Natasha Khan, who is Bat for Lashes, is an immensely talented singer-songwriter.
Her last album, Two Suns, was replete with yearning melodies, electronic power, delicate pianos and a sense of restrained but ever-present creativity.
Comparisons to Kate Bush and Bjork were made, but Khan is her own artist; poetic, lyrical and a little chaotic.
The Haunted Man, coming after a sustained period of writer's block, is only intermittently powerful, but when she gets it right – the thunderclouds of keys on opener Lilies, the tremulous ballad Laura, the buzzing second single All Your Gold and the title track – she makes music that is propulsive, sensual and unusually good.
Her creative block led to invention and eclectic experiments: there are military drums, male choirs and trumpets on The Haunted Man, and elsewhere electronica bubbles alongside lush strings and thumping beats. This collection is not uniformly great – some songs feel a little anaemic and less than fully formed – but it is still an impressive statement from one of our great young artists. A stark triumph.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article