A conversation with Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes from 2007

The UK art-pop auteur on playing crappy SXSW venues, covering Tom Waits and Neil Young, her musical journey from James Taylor to Steve Reich, and the perils of being a fashion-magazine band

Jun 06, 2025

Welcome to stübermania, where I dig into my box of dust-covered interview cassettes from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to present bygone conversations with your favourite alterna/indie semi-stars (and the occasional classic-rock icon). This is a newsletter in three parts: The Openers (links to recent writings, playlist updates, and/or other musical musings), The Headliner (your featured interview of the week), and Encores (random yet related links).

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THE OPENERS

Attention fans of 2000s-era collectivist Canadian indie-rock who also have an active Crave subscription: the Broken Social Scene documentary, It’s All Gonna Break, is finally available to stream!
If you’re a Super Furry Animals fan (and why wouldn’t you be), then set aside 100 minutes to listen to Bandsplain’s dissection of “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck,” a.k.a. the greatest song ever built from a Steely Dan sample (non-De La Soul division).
Notes on this week’s additions to the stübermania 2025 jukebox:
Click here for the Apple Music version
- Pulp, “The Hymn of the North”: I’m very pleased to report that the new Pulp album, More, is an absolute triumph, and this is its heavenly peak: an opulent orchestral ballad (featuring Toronto’s own Chilly Gonzales) that’s equally devastating and divine. (In case you missed it: Here’s my interview with Jarvis Cocker from 1998.)
- Big Thief, “Incomprehensible”: When Adrienne Lenker released her solo album, Bright Future, last year, I wrote: “It really feels like Adrianne Lenker—both within and without Big Thief—is in the midst of her mid-‘60s Dylan/mid-‘70s Neil moment. So much casual brilliance, profound beauty, and charming absurdity just tumbling out of her like it ain’t no thing.” And those words extend to the enchanting first single from Big Thief’s upcoming Double Infinity, whose dreamy yet restless sound reminds me of one of my favourite BSS deep cuts, “Backyards.” I believe this is also the first song ever by an A-list American indie-rock band to shout-out Thunder Bay, Ontario.
- Water From Your Eyes, “Life Signs”: The Gen Z Fiery Furnaces return with an alt-prog oddity that sounds like it could’ve been sandwiched in the middle of a Cibo Matto/Ween/Stereolab/King Missile programming block on The Wedge circa 1996.
- Born Ruffians, “To Be Seen”: I wrote the bio for the Ruffians’ new album, Beauty’s Pride, which sees this once-scrappy Toronto indie-pop trio add a full-time synth player (Maddy Wilde, formerly of Moon King and Spiral Beach) and steadily cruise into their third decade as a futurist power-pop band.
- veggi & Cadence Weapon, “INFILTRATOR”: The social-media-savvy L.A. producer teams up with the Hamilton rapper for a sweltering hip-house workout that’s truly the song of the summer, in the sense that its pitch-shifting vocals sound like they’re oozing out of a basement-party soundsystem that’s buckling from the humidity on a hot August night.
- Pavement, “Witchitai-To”: Matador’s soundtrack to the Pavement movie, Pavements, is arguably even more chaotic than the film itself. But buried within its audio avalanche of live recordings, movie dialogue, interview snippets, rehearsal banter, and Peel sessions is this jewel—a rehearsal-space cover of Native American jazz musician Jim Pepper’s 1971 hippie hymn that counts as the first new Pavement recording since 1999. Perfect sound forever, indeed.

THE HEADLINER:
A conversation with Natasha Khan

The date: September 21, 2007

Publication: Eye Weekly

Location: I was at the Eye Weekly office; Natasha was calling in from New York.

Album being promoted: Fur and Gold

The context: My first encounter with Brighton, UK art-pop dynamo Natasha Khan—a.k.a. Bat for Lashes—came in the least Bat for Lashesy of environments: a neon-lit Austin, Texas sports pub called the Dirty Dog Bar, which played host to her South by Southwest showcase in March 2007. But even in these scuzzy surroundings, Khan and her backing trio still managed to recreate the fairytale fantasias of her bewitching debut album, Fur and Gold, using the most minimal means: a violin, piano, sampler and a floor tom (though, of course, their Cleopatra headgear and face paint certainly helped set the right spectral mood).

