Bat For Lashes 6/14/09 - Lucky Brand Neighborhood Social (Lucky Brand 3rd Street Promendade), Santa Monica, CA.

(Photo by Bryan Sheffield)

Last Sunday, Bat For Lashes (a.k.a. Natasha Kahn) played an intimate concert for a group of around 100 lucky people who had RVSP'ed (and happened to get a wristband the day of the show) beforehand. For those of us who missed out on getting tickets to her sold-out performance at the El Rey Theatre two nights later, it was the perfect substitute for the larger show. This concert was also the inaugural one for the "Lucky Brand Neighborhood Social" - which appears to be a new roving series of live music/art/interactive events presented by Lucky Brand and Filter Magazine.

Bat For Lashes first came to my attention sometime in 2007, when I first heard of them somewhere online. It probably seemed odd to check out the band on the interesting-sounding name alone, but that's what I did. After downloading her debut release Fur and Gold, I was instantly hooked.

Her first show was at Spaceland sometime later that year - I had won tickets to it, but when I got to the venue I was told that my name wasn't on the list. It didn't look like I was getting in, so I gave up and left. A few months later, she did another show at The Troubadour, but it sold out ahead of time, and I didn't feel like trying to see if anything would be available at the door (and I'm not terribly fond of The Troubadour anyway) I had meant to purchase a ticket for the El Rey show; however, like the previous L.A. outing, it sold out ahead of time. Not all hope was lost though - upon getting the e-mail about this show at Lucky Brand and leaving nothing to chance, I jumped on the opportunity and sent in my RSVP right away.

This late afternoon performance ended up being a very unique one; the half-hour concert consisted of Natasha and one of her band members playing as a acoustic duo. Material from Fur and Gold and her recent release Two Suns was almost equally represented. The show was also special in a way because it reminded me a lot of a typical Hotel Cafe-type gig, had she ever played there.

I have to mention a couple of things about the recording itself, it didn't exactly come out perfect, much to my chagrin. Apparently, I may have had a loose connection somewhere (it's not the recording device I know for sure - used it the next night without any problems) and it caused a few dropouts in the right channel. I tried to repair them as best as I could, hopefully they aren't too noticeable. There is a 14 second dropout in the middle of "Prescilla" which I could unfortunately not fix, sorry about that.

1.) Horse & I FLAC MP3
2.) Travelling Woman FLAC MP3
3.) Glass FLAC MP3
4.) Tahiti FLAC MP3
5.) Moon & Moon FLAC MP3
6.) Prescilla FLAC MP3
7.) Daniel (Lo-Fi Version) FLAC MP3
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