Fur and Gold by Bat for Lashes, a.k.a. Natasha Khan, is one of those albums that you describe to friends as haunting (though it's not, really, just darkly intriguing) and cavernous (which it is, in that druidic, harpsichordian realm that Led Zeppelin used to inhabit), mentioning that Khan's voice is capable of the beautiful, otherworldly singing that earns endless comparisons to Bjork and Kate Bush. (Close your eyes, though, and you'll swear that's Siouxsie Sioux howling about not turning back in a breathless gallop among the redwood giants and shadow banquets of "Horse and I," or whispering broken confessions amid a backdrop of widescreen ambience and Phil Spector drums in "What's a Girl to Do?") You end up making a litany of arch comparisons to other, superficially similar artists, simply because any other attempt at describing Khan's sound of Renaissance antiquity cross-pollinating with postmodernity -- the trip-hop bass of "Trophy" that riptides into the autoharp lilt of the spectral "Tahiti," for instance -- falls woefully short of music so cleverly askew and oddly beautiful.

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Band: http://www.batforlashes.co.uk/

Label: http://www.echo.co.uk/