Bat For Lashes / Spleen

The stage at the glorious Koko venue (formerly Camden Palace) is prepared for a glitzy shimmering show – frosted trees, glittering silver podiums, sparkling draped keyboards and a silhouetted moon. Artistic Bat for Lashes lyric booklets are handed out along with elegant masks.



As the support act Spleen starts, my heart sinks. A French three-piece with digitally enhanced songs, a human beatbox, with some rapping vocals, and Spleen, the lead vocalist wearing shades on the dimly lit stage. But after a couple of songs, it’s evident that the lead singer has a very melodic voice and the band livens up and becomes quite playful. Spleen jumps into the audience for one of the songs and meanders around, stealing kisses. An attractive female volunteers to sit on stage whilst he sings a song to her about a beautiful rose, which he wrote for an ex-girlfriend. He’s certainly a charmer and carries off a fluffy tutu with trainers rather well! By the end of their set, they manage to win the crowd over completely.


Bat for Lashes is singer-songwriter Natasha Khan with a few regular companion musicians. This is the last night of her current tour, which has been across America and Canada and also to France, promoting her debut album ‘Fur and Gold’. She’s managed to sell out two nights at Camden’s Koko, perhaps on the back of publicity for the Mercury Music Prize nomination which was well deserved. I bought the album a while ago on the strength of hearing one track, ‘Trophy’, and wasn’t disappointed – there are no throwaway songs on there.


Tonight the exotic looking, glam Natasha opens with some sultry a cappella lines sung in French, which transpires to be Nico’s ‘Le Petit Chevalier’. She has a crystal clear, luxuriant voice, exquisite songs and talented musicians. The three regular multi-instrumentalists are Caroline Weeks, Abi Fry and Lizzy Carey and there are extra musicians on strings, brass and even a bowed saw at one point. The music is a heavenly mixture of bells, handclaps, keyboards, violins, glockenspiel, shakers, drums and tambourines. Natasha and her companions swap keyboards, percussion and strings effortlessly.



There’s not much banter between songs and it’s a smooth, well polished, exactly an hour and a quarter performance. She showcases most of the album and each song is greeted with cheers of recognition and each is a perfect rendition but highlights are ‘Sarah’ (revamped and enhanced with the beat of a huge stick which Natasha pounds on the floor, apparently a gift that came from the Grand Canyon), the brooding ‘Trophy’ and ‘Prescilla’ which closes the show. She also performs a beautiful version of a Tom Waits song ‘Lonely’ and there are a couple of new songs which sound promising for the next album - ‘Missing Time’ which Spleen joins her on to add beatbox backing vocals, and ‘Moon and Moon’.

The whole show is fantastical escapism, dreamy and fairytale-like; musically and visually it’s a pure delight.

FUTURE GIGS