Bat For Lashes

by Sam Johnson

A friend of mine played me this incredible music vid.
It's blog worthy, and not necessary to watch before reading this.




The massive Phil Spector beat on Bat For Lashes' "What's A Girl To Do?" blew me away and I immediately bought the entire album "Fur And Gold" on Amazon.com without even giving it a listen. Again Amazon did not disappoint, carrying the entire album for $5.99. iTunes is carrying it in their DRM-free format at the same price- possibly a hint of a reasonable pricing in the future. Again Amazon beat iTunes in sound quality.

"Fur And Gold" strikes a balance between original influence and reminding us what Bjork and Cat Power sometimes leave to be desired. You probably have six bucks, so you probably should buy it. It's mood music. Listen to it at night while you drive drunk. I have a few friends who are psycho Cat Power fans including a former employer who hired her to play a 30 minute set at a Chanel party, paying her $35,000. This is probably supposed to be a secret, which it will mostly remain because only 13 people read this. The word around that particular office was that Cat Power is "Chanel's baby" and they fly her "all over the place" to play "all kinds of Chanel parties" for 30 minutes, making tens of thousands of dollars per show to do so. Not bad. Not bad. I too am a large, not massive nor psycho, Cat Power fan and was delighted to be standing in the doorway with the waiters to watch her play to a bunch of celebrities who talked at full party volume while they ate a tiny souffle prepared by Wolfgang Puck himself.

I played bass on tour with a band named Irving, who recently put out a covers E.P., which you can listen to on their page. I wasn't a part of the recording process, but did learn a lot about covering someone else's music- the most important fact being that half of what you earn for each song covered goes to the artist who wrote the song. As it should. (Interesting sidebar: both Irving and Bat For Lashes cover Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire.") A profit of fifty cents on the dollar is not a bad number to be pulling down, and with Cat Power now selling her SECOND full length covers album like crazy, she's making a whole lot of random people a whole lot of easy money.

Which leads me to believe that I really need to be writing songs for Cat Power to then cover. I mean her last original material record was when? 2002? 2003? People never stop writing good songs, so as far as I'm concerned she could put out 3 more solid cover albums. (Interesting sidebar: her cover records are good.) She needs to get up there and shake her cute little indie ass in those cute little indie jeans to the stripped down version of my unheard pop wonder, making Kate Beckinsale want to sit annoyingly higher on her boyfriends lap at the dinner table.

I won't mind if people talk during dessert.

Sam Johnson is a music programmer and plays in bands.