Springsteen winning the Ivor Fellowship Award (with a roasting from Sir Paul McCartney) and Lana Del Rey picking up the Special International Award.
This comes after Khan released bittersweet new single ‘At Your Feet’.
“I improvised this song, all the piano and vocoder parts, from start to finish”, said Khan. “The words are all about the hallucinatory state of being sleep deprived in the night, breastfeeding, rocking the baby: so tired, so aware that I almost have no say in this devotional nocturnal practice of caring for my child.”
Bat For Lashes released ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ on May 31. Her upcoming 2024 UK tour dates are below, with tickets available here.
Bat For Lashes’ 2024 UK tour dates are:
JUNE
12 – O2 Academy 2, Oxford
18 – Town Hall, Birmingham
19 – Beacon, Bristol
24 – Barbican, London
25 – De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill On Sea
27 – Aviva Studios, Manchester
Bat For Lashes last released an album in the form of 2019’s ‘Lost Girls’.
In a four-star review, NME called the project her “most consistent work to date”, adding that Khan was “still dramatic, seductive and theatrical, but fully cut loose. This is Khan’s own heroic moment.”
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Andrew Trendell
NME
