1) Horse and I; 2) Trophy; 3) Tahiti; 4) What's a Girl to Do?; 5) Sad Eyes; 6) The Wizard; 7) Prescilla; 8) Bat's Mouth; 9) Seal Jubilee; 10) Sarah; 11) I Saw a Light
Welcome to the mystical world of Bat for Lashes - even though it's not quite the welcome you once might've thought it to be.
Key tracks: "Horse and I", "Trophy", "What's a Girl to Do?"
Time has unexpectedly removed some of the charm of Fur and Gold. Back in 2006 this was an incredibly exciting debut release from a new artist with a particularly characteristic touch to her music, and whose debut gave us the chance to peer into the musical fairytale world she called her own. Since then we've had many more Bat for Lashes releases which have built up on that initial excitement, and which have at the same time accidentally revealed just how one-note Natasha Khan's debut actually was - and in retrospect, just how much of its magic was reliant on two songs in particular. One of them, "Horse and I", is one of the defining debut album openers of the new millennium - a thrilling journey of a song that sets out Khan's entire ethos and manifesto and then crafts a world around those in just under three minutes, built on a small number of very particular elements (with a harpsichord of all things in the lead role) but marching on like a juggernaut, making for an incredibly powerful introduction. The other, "What's a Girl to Do?", takes those same ideas and marries them to a more traditional pop song format with the result coming across like a gothic nightmare take on Motown; with Khan's alluring personality, an instantly attention-demanding set of hooks and a swooning, theatrically bombastic chorus, as well a classic music video, it easily set itself out as one of 2006's best singles and still commands attention the moment the music player queues it up.
Beyond those songs Fur and Gold just isn't as superlative as it felt originally though, which is as strange as it is a little sad. Khan has a very particular vision for her music - all widescreen, dramatic and mystical, lyrics full of wild conjurations and bat lightning hearts - and in her later albums she's weaved those ideas into a multitude of sounds and styles that she now calls her own. Fur and Gold in comparison is all gothic gloom, crawling tempo and sparse arrangement where the lack of elements is as much of an instrument as the steady simple beats, strings, the occasional bass and Khan's keyboards are. Which isn't a bad formula to build songs upon and many of the cuts here - the hypnotic "Trophy", seductively sleazy "The Wizard", the Nick Cave -esque "Sarah", the quiet "Sad Eyes" - do well with it. It simply gets very similar very soon when there's little variety involved, which is all the more apparent towards the backside of the album when Khan has started to exhaust her bag of tricks, and what initially impressed now already seems rote. "Bat's Mouth" and "Seal Jubilee" already run on fumes, and the closing "I Saw a Light" is practically exhausting with its six-and-half minute duration and ends the album with by committing the cardinal sin of being boring. Khan has laid out a solid foundation for herself but the relative lack of range gets a little monotonous, and sonical shake-ups like "What's a Girl to Do" and the surprisingly bright-eyed and airy "Prescilla" that liven things up just by way of offering something different are few and far between.
Khan herself is incredibly compelling as a storyteller for these surreal dream-like scenarios she sets out in her songs and she's by far the stand-out aspect of Fur and Gold. Even when the music threatens to turn into a bog you have to wade through and the lyrics veer a little too close into particularly vivid teen diary poetry, she's front and centre with her charisma pulling everything together into a functionable whole. Without her in lead this'd be half the album it is now because as far as the material itself goes, apart from the handful of highlights Fur and Gold sticks a lot less than it gives the impression of. Still, it's not an album I can badmouth even as the years have dimmed its shine. Khan's simply written better, more consistent records further on in her career and by assessing her journey (so far) as a whole, I guess I've finally come to realise that I only ever did listen to this album on the strength of a few select songs while the rest acted as enjoyable enough padding in-between. It's a compelling sound with much promise, but promise turns out to be the key word after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment