Fashion

April Culture Index

Musician Natasha Khan is just a normal girl (she says), The Gansevoort South brings Meatpacking cool to Miami and Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange star in the new Grey Gardens.

Now hear this

By Sarah Nicole Prickett

Most famous (or almost-famous) types will say they “just want to live a normal life.” When Natasha Khan says it, you don’t believe her either. But it’s not that she’s disingenuous, it’s just hard to imagine the U.K. musician—who calls herself Bat for Lashes and wears feather headdresses—having the first clue about “normal.”

One listen to Two Suns (Parlaphone/EMI Music Canada), the follow-up to her Mercury-nominated debut Fur and Gold, and you’ll enter an archaic fantasy far from the Britpop norm. Full of hypnotic synths, experimental folk stylings and the Kate Bush echoes of Khan’s eerie voice, Two Suns sounds more like it was recorded under two full moons.

“It’s a mixture of all sorts of opposites,” says Khan, 29. “I wanted to unite elements of landscapes, relationships, countries, dream worlds and projections, consciousness and subconsciousness.”

It’s also an album born of “feeling fragmented.” First came a world tour, and then last summer’s Euro tour with Radiohead, when Khan wowed crowds in “crazy silk dresses and ruffled collars and stuff” by Aussie It label Romance Was Born.

With her dark prettiness, Khan would be an easy cast for indie-fashion princess, but she says she’s “really not a labels kind of girl.” Oh, but wait: “I quite like Gareth Pugh,” she says. “And Alexander McQueen made me this nice black lace hoodie for my album cover. Apart from that, it’s just all this old stuff I have.” World’s best “old stuff” city? “Austin.” Yes, Texas. “I really like its vintage shops! I found a nice ’70s jumpsuit and a really old crown.” -Ah, there’s our indie-pop princess, after all.

First published in FASHION Magazine April 2009

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