Bat For Lashes – “The Hunger”
When Bat For Lashes first announced the new album Lost Girls, the follow-up to 2016’s The Bride, she did it with the rapturous new synthpop track “Kids In The Dark.” And in the song’s video, Natasha Khan and friends appeared as young Los Angeles vampires, playing out a tragically doomed romance. Today, Khan has shared another song from Lost Girls, and this one, “The Hunger,” happens to share a title with The Hunger, Tony Scott’s cult-beloved 1983 postpunk vampire movie — the one that starred David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and, in a memorable opening nightclub scene, Bauhaus. This cannot be a coincidence.
“The Hunger” follows “Kids In The Dark” and “Feel For You” as the third song we’ve heard from Lost Girls. It’s exactly the type of rich, dark, textured beauty that we have come to expect from Bat For Lashes, with Khan’s voice soaring above chiming keyboards and rippling guitar sounds and reverbed-out drum booms. And the lyrics all seem to play out the vampire theme: “I want to breathe / And feel this forever / But I want to feed / The hunger inside.”
Sadly, the video for “The Hunger” is totally free of vampire-related content. But it’s still a cool video. Natasha Khan plays some kind of cult leader, commanding a desert-based coven as they play out a mysterious ritual. Khan directed the video herself, and you can watch it below.
Lost Girls is out 9/6 on AWAL Recordings.