Photos by Brooke Nipar
Natasha Khan is a performer in the truest sense of the word. On her second album as Bat for Lashes, this year's Two Suns, the UK singer and songwriter hitches her real-life tale of a dying trans-Atlantic relationship to one of the oldest tropes in the book-- star-crossed lovers. Then, bolstering her astronomical metaphors with a tragic character inspired by the seamy underbelly of old New York, and trading debut album Fur and Gold's orchestral druid-rock trappings for booming percussion and 1980s electro synths, she makes the whole thing magnificently her own. Cult crooner Scott Walker e-mails in a rare guest performance. Exeunt omnes.
However, Khan's performance goes beyond the records, as well. Bat for Lashes music videos would be memorable just for the visuals, which have included not only synchronized BMX bike jumps, but also a painting of The Karate Kid's Ralph "Daniel-san" Macchio across Khan's back. In concert, elaborate staging and costumes-- elaborate for a still relatively little-known artist's budget, anyway-- help bring her songs to life. Downstairs at Bowery Ballroom the day of Bat for Lashes' triumphant New York return gig, Khan talks conversationally and expressively about Two Suns, hippies, the state of the music industry, the time she punched Thom Yorke, Walker's indie cred, James Taylor's indie cred, and how she feels about constantly only being compared to other female artists. Inevitably, Khan's performance goes beyond what can can be translated to text, so you'll just have to imagine the way her voice warms when she talks about Yeasayer, or what it sounds like when she starts singing 1980s pop hit "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off". One night after this interview, Bat for Lashes made their U.S. network TV debut on "The Late Show With David Letterman".
Pitchfork: "Moon and Moon" was kind of the beginning for Two Suns. Can you tell me a little bit about how that song came about and how it helped pave the way for the album?
Natasha Khan: I wrote it in the studio when I actually was finishing up Fur and Gold. One of the last days in this crazy mansion house in the countryside, I sat down and wrote this "Moon and Moon" song, and it's actually named after the band and my relationship with the person in the band. So that kind of marked the beginning of our relationship. Two Suns takes you through this whole journey, all the way to the end of the relationship and the end of making the record. So it's kind of like this strange, synonymous cycle that happened. And then obviously the album's called Two Suns, so there's this kind of like "two planets" situation. Just the whole theme of planets chasing each other, you know, night and day chasing each other eternally, and being in England and New York and being separated by an ocean, and lots of different types of landscapes, different types of personalities, and internal conflict. So, all that duality stuff really came as an inspiration from that as well.
Pitchfork: What was the writing process like for these songs? Did it all follow from that overarching theme, or did you just sit down with your piano and go song by song, or...
NK: I don't really do it song by song, and even though I knew there was obviously an underlying concept occurring, it was very much just whenever I had time to write I'd just quickly steal a moment. I usually write at home, in my bed with my headphones, and I have a sequencer machine. So, I do, like, "Daniel", you know, I start with a beat, and then the DO-DO, da-DO-DO, da-DOO-DO, da-DO-DO [singing], like the bassline, put the choir part in, then I'll work out the vocal melody. And so I either write on piano or on my little machine where I'll do all the elements of the song. So what you're left with is a mixture between kind of piano-based songs and then like more electronic-based songs. And then we flesh those out and work on those and I'll bring people in to play certain aspects of them, but I have a really strong kind of vision and idea just from the demo stage. By the end of it, when I looked at it, I was like, "Ah, OK, there's like a story here," which I kind of knew would be there, but I didn't realize it was such a concept album.
Pitchfork: Was the sequencer part of what-- you know, starting with [Fur and Gold's] "Prescilla"-- kind of shifted you toward this kind of focus on being more rhythmic-oriented, the drums being in the forefront?
NK: Well, on the first album, that "Prescilla" beat was me and my friend stamping on bits of wood and clapping in my bedroom. A lot of the first album, we kept so much of what I had made myself. This one I kept quite a few elements but, rhythmically, I think I just got a little bit more confident in terms of my drum programming ability and what I wanted and I was experiencing living in Brooklyn and hearing like Gang Gang Dance, TV on the Radio, Moon & Moon, and the early incarnation of Amazing Baby-- these weird, psychedelic kind of bands. Steven [Kurtz], who played for Moon & Moon, has that rolling kind of tom sound that I was just like, "Oh my god, I love that so much," and I started writing beats that were being inspired by that kind of sound. I just felt like delving into it.