By the time I got to speak with Khan a few months later, on the eve of her Toronto debut at the El Mocambo, her circumstances had changed considerably for the better: Fur and Gold had scored a Mercury Prize nomination in the UK, and the Donnie Darko-inspired video for the ghostly girl-group homage “What’s A Girl to Do?” had racked up half a million YouTube hits—which seemed pretty impressive for an esoteric indie act back in the pre-algorithm wilds of 2007.

So the Bat for Lashes show I saw at South by Southwest was in a very weird environment. Do you find yourself having to play such inappropriate venues very often?

Obviously in England, because we’re getting so established and people know what kind of music we do, we’re playing much nicer venues—theatre type places. Those were our first American shows, so people weren’t aware of what the music needs, and I know that South by Southwest is pretty grungy anyways. But it was good, because lots of people got to see it. It’s just a way of getting through to people—you have to play weird venues.

Was taking these songs, which are very atmospheric and full of subtleties, to the stage a big step for you?

That was naturally what I wanted to create. When I first started, it was just me on my own—I played electric guitar and I had a little beatbox and a sequencer machine that had weird thunder sounds and little programmed dolphin sounds or bass lines. And I’d do little projections—I made little animated films and drawings and projections to create a bit of atmosphere. When I started out, I was completely on my own, but I always wanted to be working from that angle. Luckily, as things got bigger, we got a really good sound guy now, and it’s possible to retain that [intimate] thing.

Early on, were you playing more pub/coffeehouse environments or more art gallery/DIY spaces?

A mixture of both actually. I was in Brighton and went up to London to do more shows there. I started off on my own, and then I started playing with Abi [Fry], who added her string parts on the viola. I was asked to play little art galleries and would also play this really dingy place in Brighton that I played quite a few times—it’s usually for punk bands and smells of piss everywhere. Wherever it is, if you’ve got strong intentions and conjure up something, then you can transform any space. You could play in a woodland and it would be amazing, but I could also play in someone’s living room and hopefully transform the energy of the area.

You have an unconventional live-band set-up—did you ever consider doing a standard four-piece presentation?

I never completely considered that. The first time I got a band together as Bat for Lashes, it was me and two boys. One of them played these old, crazy modular synths and the other guy was drumming on a kit, and I had an electric guitar, so it was a much more conventional set-up. But it didn’t satisfy me as much for some reason. As each album goes along, I’ll probably explore different set-ups, and have a rotating cast of musicians. I definitely do want more percussive elements, but not at the expense of the more esoteric, medieval-sounding instruments. And I like cheesy synth drums and choir sounds in that David Lynch kind of way. I don’t want it to be too traditional or tasteful. On this tour we’re doing two new songs: I’ve done a cover of “Lonely” by Tom Waits, and I arranged orchestral parts for trombone, double bass and flutes. It’s a really beautiful, quite dark soundtrack kind of song, and then there’s a new one I’ve written which is really up. I play electric bass. One’s quite bombastic, and the other’s cinematic, so it’s, like, the two extremes.

How many instruments do you play?

I don’t know! Anything I can put my hand to, really. Anything that comes my way. The latest one is the bass, which I’m really enjoying. If you can play piano and guitar, then you can kind of play a whole multitude of other things because the disciplines are the same. A piano’s really percussive, and so you can maybe play drums too, but it’s also quite melodic and wacky, so I can play autoharp and instruments like that. And with guitar, you can easily move onto bass. And I program my sequencer with string parts.

Do you scour stores for vintage instruments?

Yeah, like accordions and Marxophones. There’s a place in New York called the Music Inn, where I bought the Marxophone, which is from 1918—it’s a really old dulcimer/autoharp kind of thing that sounds amazing. His place is like heaven—there are so many zithers and sitars, it’s like an Aladdin’s Cave. One really expensive thing I saw recently was this guy in Brighton who was playing in the street—he adapts upright pianos. He takes out all the strings from the inside of a piano and flattens it on its back, and then plays it like a dulcimer with hammers. It’s like a gigantic autoharp. It sounds like ghosts on a ship—it’s just so beautiful. But I think they’re about 1,000 pounds. I’ll have to sell a few more records.

