Bat For Lashes – ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ review: spiralling symphonies written in the patient gaze of new motherhood
It has been half a decade since Natasha Khan – aka Bat For Lashes – last withdrew into creative solitude, and once again the songwriting visionary has re-emerged, a woman metamorphosed. After the Ivor Novello-winning artist discovered she was pregnant while riding the coattails of her 2019 album ‘Lost Girls’ – a cinematic swan song to teen hedonism, fangs, and biker gangs set in the great American underbelly – it wasn’t long before Khan found herself navigating burgeoning motherhood during pandemic lockdowns. Largely siloed from family and community, and trapped in a news cycle of disease and the politically-charged murder of George Floyd, she could but ruminate on the world her child was about to be born into.
Herself named after the Greek oracle, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is, in many ways, a tale of self-discovery, death and rebirth – the titular track a spiralling pagan invocation for Khan’s daughter. Its tone isn’t so much religious as spiritual. Once again excavating her innards to fuel her art, Khan perceives herself as the ‘MotherWitch’, an earthy moniker she first embodied in 2023 upon releasing her self-illustrated oracle card deck of the same name, depicting women, goddesses, and crones; witches, monsters – and mothers. With her sixth album, she has transformed herself creatively into a heightened archetype of femininity – though herself malleable and newborn.
Khan’s curiosity is palpable; “You’re a gift; you’re from me, but you’re not mine,” she whispers on ‘Christmas Day’, her words speared by glimmering synth as she concedes childhood’s neediness as finite, while ‘Letter To My Daughter’ imparts a wisdom women often find so hard to internalise themselves. While Khan coins tracks her “song poems”, she often gives way to the instrumental, trusting music to convey what lyrics cannot; for every moment of joy comes another of trepidation in the unknown. ‘The Midwives Have Left’ captures tender wonder and uncertainty in scant keys and soft coos, while the twinned ‘Breaking Up’ and ‘Waking Up’ recount the decline of Khan’s relationship with Delphi’s father and the subsequent new equilibrium of co-parenting.
Written in the patient gaze of parenting for similarly patient ears, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is by no means as immediate as her previous work. With it, Khan has pieced an intuitive scrapbook of first-time motherhood and, with the turn of every page, uncovers chapters of potential in who her daughter may become. It is a symbiotic symphony to unlocking unknown parameters of love.
Release date: May 31, 2024
Record label: Mercury KX