Singles

Bat For Lashes - What’s A Girl To Do

Holly Barnes 14/07/2007

Rating: 4/5

Bat For Lashes is Natasha Khan: beautiful, bewitching… mysterious. What's A Girl To Do, a single lifted from her terrific debut album "Fur and Gold," is pretty indicative of her sound. Starting off with the same reverberating drums that make you take notice when you first listen to Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey," or Camera Obscura's "80s Fan," it then weaves its dream and conjures images in under three minutes that it takes Philip Pullman many pages to convey.

While percussion stomps, a harp and keyboards twinkle their way through the song and backing vocal ghosts haunt the background. Natasha's is not one clear, strong voice, but many whispers combined, like delicate strands tied together; her precise pronunciation is also a welcome deviation from the current trend for the bizarre London accent. We are being told a tale, ostensibly, about the predicament of staying in a relationship when the passion has disappeared. Her tone is not one of streetwise attitude, but of confusion and wistfulness, as she tells the listener of “the desire I'd first tried to hide, [but] that tingling inside was gone”. Fur and Gold was released months ago, "What's A Girl To Do" has been played on the stereo many times; it's something of an achievement that after such continued exposure, this song still sounds intriguing and captivating. Her passion for a former love may have died out, but you won't tire of Bat For Lashes in a hurry.


Watch the video here.

Release date: 09/07/07