Review Summary: What's a girl to do with a broom?
Ten years into her recording career--and on my radar--have finally summed up Natasha Khan for me: all that shaped her persona had come before her debut, while all that came after have been watering that shape down ever since. The former half of that realisation involves the upshot of growing up as a half-Pakistani girl in Blighty; its development is rooted in those years during which the crude finger-pointed, called her names, or ignored her. The internal conversations that accommodated one girl's malaise, twisted into lyrics and melodies and had kept her going up to the point where she added some keyboard motifs and laid
Fur and Gold down. Those experiences superseded the pop tag under her contract and dealt an almost eerie character in that first release of hers; they had even run on fumes up to Bat For Lashes'--more commercially inclined, yet still worthwhile--sophomore album,
Two Suns.
The latter involves what has been going on ever since, which, I guess, is pretty good for her livelihood and pretty bad for her moniker: moderate success and more people smiling at her. Oddly, what we've got here are plenty of sad poses in front of the lens and a sad 'would-have-been wife' behind her tracks--
The Bride sounds to me as fabricated and maudlin as the concept it conveys. The fleshy synth-driven structure that she once used to fancy, has now, for the greater part, declined into run-of-the-mill studio appliances--acoustic arpeggiations and midi-cheap garnishes and backing 'ah-ahs', on which she vocalises in order keep her mourning and her story going. "I am lost until some day when you will come and love me," she laments, taking her time--almost 30 seconds, that is--while I cringe. You know, she once was able to hit the sentimental spot, with, say, a sincere recount of what a nerd-standing-ground named Larusso meant to her during that journey towards adolescence; now she opts for dramatised deaths and unrealised weddings in order to match those minor harmonies that still feel like home to her.
The only track I'm on semi-good terms with is "Sunday Love", which mimics, instrumentally at least, the style of "Daniel"; it also feels less disjointed than "In God's House", which tries to counterfeit a couple of pre-2010 Bat For Lashes 'hits' all at once. Even so, they both try to fool you with a sense of continuity; yet, unfortunately,
The Bride reeks of only one true constant, and it had been carefully concealed from streams and Tube before the official release: melodrama that enlarges on the establishments of 2012's
The Haunted Man. You know what? I'll oppose the bereaved bride following her around; I'll hazard an optimistic guess: She's going to get married before too long. And as concerns the belfry tenants... Yes, Natasha, it's time to shoo 'em away. Shoo, shoo!
