2007 in Review: What's A Girl To Do?

Thom Yorke made an iTunes playlist for the celebrity playlist thing that the iTunes music store has been doing this year. I read about it and (obviously) tried to download every song from his playlist. The playlist starts with a song from Bat From Lashes. I forget which one, but it was awesome so I tracked down their debut album, Fur & Gold - a very solid showing. See, I'm obsessed with three-song strings. The moments on some albums when the artist strings three songs together that are so great that I'm left feeling gobsmacked or, more accurately, knob-slobbed. Fur & Gold boasts one of the best trios in tracks 6, 7, and 8 ("The Wizard," "Prescilla," and "Bat's Mouth").
Bat for Lashes is, basically, the beautiful Natasha Khan. Her songs lie somewhere in the realm of Kate Bush, certainly displaying all of Ms. Bush's ambition and drama. Perhaps the best example of her dramatics is "What's A Girl to Do?" - a stoic, skeletal track with an ample chorus. Khan spends the song narrating a relationship where "that feeling's gone" before breaking up the deadpan storyline with a plaintive chorus. In doing so, she deftly illustrates the stupor and sorrow of a failed relationship. It's a masterpiece.
In my favorite music video of the year (no disrespect to International Player's Anthem), Dougal Wilson makes an exemplary visual for the song. I don't know who came up with the concept, but the references to Donnie Darko (the costumed stuntmen on the bikes for y'all who aint up on that Darko shit) do a cunning job of tying the alienation that Khan addresses on the song to the alienation that is the main theme of the Gyllenhalls' flick. Well done Dougal.


Album highlights:

What's A Girl To Do

Horse and I

The Wizard

Prescilla
Buy Fur & Gold here....or at your local trapper/jeweler superstore.