If some artists, like Grimes, NOVAA, Zola Blood or Bat For Lashes, got us used to tracks that push the boundaries of pop music, Rihanna and Madonna both released a track named “Skin” and they both belong to the experimental catalogs of those artists.

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One can say that the skin is the envelope of our body and of our soul, that is probably why the subject opens such music directions. You can’t really do what you want with your skin: you’re born with it and you can’t change its quality, its color or its aging. You can be skinny, black, or white… Don’t try to change it, assume it. Be flamboyant, just like Solange, Thed Jewel, and Michael Jackson sing it.

Just like psychological traumas, the skin can be hurt and the pain will print its marks with scars. This is not Nine Inch Nails that will say the contrary.

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As would say French writer Paul Morand, “Love is also a skin infection.” Some people, like Samantha Fox, just want to be touched and some other ones, like Etta James, can’t bear it at times. Lastly, you say that you change your skin when you evolve yourself, but does new skin mean new nature? This is a good question that could be addressed to Jones and Kristin Kontrol.

She’s waiting for her beloved, not a rare occurence for a character moving inside the wild, green, surreal world Natasha has built around herself. This time though, the wait fades into horror. “In God’s House” finds our bride at the fateful moment of the tragic news: her Joe has been killed in a car crash while he was on his way to the church. The music is aptly ominous, inhabitated by ghosts, driven by sombre synths that sound like bad signs and threatening mysteries, but it opens up wonderfully when the chorus kicks in, loosening itself in a sweet melody. It’s a cycle, a circular sequence of alarm, unease and strange quiet. On top of it all, Natasha’s voice fimly in the high register resonates wondrous, angelic and visceral. With its vivid images, the cinematic scope, the sense for pop and the sense for the uncanny, the song has all there is to love about this enchanting woman’s work. A true banging comeback. We missed you, Natasha!

The video for “In God’s House” was conceived by Khan herself, who directed it with John De Menil. Set in a desolate prairie dyed purple by the sunset, a little Lynchian, a little Malick‘s “Badlands“, it stars an emoting Natasha and an old car lit from within.

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“The Bride” is out July 1st via Parlophone. Produced by Natasha herself, it features usual collaborators Dan Carey and Ben Cristophers, Simone Felice and Head. Check cover, tracklist and opening track, the lovely bridal ditty “I Do”, below.

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