★★★★★
After releasing two albums to universal critical acclaim, it would be easy to struggle under the weight of expectation when taking on album number three. For Natasha Khan, a.k.a. Bat For Lashes, this was the welcome dilemma that she faced after her debut album Fur and Gold was certified silver and her second album, Two Suns, was nominated for the 2009 Mercury Prize. No pressure then. But Khan is not your typical recording artist and her return confirms as much...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
A stripped-down - yet chart friendly - return... When Bat For Lashes' darkling "What's A Girl To Do?" showed up in Brett Easton Ellis's 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms - his neo-noir high-school reunion sequel to Less Than Zero - it seemed like a significant artistic coup. Short of retconning your way onto a John Hughes soundtrack or a David Lynch commercial, it represents a pinnacle of a certain kind of 21st century pop ambition. Florence Welch, for one, was chartreuse with envy...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Release Date: October 11th 2012 Over the last couple of years, I've grown to really love and appreciate indie-rock, and indie-pop music. Every so often, I find a band or record that really takes me by surprise. British outfit Bat for Lashes, and their new record Absolutepunk.net sent me a list of things to review, and one record that really caught my attention was Bat for Lashes The Haunted Man, which was released last October...
- absolutepunk.net
2013-02-26
★★★★★
Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Or rather, an album. The cover of The Haunted Man is a naked Natasha Khan, a.k.a. Bat For Lashes, staring directly at the camera, covered only by a man she wears over her shoulders. Appropriately, Bat For Lashes drops most of the elaborate ornamentation, overdriven synths, double-tracking, and overdubbing to let us get closer to her than ever before. Most tracks on The Haunted Man are a small orchestra and Khan's beautiful voice...
- www.noripcord.com
2012-12-24
★★★★★
Okay, let's start with the obvious talking point - that cover photo. The carrying of a naked man may suggest that recording a 'difficult third album' as Bat For Lashes, is a burden for Natasha Khan. The weight of expectation heavy after a successful breakthrough album, 2009's Two Suns. It's also a playful subversion of gender roles, carried over to the album proper when a male Greek chorus marches into the middle of the title track...
- www.beat.com.au
2012-11-13
★★★★★
Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, has always had a way with lyrics and her latest record The Haunted Man is yet another stellar example of this talent. The much talked-about cover art alone is striking (a naked Khan effortlessly bearing an also naked man, draped over her shoulders); but it is the beautifully arranged songs on The Haunted Man which stays with the listener...
- www.theaureview.com
2012-11-12
★★★★★
It's a risky business comparing female artists to one another, shoehorning an artist into a limited referential framework due to, as Tori Amos once noted, there being "too many tits in the room". Yet the music Bat for Lashes makes seems to draw quite consciously on this genealogy, just as The Haunted Man is informed by Natasha Khan's tracing of her own bloodline...
- thequietus.com
2012-11-05
★★★★★
Bullet Media recently scolded music critics for overusing cliches like "angular," "reverb-soaked" and "lush." These cliches, however accurate they might seem, are the bread and butter of unimaginative writers who don't feel like reaching for higher-hanging fruit. But one cliche on the list ends up causing a problem, at least for anything said about The Haunted Man, Bat For Lashes' third album. "Achingly beautiful"--this is verboten...
- www.prefixmag.com
2012-11-05
★★★★★
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but the stark NSFW cover of Bat for Lashes' The Haunted Man says much more than that about the music contained in the album. While any written description of the artwork can't quite capture what's going on in it, suffice it to say that the black-and-white photo of Natasha Khan, au naturale, with a naked male body draped over her shoulders, is as exposed and intimate as the songs on The Haunted Man are...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-10-29
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