Bat For Lashes – The Dream of Delphi Review

What does Bat For Lashes sound like?

Dreamy, sumptuous synth-driven dream pop music with an otherworldly core.

The review of ‘The Dream of Delphi’ by Bat For Lashes

Many female singer-songwriters find motherhood a deep creative well when it comes to writing music. Natasha Atlas, aka Bat For Lashes, found herself chronicling her thoughts on becoming a mother to her daughter Delphi. She doesn’t call them songs, rather song poems. Delphi is also the name of the Greek Oracle and so thematically Natasha balances how she feels as a mother now versus the world she hopes to leave for her daughter in the future. It is a heartwarming and nurturing album full of love and wonder.

Sonically the album is a return to the merger of real-world instruments and electronica too. The title track opens and closes the album with an extended strings version but it paints a sonic diary along the way. A ballet of synths are joined by beautiful strings that swell and spill over in volume and gratitude. It isn’t until after the three-minute mark that any electronic percussion bursts onto the scene for the extended outro. Mixing bird song and ultrasound heartbeats, the song expresses new life and the opportunities life brings. ‘Christmas Day’ follows as a piano and synth ballad whilst Natasha speaks of her newborn feeling like a new gift. It’s lovely but overshadowed by the utterly sublime ‘Letter To My Daughter’. that follows. This track is quintessential Bat For Lashes at her finest. Poetic lyrics, emotional delivery, unusual synths, pianos, and a delicate balance between wonder, joy, uncertainty and love. It is one of my favourite songs of Bat For Lashes to date.

‘At Your Feet’ is an improvised piece that Natasha said she created when she was knackered from all the late nights and breastfeeding. It is a waltzing piano piece that brings in Natasha’s voice in the second half through a vocoder. As she sings about “falling down at your feet” – it could be purely from being tired but also in the sheer love for your child too. It is lovely and goes side by side with ‘The Midwives Have Left’. This instrumental piece again keeps the piano central with harmonium backing. The internal guts of the harmonium creak and purr like a hospital trolley being moved into a ward. There are vocoder tendrils of Atlas’ voice hovering around the mix but no words are formed. Those are saved for the uplifting single ‘Home’. Fingerclicked percussion, jolly piano and mellotron organs create a rousing ode to staying in the moment and finding a home in your family, not a place. Apparently, it is Delphi’s favourite track and with its bouncing beat I can see why.

There are several instrumental tracks and ‘Breaking Up’ is an 80’s synthwave slow dance that flips between late-night saxophone and music boxes. Balancing the adult mental world with childlike imagination and wonder is tricky and this song narrates the need to carry both. ‘Delphi Dancing’ is a very sweet waltz that flips between the synth world and in-room piano that gradually reverbs out into a dream state. The album is unapologetically feminine and ethereal and the use of long reverb on the piano across the album makes the album sound angelic. That means if you are looking for structured pop songs, you’ll find only a few of them here. Instead, you’ll be invited into ambient tone poems like ‘Her First Morning’. Gentle hushed vocal hues, flutes, water droplets… and a croaking toad?! Bat For Lashes ambient is dreamy.

The album closes with ‘Waking Up’ (outside of the title track reprise) which is the most complex ambient piece on the album. Various synths bubble, gurgle, clink and gallop along at pace whilst Bat For Lashes “ooohs” over the top. I’m reminded heavily of Imogen Heap in a great way. The music flips from synthetic keyboards to tinkling ivories as if we’ve woken up from the dream world into reality. It is a lovely end to the album, which took me a while to appreciate. Initially, I didn’t connect fully with it due to the focus on ambient tones over straight songs. It wasn’t until I was listening to the album, wrapped up in a cosy duvet with the lights off, that I connected with its dreamworld magic. I had to give myself the ability to let my mind wander and flow with the music and I wasn’t in that headspace when the album first released. Maybe that’s why I didn’t review it then – I must have known something would change!

Give yourself the headspace to let the music wander and sweep you off your feet. You’ll be enveloped in the love and devotion of a mother who lives in total awe of her daughter. Adding in the ambient dream world of echoing pianos, sumptuous string arrangements and flowing synths make it an uplifting and playful album. There is so much love here, you’ll come away from the album glowing inside and out. It is an elixir to brighten your day and lift your spirits. Enjoy the musical womb Bat For Lashes creates.

Recommended track: Letter To My Daughter

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