The Haunted Man is the third studio album by English singer and songwriter Natasha Khan, known professionally as Bat for Lashes. It was released on 12 October 2012 by Parlophone. The album was preceded by the lead single "Laura", which was released on 24 July 2012.
Background
Khan stated in July 2012 that, after she returned home in March 2010 from touring in support of Two Suns (2009), she tried to rehabilitate herself to rebuild a sense of who she was without the music. In May 2010, Khan stated that although she had enough songs to put out as an album, she wanted to take more time working on new material, as she had been on tour for a long time, and found it boring to write songs about being on tour. She experienced a "profound writer's block", which led her to call Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, to ask, "What do you do when you feel like you're going to die because you can't write anything?" He advised her to draw, and subsequently Khan took life-drawing classes and a children's illustration course. Combined with intensive dance classes to boost her confidence, Khan began to feel inspiration enough to begin writing again, penning the album's opening song, "Lilies", which she said was inspired by a scene in the 1970 film Ryan's Daughter.
The album's artwork was photographed by American photographer Ryan McGinley, and features a naked Khan carrying an equally naked man on her back. Khan told NME: "I really wanted to strip things back in honour of women like Patti Smith; just these raw, honest women. I had no make-up on, it's just me and my haunted man!"
Singles
"Laura" was released as the album's lead single on 24 July 2012. The song reached number 144 on the UK Singles Chart. "All Your Gold" was released as the second single from the album on 19 September 2012, and was sent to US triple-A radio stations on 22 October. "A Wall" was released as the album's third and final single on 18 February 2013.
Critical reception
The Haunted Man received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 78, based on 36 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Pitchforks Marc Hogan named The Haunted Man "one of the year's most beguiling albums", writing that it "sounds like effort magnificently realized. The rawness of feeling is achieved through equally raw ambition." Ben Hewitt of NME commented that "while The Haunted Man deals in less trinkets than its predecessor, it's not scant in splendour. Instead, for large swathes, it's like being plunged into a fairytale soundtracked by skin-prickling electro and populated by downtrodden sods hunting for breadcrumbs of comfort." Rolling Stones Will Hermes praised the album as Khan's "sexiest, spookiest LP", stating that "the visions here seem all her own. And they're pretty awesome." Spins Julianne Escobedo Shepherd felt that it was "strongest in its simplest moments". The Guardian critic Alexis Petridis wrote that The Haunted Man "sounds like a bold, confident album that strips away a lot of the sonic embellishments from Khan's sound", adding that "[p]erhaps it's the sound of someone who's worked out that less can sometimes be more, that not trying too hard isn't the same as not trying." Q noted a sense of clarity on the album "that comes from the sense of physical boundaries being pushed, of personal space being tested to its limits".