Re: Download Bat For Lashes The Haunted Man Zip
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Natasha Khan has said her third album as Bat for Lashes is partly inspired by studying her own family history. This is informative. Her father, a trainer for the Pakistani national squash team, left suddenly when she was 11, and his departure casts a shadow on the fairytale drama of Bat for Lashes' debut, 2006's Fur and Gold. Yeah, but one of the guys Khan's dad coached? Her cousin, Jahangir Khan? He went on to become a six-time world champion and basically his sport's equivalent of a Pel or Michael Jordan. You don't need Natasha's Ancestry.com password to know there's competitive drive in her blood.
That's her up there in The Haunted Man cover art. Naked, un-retouched, and un-made-up, with a similarly naked man draped around her shoulders. The suggestion is that her follow-up to 2009's lavishly sensual Two Suns is more intimate and stripped bare, and sure enough, there's less reverb on Khan's voice, and the lyrical concerns have moved from an otherworldly New York to the English countryside. But what the Ryan McGinley-shot art most closely shares with the music you'll find within is that it's at once striking and enigmatic-- and artfully constructed.
Some albums sound effortless. The Haunted Man sounds like effort magnificently realized. The rawness of feeling is achieved through equally raw ambition. Bat for Lashes' sophisticated blend of art-rock grandeur and synth-pop directness again carries echoes of 1980s luminaries like Kate Bush and the Cure, gleaming with autoharp, Abbey Road-recorded strings, and a continuing exploration of electronics. Spacious, boldly orchestrated, and emotionally rich, Khan's latest is another step forward for the multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, and one of the year's most beguiling albums.
Two Suns' sublime, Karate Kid-nodding "Daniel" won Britain's Ivor Novello songwriting award. The potential hits here are just as overpowering. "Let's Get Lost", the sumptuous slab of goth-bubblegum Khan did with Beck for 2011's Twilight: Eclipse OST, was a promising sign of what to expect. On slinky, guitar-centric "All Your Gold", Khan is the one who's haunted, but it only takes a few listens before Gotye's awfully similar smash sounds fleshless in comparison. "Marilyn" adapts the 1950s matinee-idolatry of Lana Del Rey to a dream-pop production worthy of its "silver screen," with a staggering, spectral bridge-- and several instrumental contributions from Beck (plus arranging by ex-Ash member Charlotte Hatherley).
Though sometimes over-reaching, the less likely singles here are as darkly enigmatic, sonically curious, and thematically textured as their equivalents on Two Suns. The centerpiece is the title track, with its "Scarborough Fair"-tinged male choir marching up that distant hill. "Yes, your ghosts have got me, too/ But it's me and you," Khan replies, summing up the album's main conceit: the way previous experiences can twist our current relationships. On M83-gauzy, Dave Sitek-assisted opener "Lilies", though, "the figure of a man" answers a life-affirming, womanly prayer. Druid-like male voices on "Oh Yeah" introduce the poised yet passionate exultation of a narrator "in bloom." As on the album cover, Khan's music can acknowledge the female body without reducing it to sex-kitten clich.
In fact, if the last album was about contrasts-- between two suns, two lovers, even two sides of the narrator's persona-- then The Haunted Man is defined by balance, between the bare and the polished, between the communal and the personal, and between the respective ghosts haunting our personal interactions. Compromises can lead to breakthroughs: "Where you see a wall, I see a door," Khan sings on "A Wall", another Sitek-backed, baroque synth-pop anthem. By the restrained yet intricate closing lullaby "Deep Sea Diver", which meets the bar set by Two Suns' collaborative finale with famously reclusive crooner Scott Walker, Khan finds a compromise for two people separated by masks: "Darling if you can't see out/ You know that I can hear you shout." They're together, alone, shaking through.
The most overtly naked track here, "Laura", is also the most transcendent. With a gently orchestra-kissed piano-and-voice arrangement, this goosebump-inducing collaboration with the former Lizzy Grant's "Video Games" co-writer Justin Parker is the clearest example of how Bat for Lashes perches on the fulcrum between indie-associated sincerity and pop-oriented savvy. We'll never know Laura, really, but we can feel what it might be like to know her. On an album with more names in the credits than Khan could ever use for song titles (also including Portishead's Adrian Utley, among many others), the greatest testament to her strength of will might be just this: She has added a new unforgettable character to pop's family tree.