Pitchfork: Were there other aspects of New York and Brooklyn that had an effect on this album? Other bands you came across?
NK: I think just experiencing-- like, watching Lizzi [Bougatsos] from Gang Gang Dance and how she's really free with her vocal and how she played extra percussion. And then there's this singer called Stephonik Youth. She's so amazing. The problem with Stephonik is that she never releases anything because she's [a] perfectionist. And it really sucks because she's literally, I think she's the most amazing artist I've ever seen. And her voice is incredible. So I'm hoping she's going to put something out, because it's really good. She worked with Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio. So yeah, just kind of soaking up the scene. But it wasn't like, "I want to be like that, I want to be like that." It was just kind of living it, and then realizing afterwards that I've been part of an incredible time in Brooklyn, musically, I think. It was really inspiring.
Pitchfork: I totally understand where you're coming from on Brooklyn-- you put it once, you kind of feel like you're just plugged into this giant socket...
NK: Yeah. It's always on.
Pitchfork: Did that make it harder to write the album?
NK: I didn't really write much of the album while I was here because I found it difficult living in New York. I struggled with the relentless intensity and with some of the superficiality and networking and cheesy rich kids vibe, which I found really [takes breath] uninspiring [laughs]. But it wasn't until I sort of took myself away to the desert and back to Brighton-by-the-Sea that I had some contemplation and reflection time and the sediment kind of settled. I really started to filter out the bad stuff and actually take some of the really incredible stuff I'd learned and experienced and felt. And then I had time and space to start to really develop this record with a confidence that I hadn't had before. And you know, like, I'd read Last Exit to Brooklyn and I'd been here and met crazy weird characters, and like, just played, you know, and had a chance to imagine myself a bit in that darkness. That was really useful, you know? It was good, it was good.
Pitchfork: And then, Yeasayer, I guess you met them in Amsterdam--
NK: Yeah! They're sooo nice! [laughs]
Pitchfork: What role did they play on the album?
NK: It was quite a minimal role. We met up for only two days, in New York, at the Magic Shop. I had sent them "Pearl's Dream" and "Sleep Alone", and we tried to do some stuff on "Daniel", but in the end, I just got [Yeasayer bass player] Ira [Wolf Tuton] to replace my bass line, because I played it on a synth and I wanted a live bass. But in terms of creatively, "Pearl's Dream" is really the one that they kind of added really cool stuff to.
And the beat that you hear at the beginning is the one that [producer] David Kosten and I programmed. So that duh, de-de-de, de-de-de-de [whispering the beat]-- that was our beat programming. But then halfway, after the first chorus, you start to hear all this like de-de DUM, de-de-DUM-dum, de-de-de-de-de DUM, de-de-DUM-dum, all that extra like crazy African percussion stuff. That's all [Yeasayer frontman] Chris [Keating]'s funny percussive weirdness that he gets really excited about, pressing all these samples and stuff. And Ira added like a do-do-dum, do-DUM-dum do-do-do-do, that kind of rhythm bass, just in the second half. And so they really brought "Pearl's Dream" even more into the dancey area. Which I kind of was frightened about, because I was like, "This is sooo dancey, oh my god!" But I really liked it in the end. [laughs] And then, Chris also, we took some samples from him for "Sleep Alone", really pretty African percussion that is embedded quite low in the track but really helped the track.
Pitchfork: So, Scott Walker. Have you heard anything from him?
NK: I did, actually! I just got an e-mail from him a couple of days ago. I don't know though whether I should say! It was just really sweet. He was just like, "I hear that your album went in #5 in the UK." And he's like, "Such huge congratulations. I must be losing my edge." [laughs]
Pitchfork: 'Cause you guys had never met, right?
NK: Yeah! [laughs] He was being funny, but it was so nice to get back and just say like, "Well done." What a sweetheart.
Pitchfork: You mentioned it got kind of dancey on that one track. And you've got a different backing band on your tour now-- [solo artist and former Ash guitarist] Charlotte Hatherley, among others-- what do they bring? What does she bring?
NK: They're all amazing. I'm so excited about the new band, because it's much bigger, and much more like, it's just like this big monster that's multifaceted and really powerful and epic but then really gentle and beautiful when it is. Charlotte plays guitar, bass, percussion, and she sings beautifully and plays synth. And then Sarah Jones [of New Young Pony Club], she's like the best drummer in the world. She's just really blossomed. During the tour, all of us, just mouths agape, like-- she plays hip-hop samples, massive timpani, a real kit, and sings as well, and is just incredible. And then Ben Christophers is the harp, marxophone, autoharp, piano chord, harmonium, weird instrument banks, and then he also uses samples. So he's a real multifaceted-- they're all like little octopuses that just do this amazing job. I'm really just honored that they're playing with me, because I think they're all really super hot in their own way.
Pitchfork: I guess live you've been doing two versions of "Daniel"? How did that come about?
NK: That kind of came out of needing to do lots of radio promo, and the fact that it's really hard to set up a huge band-- especially how big this band sounds like-- in a tiny room. I'm always up for trying out new and weird versions of things, and so we do this lo-fi version of "Daniel" with a harmonium. And then, like two nights ago, Ben and I stayed up really late on the bus and worked out a harmonium version of "Glass", which was just-- it was sooo pretty, and I play harmonium with the pedals going, and he's playing his piano chord-like harp thing, and it's really quite epic sounding. It sounds quite old, just really really archaic. So it's nice, because on the album it's so like lush and big, and then you get this different angle.
Pitchfork: "Glass" is where you quote Song of Solomon. What brought that into it?
NK: That was reading Last Exit to Brooklyn, actually, because I do love the Song of Solomon from the Bible, but that's not really where the initial thread came. Each chapter starts with a little verse from the Bible. And the chapter of Tralala, which is this blond, crazy girl who gets raped at the end-- it's really dark-- but it talks about going through the streets, and the watchmen of the tower, and blah blah blah. And I really felt a connection between Pearl and Tralala. And then I was just reading this thing, and it was like, "I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways..." I was thinking, "This is so modern!" Even though it's from the Bible it's so contemporary-sounding. It's like a manifesto for the album. It sounded like the narration for a play, you know, the narrator comes out, "Tonight we will discover..." [theatrical voice]. It just really felt like the perfect introduction.
Pitchfork: A lot of people-- a lot of reviewers, anyway-- seem to be misinterpreting Pearl. "Oh, it's this alter ego. Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce!"
NK: Oh, it's so gross, yeah. That's really not what it was. It's so funny how people just instantly make everything black-and-white, but actually, and I've said this loads of times, it really was like an art project for me. I loved Paris Is Burning, that documentary-- there's Venus Xtravaganza, this amazing drag queen, in that, and she's blond and really vulnerable, and it's all like 80s New York with everyone dancing in the street and ghetto blasters and their crazy voguing fashion walk thing they do to try to lift themselves out of this, like, really fucked up existence into something beautiful. And there's that element of escapism that she talks about in the film, she says-- she's all skinny and fucked up and you find out she gets strangled and killed at the end of the film and is found under a hotel bed, and nobody finds her for like a week, and nobody comes to identify her body-- and in the film she's like [changes voice], "One day I really hope to have a husband and a BMW and we're gonna live in the suburbs and we can adopt children and it's gonna be so amazing." And it's just like, it's sooo sad. And she's out on the street with all these menacing, really fucking disgusting guys, and you're just like-- so it's that heartbreaking feeling, and I was really immersing myself in all of those inspirations, and moving to New York and feeling the vacuum, the void of that stuff. Like, "Where is this old New York that I romanticized about?"
So I just went out and dressed up, because I wanted to be like Cindy Sherman or Diane Arbus, do something artistic that kind of represented a visual symbol of the old New York and what I wanted and kind of be my own Candy Darling for a moment or something like that. And then she crept into the lyrics a little bit, and I was thinking about her, and she was such a good visual character that I wanted to incorporate her into the artwork. But it really is a project for me and not this premeditated promotional tool or something, which is just like, "Ohhhh. Please people, come on." We're all just human beings at the end of the day. We're not some crazy, like... [laughs]
Pitchfork: I imagine there's a big visual element to the live show?
