Bat For Lashes, whose real name is Natasha Khan has released a brand new single, ‘Jasmine’, from her upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’. The latest single, ‘Jasmine’, is the third to be taken from the upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’ – which will be released on the 6th of September 2019 – following the release of ‘Kids in the Dark’ and ‘Feel for You’.
Bat For Lashes will be launching her forthcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’, with a stripped-back set, at Rough Trade East, in London, on Thursday the 22nd of August 2019. Unfortunaly the performance is already sold out, but Khan will also DJ an afterparty, at the Ace Hotel, that same night (August 22). More information and tickets can be found here.
The latest track, ‘Jasmine’, has been described as a “hypnotic song (which sees) Natasha Khan move between husky, spoken word-style delivery in the verses and a melodic, falsetto-heavy chorus.” The song’s main character, Jasmine, makes for an irresistible figure, as Khan sings: “Don’t be seduced by those baby blues / That secret smile when it’s catching you / Because little girl cuts your heart in two / Sucks the juice till she turns you loose.”
The “vampiric” depiction of Jasmine makes sense considering that Khan revealed that her upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’, was inspired by classic 80’s movies. In a recent interview, she explained that the album became visible as she developed a film script that was “heavily influenced by ’80s children’s films and vampire films, many set in Portland and California.”
Speaking, in an interview with The Guardian, about how films like ‘The Goonies’ and ‘The Lost Boys’ influenced her upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’, Khan said; “I was developing a script for a film called The Lost Girls. It was heavily influenced by 80s children’s films and vampire films, many set in Portland and California. But as the songs progressed, I felt like I was writing the film soundtrack. Music does tend to overtake film ideas, as it comes out much more easily.
“The Lost Boys, obviously, is a close link, and seeing LA’s hazy sunsets is making me think of films like ET and The Goonies. Moving to LA, I’ve basically been plonked inside the sets of all the films I loved as a kid.”
Bat For Lashes’ upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’, is their fifth album and is the follow-up to 2016’s ‘The Bride’. Khan’s upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’, is set to be released, on the 4th of September 2019, and will include the recently released track ‘Jasmine’ and the previously released singles ‘Kids in the Dark’ and ‘Feel For You’.
The 10-track album, according to an earlier statement, is “full of romance (and pays) homage to Los Angeles where the album was recorded, to being a kid in the ’80s, to films that touched and changed her life.”
A previous press release, set the scene for the upcoming album, ‘Lost Girls’: “If her last album, The Bride, was melancholy and mournful, a tone poem of loss and regret, Lost Girls is her mischievous younger sister, widescreen in scope and bursting with Technicolour intensity. It’s an album for driving in the dark; holding hands at sunset; jumping off bridges with vampires; riding your bike across the moon….”
It continued, “Spanning 10 tracks, Lost Girls sees Khan dreaming up her own fully formed parallel universe, creating an off-kilter coming of age film in which gangs of marauding female bikers roam our streets, teenagers make out on car hoods and a powerful female energy casts spells and leave clues for us to follow. The women of Lost Girls are parallel to one of Khan’s previous female protagonists, the tough, darkness-driven Pearl, from her 2009 lauded album Two Suns. Within the women of Lost Girls and the character Nikki Pink, Khan unfolds elements of herself; within these songs, we do the same.”
The release of Bat For Lashes’ latest single, ‘Jasmine’, comes after Khan was awarded an Ivor Novello for Best Television Soundtrack for her work on ‘Requiem’, with Dominik Scherrer. Speaking about the soundtrack, the judges said: “With immediate, absorbing and haunting Celtic vocals, the score empowered drama with innovative instrumentation.” Khan also received an Ivor Novello award, in 2010, for Best Contemporary Song for ‘Daniel’.
