In the immediate aftermath of her daughter’s birth, Natasha Khan experienced a profound disconnection from reality. “When you’ve had a kid, you’re almost in a world between two worlds. It was very open and very pure,” says the British singer-songwriter, who records as Bat for Lashes.
“I was like an animal being, living on instinct. And then going into the studio, I was needing to make sense of everything that was happening and documenting it somehow.” These experiences were the basis for Bat for Lashes’s meditative and otherworldly sixth album, The Dream of Delphi.
Khan has named the LP after her daughter, who serves as her muse across a moving collection of beautifully melodramatic ballads and pensive instrumentals. But in addition to delivering a vivid portrait of parenthood, the project is an intriguing chapter for Khan, who has been compared to Björk and Kate Bush , and prompted the NME to compare her music to fairy tales “soundtracked by skin-prickling electro”. There are plenty of skin-prickling moments on The Dream of Delphi, which explores the entire emotional spectrum of new parenthood, from elation to exhaustion.
It starts with the upheaval of childbirth, which she evokes on the stark piano composition The Midwives Have Left. “I had her at home with no drugs at all. I threw myself in 200 per cent,” says Khan, whose collaborators have included Beck and Damon Albarn .
“I’m going to go for this and feel it all and grab it. I went into it w.