Yahoo News Review and photos: Bat for Lashes casts a 'reinvigorated' spell of music on Aviva Studios
Natasha Khan’s last Manchester show, nearly five years ago across town at the Albert Hall, was a sedate affair, where she stripped her songs back and presented them in delicate, bare-bones fashion.
This was especially unusual for her because, as Bat for Lashes, she has excelled as a maximalist, somebody who builds lavish worlds with her words and melodies and carved out her own fantastical niche in the world of indie folk.
So much has changed for her since she was last here, having returned to live in London after years in Los Angeles and, three years ago, having given birth to her first child.
Plenty to write about, then, and after taking such a sparse approach last time out, you might have expected her to use the stage of the new Aviva Studios’ hall as the backdrop for a much more intricate live show. She doesn’t, though; whilst the live band is expanded from two to three, to accommodate former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, and while drum machines are used to flesh out the sound, Khan still leans towards minimalism.
It makes sense in the context of her latest album, The Dream of Delphi, which is named after her daughter and focuses on the simple milestones of early motherhood, something that a quick glance over the track listing would give away (‘Her First Morning', 'The Midwives Have Left', 'Delphi Dancing’).
She opens with a couple of new ones, ‘At Your Feet’ and ‘The Dream of Delphi’, and they set the tone, crackling with a renewed musical purpose that reinvigorates tracks from across her back catalogue.
Her debut, the Mercury-nominated Fur and Gold, is not far off its twentieth anniversary but still sounds wondrous, whether it’s the slow rolling drama of ‘The Wizard’ or the ethereal wandering of ‘Tahiti’.
From there, the set runs right through the various eras of Bat for Lashes; from the most conceptual and ambitious - there are several tracks from 2009’s Two Suns that remind us how experimental she can be - as well as more straightforward synth-pop from 2019’s Lost Girls.
The songs have been cleverly considered, the three musicians often dancing in tandem or mixing up old arrangements; ‘Daniel’, arguably her best-known track’, is slower, moodier and more atmospheric than usual.
Tying everything together is Khan’s voice - she has stunning range, and the highlights are the tracks on which her voice really soars, like ‘Lilies’, ‘Close Encounters’ and ‘Laura’.
At the heart of the show thematically, meanwhile, is her daughter, who’s presence is felt both playfully - Khan includes a cover of Baauer’s ‘Home’ purely because it’s a song that makes Delphi dance - and movingly, with ‘Letter to My Daughter’ having been written as a road map for her daughter to refer to when Khan is no longer around.
From tonight’s evidence, she will be for a long while yet; she seems reinvigorated as a musician and as a performer.
