Two Suns is the Mercury Music Prize nominated second album by English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

-Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

i solo artist Bat for Lashes

Bat for Lashes

Natasha Khan , also known by her stage name Bat for Lashes, is an English musician. She sings and plays the piano, bass, guitar, harpsichord and the autoharp....

 (pseudonym of Natasha Khan), released on 6 April 2009

2009 in music

The following is a list of notable events and releases in 2009 in music. Susan Boyle's album I Dreamed a Dream became the biggest selling album in the world for 2009, selling 8.3 million copies in five weeks; more than any other artist's in the whole year...

. It is the follow-up to the also Mercury Music Prize nominated album Fur and Gold

Fur and Gold

Fur and Gold is the debut album by English solo artist Bat for Lashes, released in 2006. It was released to critical acclaim and was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize. In 2007, the album was re-released through Parlophone with the addition of a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song "I'm on Fire"...

.

According to the press release, Two Suns is "a record of modern-day fables exploring dualities on a number of levels – two lovers, two planets, two sides of a personality," bringing reflection about "the philosophy of the self and duality, examining the need for both chaos and balance, for both love and pain, in addition to touching on metaphysical ideas concerning the connections between all existence."

In Two Suns, Khan also presents an alter ego

Alter ego

An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...

 named Pearl, described by the press release as "a destructive, self-absorbed, blonde, femme fatale of a persona who acts as a direct foil to Khan's more mystical, desert-born spiritual self."

The first single from the album, released on 1 March 2009, is "Daniel". Two Suns was recorded in segments in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

 and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

.

It was co-produced by Khan and Dave Kosten, her collaborator on Fur and Gold

Fur and Gold

Fur and Gold is the debut album by English solo artist Bat for Lashes, released in 2006. It was released to critical acclaim and was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize. In 2007, the album was re-released through Parlophone with the addition of a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song "I'm on Fire"...

, and features collaborations with members of Yeasayer

Yeasayer

-History:The band's three core members, Chris Keating, Ira Wolf Tuton, and Anand Wilder, first came to attention after appearing at the SXSW festival in early 2007. Their first single consisted of a double A-side of the tracks "Sunrise" and "2080"...

 on various tracks and Scott Walker

Scott Walker (singer)

Scott Walker, born Noel Scott Engel on January 9, 1943 is an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and the former lead singer of The Walker Brothers. Despite being American born, Walker's chart success has largely come in the United Kingdom, where his first four solo albums...

 on the final track.
The whole album was available for listening at the Last.fm

Last.fm

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....

 website.

Reception

Both "Sleep Alone [909s In The Darktimes Mix]" and "Siren Song" were featured in "The Vampire Diaries" but only "Sleep Alone [909s In The Darktimes Mix]" is on "The Vampire Diaries Original Television Soundtrack" Two Suns received generally favorable reviews. The album holds a score of 76 out of 100 on the review aggregator website Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

. Two Suns was placed on Slant Magazine

Slant Magazine

Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...

's list of best albums of the 2000s at number 97.

Track listing

Charts

Chart (2009)	Peak position	Sales
German Albums Chart Media Control Charts The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie...	4	25,000+
UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...	5	100,000+
Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically...	17
European Top 100 Albums European Top 100 Albums The European Top 100 Albums chart is the European adaptation of the Billboard 200 albums chart. It was created in March 1984.The European Top 100 Albums, commonly referred to as Eurochart Top 100 Albums shows the sales of an act in 19 European countries based on IFPI data.The European Top 100...	21
Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...  (Flanders Flanders Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp... )	26
Greek Albums Chart	29
Finnish Albums Chart	39
French Albums Chart Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry...	56	15,000+
Belgian Albums Chart (Wallonia)	74
Italian Albums Chart Federation of the Italian Music Industry The Federation of the Italian Music Industry is an umbrella organization that keeps track of virtually all aspects of the music recording industry in Italy....	85	3,000+
Swiss Albums Chart	94
Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...	95
US United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...  Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...	141	10,000+
US United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...  Billboard Comprehensive Albums Billboard Comprehensive Albums Billboard Comprehensive Albums was established in 2003 and was a weekly albums chart produced by Billboard magazine that ranked the biggest selling albums in the United States regardless of the product's age or method of sales....	156
US United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...  Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Top Heatseekers Top Heatseekers Top Heatseekers refers to either of two separate "Breaking and Entering" music charts issued weekly by Billboard Magazine: the Heatseekers Albums chart or the Heatseekers Songs chart. They were introduced by Billboard in 1993 with the purpose of highlighting the sales by new and developing musical...	2

Certifications

Release history

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalogue
Germany	3 April 2009	EMI EMI The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...	CD	693 0202
United Kingdom	6 April 2009	Parlophone Parlophone Parlophone is a record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch was formed in 1923 as "Parlophone" which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a leading jazz label. It was acquired in 1927 by the Columbia Graphophone Company which...		695 7802
			LP	693 0191
France		EMI	CD	693 0202
United States	7 April 2009	Astralwerks Astralwerks Astralwerks is a New York-based record label that releases primarily electronic music. It is owned by Virgin Records/EMI and distributed by Caroline Distribution in the United States....		ASW 93020
United Kingdom	7 September 2009	Parlophone	CD+DVD	685 6662
United States	3 November 2009	Astralwerks		5099930789722
Brazil	23 January 2010	EMI	CD	5099969302022