After teasing new music last week, Bat for Lashes has announced her new album and shared the title track.
The Dream of Delphi arrives on May 31 via Mercury KX. A concept album about motherhood through “devotional love songs about the spirituality, ancestry and folklore," the long-awaited follow-up to 2019's Lost Girls was named after project mastermind Natasha Khan's daughter, who was born in the summer of 2020.
“Motherhood I thought would take me away from my art, but it opened up this massive world,” Khan explained in a statement. She went forth to call the lead track, which lists Mary Lattimore as a co-writer, the "manifesto of the album."
“It’s like a spell being cast," Khan continued. "It’s the conjuring, the manifestation, the drawing-down of Delphi from the ether. This is me calling on her soul. It’s about going up into the stars and down into the underworld simultaneously, how celestials and deep guttural sounds can come together, how that reflects the journey I went on. It’s about what happens when you’re stretched physically, mentally, even vaginally! I think it’s just humbled me, too, becoming a mother. It’s made me feel more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt before. But I feel more human, more embodied. I can’t escape life by making beautiful things as much as I did. But there’s sort of a beauty to my mortality now.”
"The Dream of Delphi" is the type of grand, tingle-inducing, billowy slow-build that is extremely characteristic of Bat for Lashes, ending with an electronic breakdown and baby gurgling. You can watch the music video below, where you'll also find the album tracklist.
The Dream of Delphi:
1. The Dream of Delphi
2. Christmas Day
3. Letter to My Daughter
4. At Your Feet
5. The Midwives Have Left
6. Home
7. Breaking Up
8. Delphi Dancing
9. Her First Morning
10. Waking Up
11. The Dream of Delphi (Bonus Extended Strings Version)
