Two Suns
- Bat for Lashes
- Band Name: Bat for Lashes
- Record Label: Astralwerks
- Release Date: Apr 7, 2009
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Dark, but never needlessly so, Two Suns offers a rich, distinct world of subterranean lullabies, spacey timbres, and ghostly beauty.
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90Two Suns then is everything it could have been--a worthy follow up to Bat For Lashes’ Mercury nominated Fur & Gold... and so much more. Here and now, take a trip, you just may come out enchanted.
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85A significant step forward from her debut, Two Suns is home to some of the year's most thrilling music so far.
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It’s the ultimate inner battle of good and evil, one that even the best of us wrestle with when making ourselves vulnerable to the entanglements and snares of love, and one that Khan has found her most confident and enthralling voice in yet.
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An easy (if slightly front-loaded) listen that Khan performs effortlessly.
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Khan’s sublime voice easily distracts from any lyrical ponderousness, and it lends even lines about “diamonds burning through rainbows” a dreamy sort of sense.
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Two Suns is epic in scope and ambition and requires a similarly epic patience to unravel its charms.
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80While her second album is frequently more drama than action, over the long haul, the magical world she creates is one worth being immersed it.
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Two Suns is another pitch-black dream world, with Khan's production touches helping paint her enchanting pictures. Color me enchanted. [Spring 2009, p.64]
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This record is one made with the artist’s full investment, every ounce of heart and soul poured into it visible for all to see.
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80The slightly pretentious concept, though, is balanced by the equally lavish music and specifically Khan's voice.
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80Two Suns doesn’t have to parade itself around as a concept album to prove that music has always been, and always should be, about telling a story, as Khan does here.
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80Two Suns is an intoxicating, addictive album, a step on from "Fur And Gold" a leap into a galaxy of its very own. [May 2009, p.118]
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80Two Suns is the rare concept album that's better for the bedroom than for bong hits.
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Psychedelic experimentalists Yeasayer add more beats than last time, but nothing that overpowers Khan's out-there mindset, stunning vocals and obvious talents. [May 2009, p.114]
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80Two Suns is fantastic as well as fantastical.
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80Two Suns is a dense, intricate album that features at least six brilliant songs, two of which are pure pop gems.
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Khan is a fantastic package and a good, if not as maverick as some believe, songwriter. In a year when no one wants to sing about making a cup of tea, she's just the ticket.
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80Welcome to the (haunted) house of fun.
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Another unique and compelling album of mystical indie-rock with shimmering vocals, proving she not only has a voice to be reckoned with, but is a voice to be reckoned with.
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Anyways, ignore the write-ups (uh, except this one), which won’t be able to help quoting all the spiritual mumbo jumbo about dualism, and enjoy what seems, to me, unstated genre practice at play on a very large stage.
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Suns is slightly less immediate, but the Brit's floaty vocals and pagan-princess themes still bewitch.
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Two Suns rarely ventures into anything truly experimental; when it does, as in the maelstromic beat of 'Siren Song' or the Scott Walker cameo in album closer 'The Big Sleep,' it makes you curious as to what Khan could deliver if she weren't so committed to her "studenty" (in the UK sense) affectations.
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Two Suns is nearly as graceful and poetic as Bat for Lashes' best work; it's just that the album's massive concepts and sounds require a little more time and patience to unravel to get to the songs' hearts.
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Pounding on pianos, cranking out delicate little click-clack beats and shivering through choruses with an ultraromantic soprano, Khan proves she's a powerhouse under her billowy sleeves.
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60While Two Suns almost inevitably finds Natasha Khan caught between the rock of artistic muse and the hard place of major label rockability, there's still invention and charisma enough here to keep both leftfield chin-stroker and ingenue fan onside for now. [Apr 2009, p.106]
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60Though the production has improved, there's still a certain lyrical flimsiness and a sense that, enjoyable and stylish as Two Suns is, it's still just horsing around in the dressing-up box of '80s pop, in a way that's more Might Boosh than Kate Bush. [May 2009, p.77]
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60The contrast between Pearl and Natasha isn’t always crisply drawn, but a central conviction animates both.
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60While the weaker songs are definitely not throwaways, they miss the mark in more than one way.
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The joy of "Fur and Gold" has vanished and taken some of Khan’s potential with it. This is request for their safe return, no questions asked.
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She has hitched her modest talent to an art-rock wagon she won't outpace anytime soon.
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50No question this is meant to be a haunting mood piece, and her gorgeous voice--somewhere between Björk and Tori Amos, to name the obvious referents--makes up in some part for what's lacking in dynamics and compelling hooks.