NK: The visual thing is always about budget and money, which I didn't get much of because my record company thought this album was not going to do very well [laughs]. Surprise, surprise. What we did instead was get Ali Pike our lighting and stage designer, who's just the coolest girl, she sourced loads of crazy shit off eBay which really is kind of reminiscent of the front cover of the album and the back cover. So we have TVs all lit up, with lights inside them, and loads of candles and deer heads and like weird Texas kind of voodoo-ey stage props and things like that. Which I think looks beautiful, and that's what we're doing this time.
Pitchfork: When you went to the record label, and you're like, "I've got this big sorta concept-y kind of album, that's around these dualities, and the Bible verses, and Scott Walker..."____
NK: [laughs] Because he's so mainstream.
Pitchfork: What kind of reaction did you get?
NK: They were very lovely. EMI, they've had Radiohead, Kate Bush-- they get it. But I think in this climate, in this day and age, that is the problem, that's where the pressure arises. The lack of support you get from people buying your record means, unfortunately, that even though I think it's great that people can download music for free and hear whatever they want, for someone like me it puts me in a really difficult position. Because the record company are saying, you know, "If Natasha sold 200,000 records, then we wouldn't interfere with her, we wouldn't try to make her fuck up her songs and butcher them for the radio because we wouldn't be so desperate and under so much pressure." The problem is, for someone like me who's trying to be creative, if my fans don't buy the records, it looks like I don't sell very many records, and then the record company tries to make you compromise yourself creatively to shoehorn you into this contemporary, fucked-up music industry.
So it's been quite hard because they didn't expect it do well, which was great. They left me alone to make the record I wanted to make and I didn't have to compromise. But now that it's successful, it's getting harder for me to fight them off, and say, "I don't want to butcher my song for radio." I don't have as much say. So I find that that's hard. At the same time, it's great that people are hearing it. So it's such a political, weird, and difficult dichotomy, and I think people view it as very black-and-white, and they're just like, "Why don't you just do a Radiohead and sell your thing for free?" And if you're a millionaire, yeah, fair enough. But your record company doesn't just give away money. They're not just giving me a free ride, you know? So it's this sort of thing of like, "Ohhh, I want to be successful," but when I'm successful it makes it really hard to keep the autonomy. Who knows? [laughs]
Pitchfork: Well, at least you have cool videos, though, right?
NK: Oh, thanks. [laughs]
Pitchfork: You studied visual art-- at what point does thinking about the video come into it?
NK: I'm trying to organize the video for the next single ["Pearl's Dream"] at the moment. I'm really hoping that we can make it as good as we can. So that's exciting. And I do collaborate quite closely with the directors. I send out my general idea of the song, a visual idea I might have, and then I get responses back, and we have dialogue, and we talk, and I send them visual references. It's really nice. I don't just go in cold with people. So there's always trying to put in elements, visual symbols that work with the concept of the record.
____Pitchfork: Any hints on that video?
NK: I'm not sure which one we're going with yet.
Pitchfork: Is that Karate Kid remake out yet? [No, it's not-- IMDB says The Kung Fu Kid is due out next year]
NK: What remake? God, I fucking hope not. God, the original is so good. Why would they want to do that?
Pitchfork: So you love that-- along with E.T., The Goonies, and "The Wonder Years", which I also really love, was there anything else that was kind of a big childhood, you know...
NK: There's loads. Like, Stand By Me was really cool. The Wizard of Oz was very important. I mean, when I was 20 I saw The Virgin Suicides, Donnie Darko, Buffalo 66, and Dancer in the Dark all in the space of a year, and that was the next influx of really cool, inspiring films. And lately I've seen The Wrestler, which I really like, and Let the Right One In, that weird Swedish vampire film. That's really beautiful and sad and weird.
Pitchfork: As far as the magical element of your music, were there books that you read growing up? Fantasy books, all that stuff? Where does that come in?
NK: I had a very English upbringing except for when my dad was around and we went to Pakistan on holiday and stuff. But in terms of reading books and living in England, I was super into Roald Dahl and weird fairy tales and really English stuff like Enid Blyton, and there are these Malory Towers books, and Anne of Green Gables, and all of that kind of girls' stuff. But then I was also really into strange fairytale stories from all over the world. I used to have Inuit fairytale books, and Nordic fairytales, and Greek mythology, and obviously the Bible and the Koran are two amazingly strange books [laughs] that I kind of got exposed to.
