Natasha Khan has announced her sixth Bat For Lashes album, The Dream Of Delphi, which will be out May 31 via Mercury KX. The album is named for her daughter who was born in the summer of 2020 and became Khan’s unexpected inspiration for the music. “Motherhood I thought would take me away from my art, but it opened up this massive world,” Khan says.
The Dream of Delphi is a concept album about motherhood via “devotional love songs about the spirituality, ancestry and folklore.” The album opens with the title track, a swirling, slow build beauty that lists Mary Lattimore as a cowriter, is very Bat For Lashes, and Natasha says is “the manifesto of the album.”
She continues: “It’s like a spell being cast. It’s the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether. This is me calling on her soul. It’s about going up into the stars and down into the underworld simultaneously, how celestials and deep guttural sounds can come together, how that reflects the journey I went on. It’s about what happens when you’re stretched physically, mentally, even vaginally! I think it’s just humbled me, too, becoming a mother. It’s made me feel more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt before. But I feel more human, more embodied. I can’t escape life by making beautiful things as much as I did. But there’s sort of a beauty to my mortality now.”
You can watch “The Dream of Delphi” video below.
Bat For Lashes has also announced summer live dates in the UK and Europe. Those are listed below.
The Dream Of Delphi:
1. The Dream Of Delphi
2. Christmas Day
3. Letter To My Daughter
4. At Your Feet
5. The Midwives Have Left
6. Home
7. Breaking Up
8. Delphi Dancing
9. Her First Morning
10. Waking Up
11. The Dream of Delphi (Bonus Extended Strings Version)
Bat For Lashes 2024 Tour Dates:
12-Jun Oxford Academy 2, UK
18-Jun Town Hall, Birmingham, UK
19-Jun Beacon, Bristol, UK
24-Jun Barbican, London, UK
25-Jun De La Warr Pavillion, UK
27-Jun Factory International Theatre, Manchester, UK
29-Jun Siren’s Call Festival, Luxembourg
18-Jul Colours of Ostrava, Czech Republic