Bat for Lashes Discusses Debut Sexwitch Album, Shares "Helelyos"

This past Saturday, Bat for Lashes‘ Natasha Khan unveiled her new project, Sexwitch, with a surprise set at Green Man Festival in Wales. Now, she’s announced its self-titled debut album, a set of six covers of 1970s psych and folk songs from around the world. It’s out September 25 via Echo/BMG. Check out the tracklist and listen to “Helelyos” below. Update (8/24 5:20 a.m.): Below, read Pitchfork’s interview with Khan from Green Man.

Sexwitch comprises Khan, her sometime collaborators TOY, and producer Dan Carey. The group first collaborated in 2013 on a cover of pre-revolution Iranian folk song “The Bride”. The album was recorded live in Carey’s South London studio.

Sexwitch will headline London’s XOYO on September 29. 

Sexwitch:

01 Ghoroobaa Ghashangan (Iran)
02 Ha Howa Ha Howa (Morocco)
03 Helelyos (Iran)
04 Kassidat El Hakka (Morocco)
05 War In Peace (U.S.A)
06 Lam Plearn Kiew Bao (Thailand) 

On Sunday morning, Pitchfork’s Laura Snapes sat down with Natasha Khan backstage at the Green Man Festival to discuss the origins of the Sexwitch project, the new Bat for Lashes album, and Khan’s forthcoming directorial debut.

Pitchfork: You were just saying you felt like you were in a trance when you came off stage last night. How did the performance go?

Natasha Khan: It takes a massive amount of surrender and trust to step into that headspace and not worry about what’s gonna come out in lyrics and getting things right. I’m such a perfectionist, I love things to be beautiful and perfect, so this is a really good new way of doing things. I was really nervous, but I thought, let’s just fucking have it, grab it by the balls and do it. The moment the first note hit, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I felt so much adrenaline and power, and I thought my lungs were gonna implode. We hadn’t rehearsed that much—only over the last week and a half. It felt like we were on a roller coaster, keening off the edge. I was holding on for dear life, and everyone else said that too when we got off. But that’s what it feels like to be alive, isn’t it? I kept having Kurt Cobain flashbacks, for some reason he kept popping into my mind. 

Pitchfork: You and TOY did “The Bride” a couple of years ago—how did this project come out of that?

NK: Dan [Carey, producer] and I have been working together on various bits and bobs, and it was so effortless and we enjoyed it so much that we always talked about doing some more. One day, he called me up and asked if I wanted to go record shopping. So we did, and picked out loads of old weird psych records from different countries, strange folk mountain songs, and took home seven or 10 of them. We got back and played through all of them and some of them we were like, oh my god, this is so badass—really tough, amazing rhythms. I was struck by all of the female singers, a couple of them almost sounded like M.I.A.—but from in a mountain village in the middle of nowhere. [Skip Spence’s] “War and Peace”—that’s an American song, I found that separately and brought it to the table. It’s from a similar era, I think they sit together quite nicely. We thought, let’s get TOY in and put it all down to tape. They learned the songs in a day and recorded them in a day. Each song was one take.

Pitchfork: Did you get the lyrics translated?

NK: We looked for translations but there weren’t very many at all, so my manager and lovely friends of ours who know Iranian people, who know Thai people, we sent out an email across friends and asked them to send back translations. Some people sent back differing translations. People’s interpretation of poetry is really interesting—sometimes you translate something really word-for-word, and other people put it into a more poetic context. I did a really quick, instinctive pulling out and underlining of things I liked, and started mixing them together to create these songs.

Pitchfork: Maybe only in “Horses of the Sun” have you done that very physical, wailing singing before. How do you get into that zone?

NK: When I was in the studio doing the singing, I felt like I was being completely taken over by something else. I don’t even really remember how it came about, it was just channeling something really heavy-going, and by the end of each song I was shaking. Especially those spontaneous screaming orgasmic bits, they were just coming out of me. At the end of each one, Dan would look at me like, oh my god, what was that! By the end of it I was a mess. I love it, it’s really liberating and such a pleasure to sing like that. I feel like I’ve been wanting to sing like that all my life, but something had to click.