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The Haunted Man is the third studio album by English singer and songwriter Natasha Khan, known professionally as Bat for Lashes. It was released on 12 October 2012 by Parlophone. The album was preceded by the lead single "Laura", which was released on 24 July 2012.
Khan stated in July 2012 that, after she returned home in March 2010 from touring in support of Two Suns (2009), she tried to rehabilitate herself to rebuild a sense of who she was without the music.[5] In May 2010, Khan stated that although she had enough songs to put out as an album, she wanted to take more time working on new material, as she had been on tour for a long time, and found it boring to write songs about being on tour.[6] She experienced a "profound writer's block", which led her to call Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, to ask, "What do you do when you feel like you're going to die because you can't write anything?"[5] He advised her to draw, and subsequently Khan took life-drawing classes and a children's illustration course. Combined with intensive dance classes to boost her confidence, Khan began to feel inspiration enough to begin writing again, penning the album's opening song, "Lilies", which she said was inspired by a scene in the 1970 film Ryan's Daughter.[5]
The album's artwork was photographed by American photographer Ryan McGinley,[7] and features a naked Khan carrying an equally naked man on her back.[8] Khan told NME: "I really wanted to strip things back in honour of women like Patti Smith; just these raw, honest women. I had no make-up on, it's just me and my haunted man!"[7]
"Laura" was released as the album's lead single on 24 July 2012.[9] The song reached number 144 on the UK Singles Chart.[10] "All Your Gold" was released as the second single from the album on 19 September 2012,[11] and was sent to US triple-A radio stations on 22 October.[12] "A Wall" was released as the album's third and final single on 18 February 2013.[13]
The Haunted Man received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78, based on 36 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[15] Pitchfork's Marc Hogan named The Haunted Man "one of the year's most beguiling albums", writing that it "sounds like effort magnificently realized. The rawness of feeling is achieved through equally raw ambition."[22] Ben Hewitt of NME commented that "while The Haunted Man deals in less trinkets than its predecessor, it's not scant in splendour. Instead, for large swathes, it's like being plunged into a fairytale soundtracked by skin-prickling electro and populated by downtrodden sods hunting for breadcrumbs of comfort."[21] Rolling Stone's Will Hermes praised the album as Khan's "sexiest, spookiest LP", stating that "the visions here seem all her own. And they're pretty awesome."[24] Spin's Julianne Escobedo Shepherd felt that it was "strongest in its simplest moments".[25] The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis wrote that The Haunted Man "sounds like a bold, confident album that strips away a lot of the sonic embellishments from Khan's sound", adding that "[p]erhaps it's the sound of someone who's worked out that less can sometimes be more, that not trying too hard isn't the same as not trying."[19] Q noted a sense of clarity on the album "that comes from the sense of physical boundaries being pushed, of personal space being tested to its limits".[23]
The Haunted Man debuted at number six on the UK Albums Chart, selling 13,334 copies in its first week.[43] The following week, it fell to number 36 with 3,991 copies sold.[44] The album entered the Billboard 200 at number 64, becoming Khan's highest-charting album so far in the United States.[45]
In May 2011, Khan said she had "the new album sketchbook under way."[6] After performing two nights at the Sydney Opera House in June, where she debuted live an early version of "Oh Yeah", she made a blog post on Bat For Lashes' website saying she would head back to the studio to further work on the new album.[7]
Billed as an "English record",[8] the album was inspired by Natasha's English ancestry and how war affected her family's relationships, and being haunted by "the memory of someone, or a lover, or things that I find heavy, like a burden."[9] It also has a nautical theme because it was written by the sea in Brighton.[9]
Natasha worked on the album for 18 months,[11] and initially had around 50 songs,[12][13] but later cut down to 11 tracks, plus three for B-sides and extras.[14] She noted that she paid for the recording sessions herself because her label didn't see any singles in the demos she played them early on.[1][4] The album was recorded around England and Italy, where she recorded the male choir for the title track.[15] Strings and horns were recorded at Abbey Road, London and arranged by Natasha herself.[3]
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