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Feb 17, 2020 By Laura Studarus Photography by Laura Studarus Bat For Lashes

Bat For Lashes’ mystically inclined electro pop contains a host of characters, symbols, and metaphors. But as Natasha Khan, the singer-songwriter behind the project admits, her creative visions are freed up by removing herself from the equation and writing as someone other than herself. Since her 2007 debut Fur and Gold, the British singer/songwriter has treated us to a host of narratives. Two Suns, explored the idea of duality, a concept particularly told through a blonde named Pearl. The Bride explored the renaissance of a bride who lost her groom before walking down the aisle. And her newest album, last year’s Lost Girls, focused on a gang of bike-riding good witches that had been banished to the desert. But on Friday night in Los Angeles at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel, it was the storyteller behind the narratives that was on full display.

Taking the stage in an elaborate red dress, Khan performed fifteen career-spanning cuts, with only bandmate Laura Groves adding additional keys and backing vocals. As Khan explained to the audience, after years of full-band performances, she wanted a stronger connection to the audience, forged through revealing some of the stories and motivations behind her atmospheric pop. There was the simple obsession with lost time and alien abduction that inspired “Close Encounters.” A selected reading from the novella she wrote that inspired “Joe’s Dream.” And of course, a trip to the Lost Boys bridge that inspired the entirety of Lost Girls.

Given that so much of her catalogue is influenced by a love of the 1980s it’s appropriate that Khan also covered three of the era’s marquee singles, Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work,” and, as made popular by both Cyndi Lauper and Roy Orbison, “I Drove All Night.” It was a fitting mystical valentine from an artist who has already secured her place in the modern pop canon.

Setlist:

1. Kids in the Dark

2. The Hunger

3. Mountains

4. Desert Man

5. Feel for You

6. Jasmine

7. Joe’s Dream

8. Boys of Summer (Don Henley cover)

9. Close Encounters

10. Land’s End

11. Daniel

12. Horse and I

13. Laura Encore:

14. Moon and Moon

15. This Woman’s Work (Kate Bush cover)

16. I Drove All Night (Cyndi Lauper cover)