Pitchfork: Psych is this big broad umbrella term. What possibilities do you find within that sound?

NK: It’s really organic. When I use electronic beats and program things, there’s something quite brain about that—you’re feeling it in your body but it’s like a puzzle you wanna solve, and it gets very detailed. I really enjoy that side of music, but then for this, you can let things play out and improvise. Things can just extend, it’s human beings all playing together, like one organism. I remember touring with Tame Impala in Australia, at the Laneway festival, and standing side of stage being brought to tears because I was seeing the way they move as one organism, slowing down and speeding up. I remember thinking, god, I’m so jealous—I really want to do music like that! It’s freeing and more human and visceral—not that it’s any better, it’s just really different. I think I will bring more of this live feeling into new Bat For Lashes material because I’ve enjoyed it so much.

Pitchfork: Where did the name Sexwitch come from?

NK: It came from my flange! [laughs] No, it didn’t. It came into my head because we were trying to look up beautiful Moroccan names, or names of stars or goddesses, but I thought, god, this is getting so fucking cliché, I can’t deal with this. I just thought, let’s just say what it is. When we were recording it, every time I’d do funny sex noises, me and Dan said, we’re being sexy witches. It’s a bit tongue in cheek, we’re not trying to be super cool, but I think it’s memorable. There is something very magical and dark and feminine archetypal force about it. Also, when I was singing—and this sounds ridiculous—it did feel like I was channeling some sort of ancestral feelings about witches. I kept feeling witch spirits and people that had been burned and repressed and pushed down. I just felt like I’d opened a portal—you know in Ghost, where all these dark spirits come out of the grates in the floor? I felt like something had been opened. So there is definitely a witch thing, but not because it’s now cool to be witchy and mystical, but generally about that sort of ancient feminine archetype. And also not just the feminine, not just being a woman, but there’s a quote we put in the press release because I loved it so much: about the feminine aspects in men and women, and men and women being connected to nature, power, sexuality, rebirth, regeneration. I feel like that’s in the name as well.

Pitchfork: Thinking about oppression—a lot of the songs on this were originally sung by women who come from countries where we now think of women as being very repressed. And also, countries where pop music might be banned today. Was that on your mind when you picked the songs? 

NK: I didn’t want to make it political; Dan and I were aware of that, but we were picking from a purely musical resonance. But thinking about it, it is beautiful when you look at the lyrics, how playful, teasing and liberated they sound. And “Ha Howa Ha Howa”, the “he addicted me” song—the girl that originally sang that [Cheikha Hanna Ouakki] was really young, 15, 16. She traveled around these mountain villages and became this vagabond singer. She’s the one that sounded so street, so contemporary. I loved her spirit, I felt her freedom in the way she was singing it. So it’s really nice to shine a light on that time in those countries where there was liberation. They feel the same things we do, it’s just blanketed in our impression of oppressive regimes. I think deep down, we’re all from the same place. People now can enjoy this kind of music next to contemporary psychedelic music. I think it’s really important to feel free, and to be free to express everyone’s humanity, the things that link us, that we’re all just falling in love with people or running away. The darker lyrics, like “Kassidat El Hakka”—“the doctors won’t cure your torment/ The right to seek is in your hands,” “if you’re fleeing and you do not know, it will linger in your soul”—that really deep taking responsibility for your own journey, and being responsible for evolution, it’s very progressive in that message, which is kind of the opposite of organized religion. I don’t want to get too political but I think I’m an advocate for freedom of expression.

Pitchfork: While some of these songs are very universal, “Helelyos”, a song originally written about the beauty of south Iranian women, becomes something very different when you sing “my dark girls, my dark girls.” It’s more like a rallying cry. 

NK: It changes it and I love that expression, “My dark girls are going on adventures/ We are not afraid of any dangers.” I just think “my dark girls” is a representation of that feminine spirit.

Pitchfork: Some people would say that western artists taking music from other cultures is a kind of cultural appropriation. What do you think?

