National Album Day 2019: The Bride by Bat For Lashes

I’ve always thought Natasha Kahn‘s voice was beautifully melancholic, until this album best evidenced for me on tracks like Sad Eyes or the single Laura. With The Bride she uses her songwriting and performing talents superbly to tell a story of love and loss.

The story opens with The Bride’s romantic anticipation of her wedding on the eve of the ceremony, followed by a nightmare of the groom’s demise. Come the day she is left at the altar, not believing she has been deserted, and then learning of the death of her betrothed in a road accident. The album the follows the path of her grief through anger and jealousy of happiness around her to acceptance and then moving on and looking to the future. In places the emotion is raw, the anger and sense of injustice finds space and expression in Widows Peak, and the realisation that life will go on and there is a future in I Will Love Again.

The album has to be listened to as a complete piece of work, proof of the saying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Each track is powerful without being demanding, no stridency, yet the sound and unconventionally structured but flowing lyrics hold your attention from beginning to end.

The Bride by Bat For Lashes, 2016, by chosen photographer Simon Partington

Amy Macdonald @ Hammersmith Apollo (Kalpesh Patel)

Amy Macdonald Warms A Frozen Hammersmith Apollo With Heart, Humour & Huge Hits

“Are we having a nice time so far? Are we getting a bit warmer?” Amy Macdonald grins, peering out at a Hammersmith Apollo audience bundled into coats and scarves. It’s a question that becomes a running joke throughout the night — because despite the November chill and the decidedly frugal heating, Macdonald sets about warming the 5,000-capacity venue the only way she knows how: with humour, heart, and a powerhouse performance that leaves no seat unshaken.

&U&I @ Muthers Studio (Henry Finnegan / @finneganfoto)

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Bad Nerves @ O2 Institute, Birmingham (Nick Allan)

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