Mercury Music Prize 2007

Any regular reader of this blog will know that it first came in to being, in September 2006, as a direct result of my wishing to reply to a post on US-based blog "The Yellow Stereo" that, incidentally, is no longer to be found at the url that they were using back then; it can now be found at http://theyellowstereo.com/.

My first actual blog post was also a comment on the very same new UK band - Bat For Lashes - that is both the creation and the performance alter-ego of Natasha Khan.

Their set at Latitude 2007 (during which I took all the pictures in this post) was stymied by equipment malfunction; in particular the sustain pedal for the electric piano, which proved to be utterly unreliable. It shortened their set by two songs and Natasha's understandable disappointment, tinged with embarrassment and annoyance, was quite palpable (at least from the front row).

Bat For Lashes live at Latitude 2007. 'What's A Girl To Do?'

They handled it all so well and, by way of recompense, a few days later the début album 'Fur and Gold' was announced as one of the twelve nominees for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize!

The tracks that they were able to perform were however even better than could possibly be imagined. Even without on-stage malfunctions the album Fur and Gold is not, on the face of it, so very obviously transferable to live performance.

L - R: Abi Fry, Ginger Lee, Lizzy Carey and Natasha Khan. This was taken during the performance of 'Sad Eyes'.

If you haven't been lucky enough to catch Bat For Lashes live yet then I suggest you try and get hold of a copy of their latest 7" 'What's A Girl To Do?'.

The b-side is a very good live version of 'Sarah'.