4.5 STARS
From Shakespeare's Iago to recent epics such as There Will Be Blood, Western culture loves to offer cautionary tales against unchecked ambition. To harbor restless hunger for a higher station, the timeless warning of this archetype goes, is to risk coming undone by one's own machinations.
Natasha Khan (aka Bat For Lashes) is obviously not impressed. On her sophomore album, Two Suns, the Pakistani-born British songstress takes the theatrical impulses and moonlit melodrama that distinguished her worthy debut album, Fur & Gold (2005) and amps up the footlights to an impossible degree. Cosmic-collage cover art worthy of a heyday-era Asia album? Check. Totally ridonculous lyrical conceits? Check. According to her label's press releases, Two Suns deals with a modern-day fable that uses a tale of two planets to reflect on "philosophy of the self and duality."
If that's not enough, the album also marks the introduction of a blonde femme-fatale alter ego named Pearl, who battles for supremacy against Khan's "more mystical, desert-born spiritual self" (press release again - no way I could make this up). Near as I can tell, Sasha Fierce - uh, sorry, Pearl - dominates the album's second half, but there's no discernible plot to back this stuff up, so it's anyone's guess as to how this space-bound soap opera plays out in Khan's mind.
These harbingers of impending prog-rock signal the possibility of another tragedy-of-ambition allegory in the making, but a single listen to Two Suns dispels that notion outright. Almost every starry-eyed affectation and psychedelic detour employed here could tank an album in lesser hands, but Khan's wellspring of melodic wizardry and charisma transform the exploratory Two Suns into a haunting, singular work that only offers further testament to her talent with each grand gesture.
In fact, the only cautionary tale here may be that of the numerous critics who were ready to crown Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion as the best album of 2009 back in January, because the highlights from Two Suns easily hold their own with that excellent record. Lead single "Daniel" spices the icy detachment of electro and modern Italo-disco with a swooping violin and a lush chorus that echoes for miles, while opener "Glass" marries taut, muscular post-rock drums with slashing bells and Khan's operatic vocals to create an impregnable tower of strange, seductive sounds.
Like many of the tracks here, "Glass" is almost impossible to parse out into individual instruments - it feels like it unravelled out of a collapsing universe, or maybe spewed forth from a cauldron behind a curtain of smoke. Where like-minded hams such as Coldplay and Snow Patrol try to traverse the stars with rote U2-style delay effects and copious reverb, Khan discards the traditional rock palette for strange chimes and clanking things that sound like they were unearthed from ancient Aztec cities. It's a daring tactic that lends her lyrical musings about "hot white diamonds burning through rainbows" a surprising credibility that has eluded most progressive rock for decades.
Almost all of the 11 tracks on Two Suns succeed beyond wildest expectations, conjuring a mystic, somnambulant mood out of unfamiliar instruments and Khan's Ziggy Stardust-style personas of astral wayfarer/hippie goddess. Only the Enya-on-mushrooms bad trip of "Two Planets" falls short, mostly thanks to an unwelcome Knife-esque robotic vocal effect that feels like a cheap parlor trick - the sole mis-step in an album full of bravura experiments that reap huge returns.
Part of the fun lies in Khan's distinctive aesthetic, which eschews contemporary indie trends toward lo-fi scuzz and nonplussed attitudes in favor of crystalline production and emotional plateaus that recall Bjork, P.J. Harvey and Portishead. Khan sings each line as if she's wringing the last quivering tears out of her naked soul under white-hot stage lights - and if that sounds unbearable, it could easily turn out that way in less capable hands. Instead, Khan strikes a master performer's high-wire balance between vocal precision and soulful vulnerability, selling each vocal turn with the poise of a Renaissance tragedian on only her second outing.
Bloggers made a big deal of Khan's all-star collaborations with Brooklyn experimentalists Yeasayer and bizarro-pop recluse Scott Walker on Two Suns, but what's surprising here is how little they matter. Walker's ballyhooed appearance on closer "The Big Sleep" functions merely as a brief mood piece (albeit an effective one), and I can't even tell where Yeasayer shows up - not that it matters much. If anything, Two Suns proves that Bat For Lashes' singular, kaleidoscopic vision almost precludes any sharing of the stage - this is her show exclusively, and anyone who attends will likely feel elated to stand star-struck in the wings.
Now that you've read about it, listen to it. Visit phoenixdiversions.wordpress.com for this week's streams.
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