Photo by Francis Chung

Bat For Lashes certainly know how to set a mood. If the wolf howling in front of a full moon draped behind them on the 9:30 Club stage Saturday night didn’t give away their intentions to create a mystical night, the glitter, lights and feathers adorning the stage (and lead singer Natasha Khan) pushed the point home. And that was before Khan even opened her mouth. Her ethereal, chilling voice rung clear through the venue for opener “Glass,” instantly ending chatter and leaving the audience wide-eyed.

Khan was clearly the main attraction. Regardless of whether she was sitting at a piano or dancing across the stage, the instrumentation seemed secondary to the Khan’s vocals. The near operatic soprano had echoes of all the great female vocalists that preceded her: the chill of PJ Harvey, the range of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, the natural aesthetic of Björk. With Khan at the helm, for the first 30 minutes of the show, Bat for Lashes succeeded in overwhelming the audience with a beautiful, haunting sound.