My Blonde Curls Slice Through Your Heart

Bat For Lashes @ Webster Hall 8/12/2009

Glass / Sleep Alone / Horse & I / Tahiti / Siren Song / The Wizard / Two Planets / Sad Eyes / Traveling Woman / What’s A Girl To Do? / Pearl’s Dream / Prescilla // Good Love / Moon & Moon / Trophy / Daniel

Natasha Khan is so naturally gifted as a singer that her technical skill seems entirely effortless, leaving you to focus on how fully she commits to throwing herself into the emotion of her songs, and the visual aspects of her performance. Truly, this is the sort of artist who works up to a standard that makes a vast majority of her peers seem like unimaginative slackers, or just outright untalented. I can understand why this music is not for everyone, but when artists working on this level of craft exist, it’s hard to grasp why so many would prefer amateurism, as is so often the case in the indie world.

Bat For Lashes “Siren Song” (Live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, 2009)

There are two ways to be emotionally devastated by this song: You can either relate to the character singing the song, and identify with the self-loathing that comes out of the conflict of wanting true love and affection despite a restlessness that makes it impossible to commit for long, or you could see yourself as this woman’s victim, and imagine this horrible bait-and-switch scenario as a bleak romantic inevitability for yourself. For me, it is the latter, and the thing that guts me most is that this isn’t some manipulative, creepy, sociopath thing — she feels sincere, sweet, genuine love for this man, but cannot stop herself from being selfish or self-destructive. To a certain extent, this is self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps on both sides — one person convinced that they can’t control their impulses no matter how unhappy it makes them, and the other no doubt feeling as though they’re just not good enough and unwilling to fully buy into this whole “it’s not you, it’s me” line, no matter how many times she swears that she is evil.

Buy it from Amazon.