Pitchfork: You mentioned Anne of Green Gables all that "girls' stuff." One thing that I noticed reading all these reviews, almost all the comparisons they make-- whether it's Björk, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Siouxsie Sioux, Stevie Nicks-- it's always women. I was wondering what you think about that, and who some dudes are that we should be comparing you to if we can look past gender. Or who inspired you.
NK: Yeah, yeah. Because I'm really more-- I mean, I love those women. I think they're amazing. But I kind of get more obsessed with the guys, in terms of-- I'm obsessed with Lou Reed, and I love Berlin. I went to see the Berlin show in London, and I cried the whole way through, because that album was really special to me, and Street Hassle as well, when I was like 18 or 19. Me and my boyfriend fell in love to like the Cure, Disintegration; Lou Reed, Street Hassle and Berlin; Neil Young, Harvest. And it was all guys! And James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, and who else? Van Morrison, kind of his early, weird stuff. Nick Cave, who I love and have seen live like 8 million times. Siouxsie Sioux, I've only ever heard like four songs by her-- I don't really know anything about her-- but everyone's always like [changes voice], "Oh, it's sooo Siouxsie Sioux."
And I'm like, "Really? Or is it just the fact that I'm inspired by similar things and happened to translate them in a specific way?" Because I've never really heard her music, so, you know, maybe it was more via the Cure that I got inspired and stuff. But they'd never say, like, "Oh, the Cure," even though I've seen the Cure eight times and I have all of their records. That's far more likely that I'm inspired by the Cure, but because I'm a woman-- it's really weird, right? [laughs] So those are the guys. Robert Smith, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young.
Pitchfork: It's interesting that you said James Taylor, though. You don't hear that name that often, at least in these circles. I don't know if he's supposed to be too square or...
NK: Too nice, yeah. I don't care! He wrote "Fire and Rain". I mean, anyone who wrote that needs to just, like, "Ahh!" [sounds like mimicking a chorus of angels singing]. He's an amazing songwriter, and so sweet. I don't care if he's cool [laughs]. But yeah, I know everyone's like sooo careful with their references. I mean, if you want cheesy references, too, like Prince--
Pitchfork: Well, he's not cheesy!
NK: No, he's not cheesy-- Prince, early Madonna I totally love, and then I like-- what's that song? [singing] "I got the Midas touch/ Everything I touch turns to gold" [Midnight Star's 1986 synth-funk hit "Midas Touch"]. And then I like, [singing] "You don't have to take your/ Clothes off" [Jermaine Stewart's synth-funk hit from the same year, "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off"]. So there's all those guys, like, cheesy late-80s, early-90s, like the Arthur Baker kind of slow disco. Oh, it's amazing! With the cheesy fake piano solos and stuff. Oh, and David Bowie and Brian Eno, Low, as well, is really inspiring.
Pitchfork: The stuff that people describe as more hippie-ish when they're talking about you, whatever you take that to mean, is that from-- you lived in San Francisco, as well?
NK: Not really "lived." I've been there lots of times and driven down to L.A. on Route One and been to Big Sur, because I just love that landscape-- it's really inspiring-- and obviously met Devendra [Banhart] there, and I hung out with him quite a lot, and all his lovely crazy bearded boys [laughs]. He's such a charming, childlike spirit. I don't care whether he wears flares or not, he's just the coolest and an intriguing and special person. So I felt like that kind of fulfills my hippie needs.
Because you know, I loved Woodstock when I was growing up, and I don't think it was quite as idyllic and cheesy as everyone says. I think it was actually quite dark times where everyone was really fucked up on drugs, expanding their minds but not really having a place socially so feellng probably quite lost and psychedelic and weird, and I think that led to a lot of strange social situations occurring. And I think Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, all of that came out as a rebellion to that, but at the same time they were equally fucked up, but in a much more truthful, dark, urban way.
It's really interesting to me that this whole hippie thing is so classed as flower power and so nice, because I think it was-- I mean, people were insane! They were painting their faces and dancing around naked and fucking everything that moves. [laughs]
Pitchfork: Yeah, that was kind of the lesson right? You've got Altamont and Manson and it's like, OK, like, these things weren't totally innocent.
NK: Of course! And I think it's quite an intriguing time that shouldn't be painted with just a rainbow-colored brush.
Pitchfork: You could argue that part of why the Velvet Underground were different was because they were on speed instead of acid.
