Natasha Khan, best known as Bat For Lashes, is perhaps one of the most talented music artists and has just released a new single, “The Dream Of Delphi.” The song is the title track of her upcoming studio album (her sixth) which will be released at the end of May. It is brooding, ethereal, captivating, spellbinding, and beneath all that, it still has the bare-faced audacity to make you feel happy. The drone-like sound drives into your mind like an unwelcome, insidious guest, but when it buries itself deeper you realise that you probably always wanted its beauty in your head forever. Her voice simply soars in a heavenward trajectory. In the past, she has been compared to maverick music artists like Bjork and Kate Bush. For me, on this track, she reaches the same level as both of those icons.
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We’ve all heard of “Bat Out Of Hell”, Bat For Lashes and Ozzy Osbourne’s taste for bat’s heads but now a real live bat (as opposed to the Ozzy one) has become a rock legend. Maybe not a big legend, but a legend nonetheless in my opinion.
During a recent US gig Napalm Death had to stop the show because a bat was flying persistently above the stage. The band might be hard-core rockers but they did see the funny side of it and broke into an impromptu Black Sabbath song!
No one was prepared to argue with Lily's new security guards Ethel and Doris
Todays post may be a bit random, I haven’t posted for a while so I just fancied getting back in the saddle as they say. Incidentally do you, like me, ever wonder who ‘they’ are? I should also warn you that this post makes a brief return to the Lily Allen Naked experiment.
Lily suggested that her next album might be a bit more soulful
So first up is the news from the 55th Ivor Novello awards that the wonderfully talented and entertaining Lily Allen won three awards; Best Song Musically & Lyrically for “The Fear” PRS Most Performed Song also for “The Fear” and Songwriter Of The Year along with Greg Kurstin. You can read all about it here on the BBC website. A few of my other favourite artists also won awards; Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and Bat For Lashes. The Ivor Novello Awards started in 1955 and are awarded largely for songwriting and are named after Welsh performer Ivor Novello (I bet that you never guessed that did you?) Learn more about the award that is nicknamed the Ivor here at Wikipedia
Catching falling stars appeared easy after winning three Ivors
An artist who has previously won an Ivor Lifetime Achievement award is Peter Gabriel, that was back in 2007. Today he is in the news for a slightly different reason. He is back in the UK to support a campaign to stop the development of the Woolley Valley near Bath. The valley is threatened with significant farming developments which it is claimed will ruin its picturesque appearance. So why is Gabriel interested in the Woolley Valley I hear you ask? Well it just so happens that he lived there for quite a while and more importantly, for me anyway, it is overlooked by Solsbury Hill. That hill is the subject of what I feel is far and away Mr Gabriel’s finest song, click here to listen to it and read the Guardian article about the campaign here. There is a well organised campaign to save Woolley Valley. You can show your support by visiting their site and signing the petition or even donating to the cause, click here to show your solidarity! And now that you have done something for the environment, make yourself feel even better by listening to one of the most inspiring songs that I know, “Solsbury Hill”
Or hear it again in the video below, this time with the appropriately named Happy Tree Friends
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 