Capitol

On Bat For Lashes’ third album, musician Natasha Khan culls the intense emotional delivery that she unleashed on her 2006 debut Fur And Gold and its follow-up, 2009’s Two Suns, into a more singular channel. The hypnotic numbers that appear here on The Haunted Man are, as always, propelled by Khan’s breathy croon, but this time the artist feels more focused and the emotions are more intent. First single “Laura” strips the instrumentation to its barest minimum, allowing the vocal melody and its inherent feeling to surpass all else. It’s not all so sparse – “A Wall” employs delicate synth tones and the title track builds atmospheric clouds of sound and rhythmic drum beats around Khan’s voice. In the end, though, it’s that voice that males the disc so evocative.