Bat For Lashes - The Dream Of Delphi 

Even if you headed into this sixth studio album from Bat for Lashes without any knowledge of the circumstances of its production, a cursory glance over the track listing would quickly give the game away. The Dream of Delphi is named after Natasha Khan’s three-year-old daughter and sees her navigating motherhood, as song titles including ‘Letter to My Daughter’, ‘The Midwives Have Left’ and ‘Her First Morning’ suggest. This is a chronicle as much of Natasha’s own rebirth as it is the actual birth of her first child, as she takes the opportunity to perform a musical reset after venturing into poppier territory than ever on her last album, 2019’s ‘Lost Girls’. The results are glorious; in going back to basics and embracing minimalism, Natasha has made her best record in over a decade. With the piano at the record’s core, she processes the emotional maelstrom of early motherhood with palpable tenderness. There are moments of swooning beauty (‘Christmas Day’, ‘At Your Feet’), and sparse nervousness (‘The Midwives Have Left’), as well as unbridled joy (‘Delphi Dancing’). In among it all, there is still room for experimentation, with groove-infused pop on ‘Home’ and a moody, Lynchian atmosphere suffusing ‘Breaking Up’. If there was a sense that Natasha had perhaps lost her way slightly on the conceptual likes of ‘The Bride’ and ‘Lost Girls’, she finds her feet again magnificently here, with simplicity key; the lyrics, the melodies, the gorgeous intertwining of piano and synth.