NK: Yeah, but what I'm saying is the whole hippie thing has such a bad name now, whereas...
Pitchfork: I'm just talkin'. [laughs]
NK: ...No, but I think you're right, that like, because the Velvet Underground wore black and did speed, like, that was cooler than wearing nothing and doing acid, but no matter what happens, when people, young people, all get together and they're rebelling and they're getting fucked up, it has to inform the next generation. That informed lots of weirdness that occurred after it, like performance art, and you know, Andy Warhol and his Factory stuff. There were people like Glenn Branca and all these crazy people dancing around and kissing and being totally psychedelic and hippiefied, but they were wearing black, so it was cool. [laughs]
____Pitchfork: They had downtown punk connections, so it was totally all right.
NK: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.
Pitchfork: So do you live back in Brighton now when you're not on tour?
NK: Yeah, I have my home in Brighton now. I bought a little apartment in Brighton, which is like five minutes from the sea and really near London, too. Brighton's a really cool place. And I think that I really needed that after just being all over the world so much. I just needed a home, somewhere to call my own, and to have a comfort zone, because this kind of existence can really get ungrounded and crazy. So that's my home now and I'm happy to be there. And I love coming back to New York because all my friends are coming out tonight, all the old faces, and it's just-- sweethearts. I really rate my friends in New York. I think New York's full of really amazing people, and I'm sad that I can't have them near me. People are really thinking about things and doing really interesting things in their lives.
Pitchfork: Oh, Radiohead! You played with them recently and they said great things about you. What are some of your most vivid memories of your shows opening up for them?
NK: I think just being a total geek and embarrassing myself in front of Thom Yorke several times was what I remember. Just because he's quite elusive and like, he's a lovely guy but he's quite difficult to kind of create conversation, you know, like a situation where you can just talk, and I think I sort of told him once that-- [breaks out laughing]. I was wearing pajamas with weird rainbow patterns on the bottom, and he was wearing what I thought were red pajama bottoms, and I was like, "My pajamas are sooo much cooler than your pajamas." And he was like, "Uhh, these are trousers I'm wearing on stage tonight," and I was like, "Oh. [long pause] Sorry." And he was like, "They cost me quite a lot for pajamas." And I was just like, "Ohhhh, fuuuuuuckkkk." So I was trying to be funny and I just kept putting my foot in it and insulting him basically [laughs].
And eventually-- he was really sweet, and we did have good chats, and we kind of just punched, you know like [laughing, smacks Pitchfork playfully on the arm] "Hey, what's the," really embarrassing, you know like, you like somebody and you're trying to talk to them and you end up just hitting them and tripping over them. It was kind of like that situation. [laughs]
Pitchfork: Are there any other artists going forward that you'd be interested in collaborating with?
NK: I wish that I had been able to sing "All I Need" with Thom Yorke off the last record. Because I love singing that song sooo much, and I sing it in a high register and it sounds really good [laughs]. But I missed my chance on that. I think I'd quite like to work with the New London Childrens Choir, because they sang with Lou Reed on the Berlin show and I just loved that. I thought it was beautiful. Usually when I'm making an album I won't think of it beforehand, like, "How can I write a song to fit in with singing with this person?" It's usually, the song comes, and then it's like, "Ohhh, it's calling out for this type of person." So that's what I'll do again, maybe.
Pitchfork: "Moon and Moon" started this one, and you wrote it while finishing up Fur and Gold. Now that Two Suns is out, what's next? Is there anything brewing yet?
NK: There are a few bits and pieces. I haven't got the song that's gonna start everything off, but I've got all the stirrings of attraction to specific ideas and themes are coming. But it's all very subterranean at the moment, because I'm so focused. This is the most manic I've ever been, so it's pretty crazy, and when you're in a mode of giving out, it's hard to be in a mode of taking things back in and making sense of them. It's all to do with cycles, and I'm in an outward part of the cycle at the moment.
I think the next record will be a lot more English, maybe. This album is very connected to America and has quite a lot of those influences, but the next one I'm kind of excited about really exploring England and really getting into the countryside and the folklore and the mythology of England in a contemporary way. And how the hell am I gonna do that without sounding like some weird pagan, Wicker Man, cheesy 70s prog-rock band? I don't know.
