1) I Do; 2) Joe's Dream; 3) In God's House; 4) Honeymooning Alone; 5) Sunday Love; 6) Never Forgive the Angels; 7) Close Encounters; 8) Widow's Peak; 9) Land's End; 10) If I Knew; 11) I Will Love Again; 12) In Your Bed
Finally dwelling deeper into those soundtrack-like qualities of the prior albums with a full on concept album, but that concept seems to come before the songs.
Key tracks: "In God's House", "Sunday Love", "Close Encounters"
It was only a matter of time until Bat for Lashes came up with a bonafide concept album given the love for wider themes that Natasha Khan has demonstrated in her prior albums, and The Bride couldn't be more BfL-esque if it tried. With so much of the Bat for Lashes discography centered around romantic notions that are more longing than loving and almost fatalistic in their devotion, naturally the first full-on story that Khan devises is about a bride-to-be is left alone at the altar after the groom is killed in a car crash on the way to the church. Amidst her grieving, the never-wed decides to take the intended honeymoon trip by herself while searching for answers and meaning in the universe. The Bride wanders the mountains and the seas, connects spiritually with her former partner and ultimately finds the first strands of will to go on, but ultimately the story arc is left unresolved - because how could you ever neatly reconcile such a dramatic loss?
It's always been obvious that soundtracks rank highly among Khan's musical inspirations, and one of the biggest compliments you can give to The Bride is how much it sounds like a score to a film she put her vocal tracks over. Khan weaves dramatic arcs, builds tension and sets up narrative threads in the way a director puts together a film - the songs act as scenes that link together into a greater whole, where everything serves the narrative first and foremost. You don't even need to know it's a concept album to understand that, simply because of how vividly the music tells the story. It's in no small part because the musical language Khan uses throughout is closer to film scores than indie pop albums: the sound here is deeply atmospheric and leaves a space for the narrative to course through, built on sparse elements which are used less as melodic tools and more as methods to decorate the unfolding scenes, where percussion is minimal at best. Khan's voice in the center is practically ethereal thanks to the vast amounts of space the arrangements leave around it, and she brings the central character to life with dramatic, actor-like yearning. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if someone did think this actually is an expanded accompaniment to a visual counterpiece, and I have to give Khan kudos for how The Bride is both a film and its soundtrack at once.
You know there's a 'but' though, and it's a two-fold matter. Despite its narrative cohesion, The Bride as an album is one of two halves where the first steps take wider moves with a bit of a beat to their step, while the second half sinks deep into that soundtrack feel by acting as singular suite of sustained moods. The first set of songs is closer to the established core sound for Bat for Lashes and does well merging this album's more widescreen ideas into Khan's ideas of pop songs. They're not among Khan's best compositions but they leave a lingering impression and in their own right are a stable ground to build an album on. The drama of "In God's House" is what truly kicks the album into gear after the intentionally and ingeniously sweet bridal march "I Do" and the nervous "Joe's Dream" act as the extended intro and it sounds a little special on that alone, and "Sunday Love" dashes forward with a nervous step and injects some much-needed energy to the record after four songs of moody marching. It's an impressive start even if not such a stand-out outside the album context, but what that initial run of songs does do is build up the tragedy and ache of the album, steadily winding the spring tighter, for that pay-off to come.
It never does. I mentioned how the album's story arc feels like it's missing an ending, and that carries through to the music. The entire bottom half of the record is one anonymous mood piece, exquisitely crafted but oddly empty: illustrating scenes to film which, at the end of the day, doesn't exist. It's rather pretty at places - "Land's End" and "If I Knew" especially - but in practice what happens is that the dramatic (and musical) build up of the first half ends up fizzling out quietly before the abrupt credits roll. Much of the final run of songs feel like segues or bridges between greater moments, but with all those important cornerstones missing and all you have are the thin strands. They're inconsequential and unmemorable at worst, and lovely enough ambience with no depth at best. Making matters inadvertently a little worse is "Close Encounters" which starts off that sequence of spatial ballads, and which is the one song on this record I would count as among Khan's very best. Made out of mostly just strings, her voice and a celestial choir of backing vocals, in this one song she consolidates together all the pain and longing that the album's central story arc is built around to a most devastating degree, with a chorus melody that is one of the most immediately piercing and disarming moments she has ever committed to tape. Everything that comes afterwards tries to do the same but sound like half-thought epilogues, all one after another: a stream of songs with barest of ideas that disappear into one another as well as into the ether immediately after hearing them.
I do honestly admire the ideas that Khan presents on The Bride and it has all the makings of a truly special Bat for Lashes album, one which would dive delightfully deep into the musical and thematic concepts that have been lurking around in the background for a while. The ideas around the production and the arrangements, the widescreen drama in the actual music itself and Khan's vocal performance (probably her best so far) are all top notch and clear takeaways from the album. It's almost unfair then how the actual songs fall short, and the further the album moves the less life it has. The danger of concept albums is when the concept overrides the musical content and you can see it happen here: the trappings are all in place but as a set of songs - in melodies, hooks, emotional resonance - it's Khan's weakest so far. The comparisons to soundtracks feel so apt once more, because so many scores turn out be incredibly meandering no matter how much you love the source material when the visual accompaniment they're meant to go with is stripped away. The arrangements for The Bride favour space, but the deeper you get into the album the more it feels like it's just emptiness. There are many things to love The Bride for - I'm not rating this all the way to the bottom, after all - but as a selection of music it's almost underbaked.
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