Bat For Lashes — Two Suns

Two Suns

Astralwerks/EMI

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

04/30/2009 1:44pm

Natasha Khan's music has always been ethereal and vaguely spooky, but she's stepped it up on her second album. Half the time when Khan, who's from Brighton, England, sings on Two Suns, she sounds like she's singing through a fog in a rain-soaked moor in the middle of Yorkshire.

Khan's haunting voice has drawn comparisons to Kate Bush, and they're not unfounded — at times, she sounds frighteningly like Bush. It's perhaps fitting Two Suns is a study in duality, since Bush's "Wuthering Heights" is about Emily Bronte's book of the same name, which examined how two people couldn't be with or without each other.

Minus its different character names, Two Suns could practically be that novel's soundtrack, since it's about the same thing. Whether it's about Khan fighting against her alter-ego, Pearl, or two lovers who just can't be together because they tear each other apart, the similarities are striking nonetheless.

"Glass" opens with thundering toms and sounds like it's rising out of some kind of mire, while the more electronic "Sleep Alone" is a stirring take on not being able to live without someone. First single "Daniel" is a catchy tune that recalls an edgier, less crappy Tori Amos, while Khan (or her split personality?) sounds like she's beckoning someone, or herself, into a fog on "Siren Song."

You can easily get lost in Two Suns, since it sounds both rooted in the past and stuck firmly in the present and seems to defy time.

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