
Bat for Lashes“Prescilla”
[2006]




Unlike most artists who've earned the Devendra Banhart seal of approval, Natasha Khan is best suited to crafting pop music, as she does on this icy cut from her debut, Fur and Gold. It's skeletal in its simplicity-- bass drum, handclaps, harp strums, single-note piano figures-- and for the big chorus she adds a little bit of tambourine and some harmonies. But each of these elements is carefully placed to give the song a bounce that's rarely achieved in this sort of arty pop.
Lyrically, Khan's ambiguous pronouns make it unclear exactly who is speaking and to whom-- or if there is even a distinction between the two-- but she includes enough straightforward lines like, "She wants to live in a place that has a number and a name," that the disconnect between the tricky lyrics and the stark yearning of the music gives the song a Magic Eye quality, making it endlessly repeatable.
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