Musician Bat for Lashes: ‘When you become a mother, a lot of empathy and rage comes up’

“This album is one of the purest pieces of work I’ve made, because it’s come directly from this experience of motherhood and the opening of my heart,” says British singer-songwriter/musician Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes.

While making her long-awaited sixth album, The Dream of Delphi, she found herself navigating new territory. During the pandemic year of 2020 she was living in Los Angeles, no longer with a mainstream record deal and, most significantly, had given birth to a daughter. The resulting music feels transformative, tender and fierce: not so much a “lockdown record” as a liberated statement. “It was made in a time when all bets were off,” she says. “I didn’t have a label, the world was shut down, there was nothing I was trying to prove.”

I have spoken to Khan, 44, before. On the first occasion, she was a twenty-something rising star, rocking glittery face-paint in a grimy Shoreditch pub. Today, we are back in east London — her home again after six years in LA — but the setting is a cosy café after school drop-off. Over the years, Khan has crafted an expansive catalogue, from the electro-folk fairytales of 2006 debut Fur and Gold to the lush retro-synth scores of 2019’s Lost Girls. She has earned numerous plaudits (including three Mercury Prize nominations and two Ivor Novello Awards) and collaborated with artists such as Beck, Damon Albarn and Jon Hopkins. And she has retained what she once cheerfully described as “stubborn vision”.

“I’ve been quite uncompromising and strong-willed,” she says, pouring chamomile tea into a dainty cup. I notice her daughter’s name, Delphi, tattooed on her left wrist. “Initially, it was difficult because I was on a major label, whereas I think now I’m in my forties, everyone knows I’m not trying to make a ‘pop hit’.”

I think the mother as an archetype is one of the most potent healing forces that we can integrate, study, love and develop within ourselves

Even so, The Dream of Delphi extends Khan’s forte for intensely catchy and moving melodies. She previewed some of its material at a few gigs last summer, including a captivating London show for Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown Festival. She also showcased its accompanying dance choreography (developed with Alexandra Green): a kind of ritualistic flow that features in the video for the title track.

“All of these movements — the stomach, the warrior, making soup, rocking the baby — were improvised from everyday things,” she explains. “The back-breaking lifting becomes this dance in itself — grounding, repetitive, domestic, weird.”

But parenthood didn’t daunt her. “For me, not being focused is actually what brings in the best work,” laughs Khan. “The Dream of Delphi was knitted into the fabric of everyday life: being sleep-deprived, in this liminal space between worlds; going into the studio between breastfeeds, being really tired but full of love — it was like it tore down my ego and all barriers. It suited me to be doing this really cosmic role and this really mundane role . . . because that’s who I am, really.”

She describes the new compositions as “song poems”; the most delicate, reflective pieces (such as “The Midwives Have Left”) were written earliest, while she recalls playing “The Dream of Delphi”’s hypnotic synth motif to her then three-month-old daughter (“she was laughing and crying, just feeling music”). The collection also documents Khan’s split from Delphi’s father, Australian actor and Lost Girls co-star Samuel Watkins, with pain and enduring love. There is a curveball cover too: Baauer’s club pop tune “Home” performed as a rave lullaby.

While this is technically Khan’s second LA album, it exists in a different stratosphere to the slick city romance of Lost Girls. Still, her distinctive voice and instrumentation remains unmistakable; as a child, she studied classical piano before focusing on improvisation. “I wasn’t very good at reading music,” she says. “I just stopped trying to learn other people’s stuff. So I’ve developed quite an unusual style, but it’s so specifically me. When I play piano now, it’s like I’m singing through my fingers.”

Her music has regularly involved mystical alter-egos and archetypes; this time, she presents the inclusive maternal power of the “Motherwitch”. “I think the mother as an archetype is one of the most potent healing forces that we can integrate, study, love and develop within ourselves,” she says.

How has that force affected Khan personally? “I feel like I’m a lot more connected to myself, rawer,” she replies. “I’d always found it more comfortable to be in these ethereal spaces, and not necessarily felt part of the world, whether that’s through trauma or just being an imaginative or sensitive child. But there’s something humbling about the physical changes in my body, and the act of nurturing and loving somebody, and it’s rooted me in some way.

“Of course, it’s bloody hard when I’m exhausted — but there’s still this connection to celestial realms, and that’s made me so happy. Because I felt a little bit lonely before.”

On The Dream of Delphi, Khan celebrates her child but considers her place as a daughter, too. She has outgrown a mainstream industry that behaved like a demanding parent — “they’d expect you to put aside your instincts and just do things because you’re supposed to. I did that for years, and got a thyroid illness because of it”.

She is also increasingly conscious of her own mother’s experience as a single parent. “I think when you become a mother, a lot of empathy and rage comes up, and that’s natural,” says Khan. “It’s realising you’re part of a lineage, and you’re not going to get everything right. But you’re hopefully going to evolve.”

The single ‘Letter to My Daughter’ is released on March 21. ‘The Dream of Delphi’ is released on May 31. Tour from June 12, batforlashes.com