Bat for Lashes: Lost Girls review – Mystery, romance and nostalgia

When Natasha Khan moved to Los Angeles it was to write scripts, but over the course of writing music for television, a new record emerged. The swoony Kids in the Dark was originally written for the Stephen King series Castle Rock. This thread from King to Khan makes sense, since the record sounds like an alternative soundtrack to Stand By Me, the 1986 film based on King's 1982 novella The Body.

Nostalgia is everywhere, and Khan is masterful at conjuring up a sense of mystery and romance. Echoes and images of films such as The Lost Boys, ET and The Goonies fly around compositions such as The Hunger, a lush epic that complements the atmospheric synths of Jasmine, the brooding electro of Vampires and the wistful Peach Sky.

This is perhaps also a record about Los Angeles itself; its intoxicating light, possibility and transience are there on the beauteous percussion of Feel For You and the closing statement of Mountains, with its sad acknowledgement that we are all just passing through. Desert Man brings us back to Khan’s musical DNA – a piano-led dream, it reminds us of her central vision and her vampiric appetite for more.