NK: Well I’m half-Pakistani, so shove it! I think they need to get a life and not worry about it. Music’s free and music’s for everyone to enjoy and express and interpret. It transcends countries and times and decades and I don’t think it should be an issue. It’s definitely not exploitative, it’s a celebration, and there’s a lot of respect and love for that music there. I feel a kinship with all of these songs and really wanna show them to people. 

Pitchfork: There’s a difference between this and posh white women wearing war bonnets to music festivals, for sure. Cultures benefit from absorbing more of each other.

NK: Exactly. There is a lot of that being brought into western culture, but I think it’s to our benefit because otherwise we’ve lost a lot of our rituals and adornments, the beauty of incorporating nature. I think if you turned up to this interview in a massive giant headdress, I’d probably be really into it. 

Pitchfork: To be fair, it’s all your fault.

NK: Yeah exactly! [laughs] I think no matter what it is, as long as you’re enjoying it, celebrating it, and feeling great because of it, then whoever originally did that, they’d be happy. I don’t know. There’s a lot of pigeonholes and lines and maps and barriers and constructs put around everything, and I think at the moment, I’m much more interested in dissolving those, the hotchpotch of what it is to be alive today. 

Pitchfork: Artists like Robyn are putting less weight on the album and releasing more regular, experimental EPs. Does that way of working appeal to you? Is the album still the holy grail?

NK: I love the album as a format. I like to create universes and tell stories, and I feel like it’s a great amount of time to do that. But again, the EP thing is great as well. Any way you can get it out there—what each project is, whatever feels appropriate. I used that Beck song for that little YMC thing I did, it was just knocking around. I feel like doing more of that, putting things out when they happen, rather than waiting for the big machine to start turning.

Pitchfork: You’ve already written the next Bat For Lashes album, right?

NK: Hopefully it’ll be out in spring, yeah. It’s a big undertaking because thematically it’s very linked to a feature [film] that I’m writing at the moment. It has a story and I’m really excited! It’s going to be really good. But because I’ve done this, I feel like I might do a few more sessions and play some of the songs live a bit more, incorporate that into the recording—I haven’t done the final stage of recording yet. 

Pitchfork: And you have a short film coming too? 

NK: MTV got six short filmmakers, compiled the six shorts into a feature. I think it’s called Madly—they’re all on themes of love. Mine is a 15-minute short story: It’s about a bride, the morning of her wedding, being disturbed by subterranean weird feelings, message and signs. On the way to her wedding, something really crazy happens, and you’re left wondering whether she’s gonna go through with it. It’s all about redemption of grief, putting ghosts to bed before you can move into a fully committed relationship. It’s very countryside, weird, English, surreal.

Pitchfork: You directed it?

NK: I love directing. I worked with a brilliant DAP, Chloe Thomason—we had quite a strong female contingent, actually. She was my cinematographer, so we spent week beforehand sharing my favorite films, making storyboards, image boards, talking about color, types of light, composition of shots. I’ve been drawing a lot recently, I love the visual thing. It was really nice to have a collaborator again on that level. Directing actors was incredible. I think because of all the singing I do, it’s very much about being in your body and feeling things, so I felt like we had a good basis of understanding, ability to talk about nuances of performance. It was very whirlwind and I was worried I hadn’t got everything I needed, but then in the editing process—like an album—things just shine. Abi Fry, who played viola in the first Bat for Lashes band, she did the majority of the soundtrack. It was really nice to hand that over to someone. I did some synth drones but she was brilliant, she’s got beautiful pieces in the film. I can’t wait to direct a feature film, I really want to do it.

Pitchfork: Is your idea in the works?

NK: I still have to pitch it, but because of the encouraging responses I’ve had from the short, hopefully it won’t be impossible.

Pitchfork: How about the rest of the year? Your slate is packed.

NK: Finishing off the album, hopefully the film will come out at some film festivals—Sundance, or SXSW, and I think I might play SXSW as well. Then any Sexwitch shows—I really wanna do more, I want to take it out live, but I don’t know how much I can do it—I’m suffering from the headbanging!

Revisit our Cover Story on Bat for Lashes, “Glitter in the Dark“.

Watch Khan discuss her last album with Pitchfork.tv:

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