Bat For Lashes - ‘The Hunger’ (extract) @ De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 25 Jun 2024

An all too brief extract from Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes’ song ‘The Hunger’, (from her vampire-themed 2019 album ‘Lost Girls’), during this leg of her 2024 The Dream Of Delphi tour, following the recent release of her lovely motherhood-themed album of that name, (Delphi being her young daughter’s name, of course). (I regret not having filmed the entire song, indeed the entire set, but I felt obliged not to film for prolonged periods due to being seated in the central stalls area directly next to and in front of other people, as opposed to my location off to the side in one of the raised terraces during the Feb 2010 Bat For Lashes concert at the same venue, when I felt confident enough not to be blocking anyone’s line of sight while filming, and able to get a bird’s eye view of the stage). I loved Natasha’s 80’s style synths in this and many of her other Lost Girls songs, and the aptly blood-tinged stage lighting effects deployed during this song here. I wonder if the perennial popularity of Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ with its similar nostalgic plunge into that period’s American gothic synth heavy score was any inspiration for Natasha when composing Lost Girls, (though clearly the vampire film ‘Lost Boys’ certainly was). She laughingly mentioned at some point during her set that she’d elected to sport a (presumably uncomfortably hot) velvet outfit on perhaps the hottest day of the year so far, that she’d enjoyed fish & chips on the beach earlier that day, that she was delighted to return to the Sussex coast for this gig, where she’d spent many of her formative years, and that she always loved seeing the splendid De La Warr Pavilion, graced over the years by so many other musical legends, such as Patti Smith whose 2011 concert here was what had last brought Natasha to this venue. I confess I’d hoped against hope that Natasha might have during this Dream of Delphi gig also sung the heart-warming (& seemingly rarely performed) ‘Winter Dreams’, my fave from her gorgeous 2012 ‘The Haunted Man’ album, if only because it mentions “Scaredy rabbits make good paper ghosts / That lick the salt off the Sussex coast…”, though I appreciate it might not seem an obvious choice for mid summer.