So much of the discussion of your music focuses on the fairytale aspect, yet you also cover Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits, who come from a more earthy realm.

Maybe it’s more about the lyrical content of the covers than the music. When I write the music, it’s not following what those guys did in their versions of the songs, so the music is fairly atmospheric and more feminine. I also did Neil Young’s “Old Man.” I just like masculinity, and it seems to suit their lyrics. Like, I love Lou Reed’s lyrics, and Leonard Cohen is one of the best lyricists ever. Maybe it’s like a paternal thing—sometimes you want the greats to teach you something from a generation ago. There’s been some amazing male musicians that I really love, and because I’m such a feminine person, it’s my way of tapping into that sort of thing, and learning from them, and reinterpreting it through my eyes. I’m not like Courtney Love—I’m not trying to be a man in my music.

And all those songwriters aren’t afraid to come off as vulnerable or broken in their songs.

And it’s a different kind of broken, a masculine vulnerability, but they’re very much men, aren’t they? All the musicians I really love are Scorpios like me, which is really weird. I found out Neil Young’s a Scorpio and Joni Mitchell, and Björk.

Coming from an art-school background and studying people like Steve Reich, what drew you to working in a pop context?

I was 20 when I did my degree, and only at 20 did I decide I really wanted to do music. I was quite naïve when I started my degree, because everyone there was like “yeah, Steve Reich and Royal Trux and Sonic Youth…” I knew about grunge music because when I was a teenager I had Sonic Youth’s Goo, but I really wasn’t that cool when I started university. And I think my initial musical input was from my mom, because we used to drive to school and she would play me Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young and James Taylor and the Mamas and the Papas and The Animals and The Beatles—good quality songs. That was in the ‘80s, so I was also listening to Prince and “True Blue” was my first seven-inch. I was very much a radio kid, taping songs off the radio. But later on, I knew there was something more that I wanted to discover. In my late teens, I started listening to Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel and Björk—some more beautiful things. So when I was at university, I started checking out composers and film soundtracks and then Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Tortoise were all happening then, and I was going to the All Tomorrows Parties festival. I went six years running and totally absorbed all of that: Dirty Three, Joanna Newsom. So I found this palette of instruments and contemporaries in music later on. But the reason I write more songs in a pop context is I want to write good songs that people can understand, but are still interesting.

Was giving yourself a band name a way to avoid the singer/songwriter stereotype?

Definitely. I didn’t want to be Celine Dion. But I think to avoid confusion in the future I’m going to make it really clear that I am Bat for Lashes, and whatever band I’m playing with. I’m going to call them the whatever-band: like, Bat for Lashes and the Snotty Noses! Bat for Lashes is me and it is my creative vision and visuals, and the whole universe is me. I’m the control-freak megalomaniac in the band [laughs]. Everything goes past me, and I say if I don’t like something. But at the same time, I take fully written songs with parts into the band, and we all work out how we can arrange them within the band with the instruments we have. Like Caroline [Weeks] will come up with a beautiful guitar riff that sounds amazing, and I’m totally up for that.

How did you come into contact with Josh Pearson from Lift to Experience?

I saw Lift to Experience about four years before that. That band kind of fell apart, and then a few years later I went to see Dirty Three in Brighton and he was supporting, and I was really excited he had come back because he had been living in Berlin at the time. And so we just got chatting, and I told him, “I remember thinking when I saw you years ago, ‘I have to sing with this man—his voice is amazing.’” So I said, “If I send you a CD, would you consider singing or playing guitar on the record?” Because I knew I wanted that deserty, preacher-man Texan feel, and he’s the real deal. He was really into it and came in for a couple of days and put down some crazy shit. We spent days singing gospel songs together and harmonies—we sang loads more than we used. He said he doesn’t often sing with women’s voices that much, but it was just such a pleasure.

So you obviously have this deep love and knowledge of music, but I’ve noticed a lot of your press so far has come from fashion magazines...

