New Bat for Lashes video: ‘Pearl Dream’
Natasha’s second single from one of the year’s best albums, “Two Suns,” gets a pretty typical Bat for Lashes approach for its video. Costumes, nature, bright/dark contrasts and some goofy wire flying around. Nice to see Nat doing her own ’stunts’ though :).
Not sure where the blond-wigged version of Natasha comes in. Anyone care to shed some light?
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Tibi is the co-founder and current editor in chief of ZME Music. He's had a passion for music since when he can remember, but since he lacks the necessary skills to make music, he decided to simply mix in another passion of his: writing.
Thanks to the marvels of the Internet, anyone can voice out and, in time, Tibi has helped a lot of artists and made a lot of friends by following his double passion for writing and music.
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May 29th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
here’s the best way of understanding Pearl (Khan in the blonde wig)… this is taken from the FADER interview:
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It was in New York that Pearl, an illusory blonde femme fatale first emerged. Khan would wear a platinum wig “stalking the nighttime streets” while her friend Jordan took pictures. She’d appear at parties as this new character with massive eyelashes, blue eye shadow and red lips. “It was really interesting psychologically,” she says of her transformation from a brunette. “People seemed slightly intimidated, and there’s a lot more sexual tension in the air.”
….The Natasha Khan vs. Pearl dynamic isn’t about performance or persona, like Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce or David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. Rather it’s an inner split: Pearl is the escapist, drama-prone, devastating id, to Khan’s rational superego. She’s a “subterranean prowling witch,” at odds with Khan’s “desert being, which is very much about nature, inter-connectiveness and acceptance.”
…Sometimes the two halves duel directly, as on “Siren’s Song,” where the languid verses find Khan contemplating what it is to be a perfect, nurturing woman (keeping the bed warm and being “proud when you dazzle”), but in the chorus Pearl comes crashing in, destroying the calm with cacophonous piano chords and insistent drums. But a conclusion is found with “The Big Sleep,” the album’s closer that features cult ’60s crooner Scott Walker, an internet collaboration that Khan still can’t quite believe happened. The song is Pearl’s finale. “The curtain’s coming down, she’s going to take her millions of sleeping pills and finally enter nothingness,” says Khan. “She had to subside. The aware side of me woke up, and the more I woke up, the more Pearl fell asleep.”
The seeds of inspiration for Pearl were largely visual: the portraits of Cindy Sherman, the shape-shifting drag queens of Paris is Burning and particularly the 1955 film noir The Night of the Hunter, where a young boy and his even smaller sister Pearl try to escape Robert Mitchum’s murderous preacher. “Perhaps my Pearl is like that little Pearl grown up, orphaned and traveling down this dreamy river surrounded by dark forces,” says Khan. “Also, in folklore the pearl is like a droplet of the moon falling into the ocean. She’s supposed to govern the subconscious world.”
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source: http://www.thefader.com/features/2009/2/20/fader-60-bat-for-lashes-cover-story
May 30th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Thank you, Rachel. Most insightful
May 31st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
yay! glad it helped.