If Just For Tonight, Darling

Bat For Lashes featuring Beck “Let’s Get Lost”

I’m willing to forgive whatever flaws the Twilight series may have simply because that franchise sparked the creation of this song. Beck and Natasha Khan have distilled the essence of the series’ appeal — intense longing for forbidden sexuality and drama — into four minutes of perfectly realized dark, hyper-romantic pop. This is much more like a Bat For Lashes song with Beck as a guest than vice versa, and the sound of it isn’t far off from what Natasha was doing on Two Suns. Nevertheless, Beck is ideally cast in this duet. Natasha sings with passion and desperation, but he’s cold and aloof, there but just out of reach. There’s an ache in his voice, but he mostly comes off as this fascinating and unknowable object of desire. The song makes a virtue out of something in Beck that has put a damper on his most recent albums, and it flows seamlessly into Natasha’s distinct aesthetic. It’s a incredibly sexy and beautiful piece of music, and it’s all the better for taking its cues from this sort of dubious yet compelling pop culture phenomenon.

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