Whenever I do the fashion pieces, I always say, “I want the music to be the main thing I talk about.” Obviously, there’s a big interest if you have a particular style that people want to jump on, but it is a difficult thing to gain the right amount of integrity if you do too much of something that’s not in your field. So I always want to do the music-magazine press before [fashion magazines]. In England, and over here and Germany too, the local music press comes first and then the fashion magazines come as a secondary thing. But it’s harder to get into the mainstream music magazines in England especially, because they’re just interested in boy bands and Oasis and Led Zeppelin reissues. And it’s like, “okay, here’s this strange woman”—it’s a bit harder. But that’s okay, because I really trust that the work will speak for itself, and as the next album comes out, I know that it’s going to be amazing and people will see that there’s more substance to it than just a visual element. I’m patient and I just hope that [the fashion-magazine attention] doesn’t take away any integrity, that people don’t look at it like a fashion band, like what happened to The Strokes—in England, it was all about the trousers rather than the second album.

Does that kind of exposure make you think about the image you’re putting across?

I don’t really change anything for other people. It’s an organic and natural progression of my own ideas and my own tastes and styles. It’s the same for music and the way I dress or the things I’m into. I go through phases of constant obsessions over different things. I’ll be obsessed with 1920s brooches and then I’ll be obsessed with E.T., and that’s reflected in the things I collect. At the moment, I’m having a Stevie Nicks obsession and I just want to buy everything in black suede! I’m going to perm my hair and go crazy! It’s better for me to just be individual to myself—I’m not going to expose my body. It’s just about me sticking to my own style and not worrying about trends and being strong in my own identity. I’m not on a big fashion mission in any way.

Fur and Gold presents you with a lot of musical directions you could pursue.

The confidence has grown, and through the experience of recording our first album, putting it out, traveling around with it, and working with a live band, you learn so much and I think the next record will be more assertive and more assured. I’m working with different vocal styles and a different range of personalities I’m singing from. There’ll be more percussive elements, but I still think it’s going to be really eclectic, just because I get bored really easily and my style is all over the place sometimes. When you bring it together in an album, you create a body of work through the fact that you record it at a similar time with a palette of instruments. But I still think there’ll be quite an array of types of songs—I don’t like albums that sound too much the same. It should be a journey that represents all the different feelings and eras you’re going through, so you’re never really quite the same twice over.

You were nominated for the Mercury Prize this year and attended the gala—did you care?

No, not really. It was quite horrific actually, the whole evening, just because it’s full of industry types. I found it really scary. But it did serve its function for people doing stuff that’s not played on the radio—you don’t get any exposure in terms of TV or radio or getting into any daytime arena otherwise. The whole line-up of people who got nominated were all really eclectic and a lot of them are pretty underground, so that was a real positive, and a lot more people got to hear the record as a result. I wasn’t bothered about winning—I think that would’ve been quite scary at such an early stage. I think there’s more room to grow, I didn’t really want to have the spotlight on me just yet! That would be really uncomfortable.

ENCORES

For a small club show that happened in Toronto 18 years ago, Bat for Lashes’ El Mocambo gig is fairly well preserved on YouTube—here is one of six videos currently available:
I feel like Bat for Lashes has low-key been one of the most significant trendsetting acts over the past 20 years. In the wake of Fur and Gold, we saw a steady stream of arty female auteurs—Florence + the Machine, Lykke Li, Lana Del Rey, U.S. Girls, and Lorde, among others—emerge with a similar flair for moody indie-pop and shapeshifting visual aesthetics, and I’d argue Khan also laid a great deal of the groundwork for the ongoing Kate Bush revival. Sadly, Bat for Lashes is no longer as central to the pop-cultural conversation as she was in the late 2000s—her meditative, motherhood-inspired 2024 album, The Dream of Delphi, stalled out at No. 73 on the UK charts and, to date, none of its tracks have crossed the million-play threshold on Spotify. And that’s a shame, because songs like “Letter to My Daughter” show she still has a firm command over both halves of the art/pop equation:
But, for the record, the single greatest Bat for Lashes song remains “Laura,” which has been a personal playlist staple since its 2012 release and still slays me every time I hear it.