- Lilies
- All Your Gold
- Horses Of The Sun
- Oh Yeah
- Laura
- Winter Fields
- The Haunted Man
- Marilyn
- A Wall
- Rest Your Head
- Deep Sea Diver
Bare Skin, Bold Spirit
Bat for Lashes’ The Haunted Man is an album that raises the curtain on vulnerability with fearless clarity, stripping away ornament until only raw humanity remains. After the lush dreamscapes and ornate mysticism of her earlier work, Natasha Khan emerges here carrying emotional truth like a torch in a darkened field - naked, unguarded, and fiercely present. It is her most exposed and most assured statement, a record that treats honesty not as a confession but as a form of power.
The beauty of The Haunted Man lies in its elegant austerity. Khan refuses excess; instead, she sculpts space. Arrangements unfold with a kind of architectural minimalism: wide-open, airy, and grounded by rhythms that feel almost ritualistic. Within that spaciousness, her voice takes on the weight of myth - not because it is adorned, but because it is allowed to stand alone, tall and intact. It is an album that understands the potency of the human voice when it is given room to breathe.
There is a palpable sense of search here, as though Khan is wandering through the ruins of past selves, holding them up to the light with equal parts tenderness and resolve. The emotional palette is varied but unified by its sincerity: yearning without melodrama, strength without bravado, sensuality without spectacle. Every texture - from the tremor of a string arrangement to the pulse of an electronic heartbeat - feels intentional, placed as carefully as stones in a ceremonial path.
The production carries an almost cinematic restraint. Rather than overwhelming the listener, it guides them through atmospheres that hover between the earthly and the spectral. The result is a record that feels simultaneously intimate and widescreen, like a whispered secret carried across an empty landscape. Even in its boldest moments, The Haunted Man directs its energy inward, capturing the tension between fragility and resilience.
Khan’s songwriting here is mature, incisive, and unflinching. She leans into the complexities of identity, relationships, and inherited emotional weight, not with cynicism but with a steady, contemplative gaze. There’s a quiet confidence in her willingness to depict herself without symbolic armor, trusting that the truth - even when stripped bare - is beautiful enough on its own.
The Haunted Man is a work of striking clarity, an album that finds liberation in vulnerability and strength in simplicity. It is the sound of an artist stepping fully into her own presence, no longer drawing her power from mystery but from the courage to be seen. In its restraint, it becomes arresting; in its starkness, radiant. This is Bat for Lashes at her most human - and therefore, her most haunting.
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My personal view:
In many ways Natasha Khan continues the style of the two previous excellent albums on this one, with the expected influences. It was hailed as one of the best albums of 2012 by many notable music publications (online and otherwise) including NME, Pitchfork, Uncut, and Under the Radar. My favourite songs include All Your Gold, Horses Of The Sun, Winter Fields, Marilyn, A Wall, Deep Sea Diver, and especially the excellent ballad Laura.