Kate Bush

Kate Bush has been an influential and intelligent musician, but certainly not a daring one—a compromise figure, always torn between chart success and her true artistic ideals (which perhaps remain unknown to this day). She renewed the figure of the singer-songwriter at a time when the new wave was creating completely different personas, so, all in all, she was a retrograde figure, tied to tradition, representing the recording industry’s last-ditch effort to keep a successful formula alive. In retrospect, her merits lie mainly in her singing. Her arrangements were not revolutionary, her lyrics were not much different from those of the romantic ballad, and the structure of her songs was, at heart, the usual one. But her way of “carrying” the songs was truly original, full of supernatural references that make many of her songs the rock equivalent of medieval “mysteries.” The dark and desperate atmospheres of her albums would be nothing spectacular if they did not sometimes erupt into actual fits of terror. It is then that Bush touches the noblest chords of her lyricism. A rare case indeed, Kate Bush was signed by a major label at only sixteen, but spent the next three years studying singing, dance, and pantomime. She was launched with Wuthering Heights (1977), a worldwide hit that showcased her piercing trill and her gothic, archaic, mythological pop. The album she had worked on during those three years, Kick Inside (EMI, Feb 1978), was not the work of a mature artist, but it was certainly the work of a new kind of artist. Moving, Strange Phenomena, James and the Cold Gun, Feel It, L’amour Looks Something Like You, Them Heavy People, and Kite form a kind of shock diary. A teenager endowed with a four-octave vocal range, inspired by folk, opera, and world music, and fascinated by the supernatural, Bush combined Joni Mitchell’s human sensitivity with Peter Gabriel’s fairy-tale melodramas, Meredith Monk’s experiments with the melancholy of the chansonniers.

Bush had less time to prepare Lionheart (Nov 1978), which indeed contains a lot of patchy material. On this album, it is more evident how the songs rely on “diction”: her clear soprano could artfully chill dark stories such as The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Wow. But often the pairing serves merely to “sell” muzak-style pop (Hammer Horror, Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake). She once again proved to be a rare case by allowing only a single tour (in spring 1979), which would never be repeated. The taste for ethnic folklore reached maturity on Never For Ever (Sep 1980), a more subdued and refined album on which she used the Fairlight CMI (the first in the world alongside Peter Gabriel). The lyrics free her from adolescent romanticism and tackle deeper themes. Her acrobatic vocals weave through the hidden folds of an emotional soul to sing of despair and inescapable fate, with tragic overtones that strike chords sometimes sorrowful (Babooshka), sometimes epic (Breathing), and sometimes angry (Violin). The arrangements are at the very least eccentric, and the production is dense with sound effects. Acoustic and electronic instruments intertwine in an almost delirious fashion.

Bush had progressively emancipated herself from the record label producers, and with The Dreaming (Sep 1982) she achieved a sound that was not only eccentric but also distinctly personal. The album, with its lush arrangements and metaphysical lyrics, revealed her as a complete and forward-looking musician, immersed in eclectic exoticism and interwoven with electronics. The demonic sabbath of Sat In Your Lap, punctuated by African rhythms and layered with interwoven vocals and trumpets, and the equally dark and tribal Dreaming, a slow Native-American-style dance bombarded with overdubbed vocals and electronic distortions, upheld the promise of her early work. Night Of The Swallows and All The Love returned to the poignant pathos of Wuthering Heights. Her voice now spanned all registers, from operatic soprano to ecstatic gospel, from Native-American-style cries to childlike squeaks, and studio work (especially on Leave It Open) transformed it into a supernatural element. By contrast, Hounds Of Love (Sep 1985), her first album entirely produced in her private studio, focused on a voice reminiscent of a seasoned soul singer. Bush adopted a heavier, more rhythmic, and aggressive sound, featuring the voluptuous technological-tribal swirls of Peter Gabriel (Hounds Of Love and Running Up That Hill). Her ambitions remain evident in the martial crescendo of Cloudbursting and in Ninth Wave, a Gaelic concept suite that is also a psychoanalytic journey into her cultural roots, applying production techniques similar to late-period Pink Floyd while preserving the “human” effect of acoustic instruments. The Sensual World (Oct 1989) retains that atmospheric and baroque sound, but the album is permeated with a dark sensuality, with accents at times Freudian (This Woman’s Work) and at times pagan (The Rocket’s Tail). Bush crafts one of her most memorable melodies (Never Be Mine) and some of her most meticulous arrangements (the title track), employing Celtic instruments and Slavic choirs.

The Whole Story (EMI, 1986) is an anthology of Bush's singles.

This Woman's Work (1990) is an 8-CD box-set containing two two CDs of rare, live and remix material.

Despite the quantity and quality of guests, The Red Shoes (1993) is a contender (with Lionheart) for her worst album ever. It's a confused barrage of styles and quotations, none of which works particularly well. She finds enough focus to deliver the shameful pop muzak of Eat the Music and You're the One, but then loses it when she tries something deeper (Rubberband Girl, Moments of Pleasure). She straddles away from the canon in a few strong moments (Lily, Top of the City, Big Stripey Lie) but not enough to make it worth listening to her.

The ambitious double-cd Aerial (Columbia, 2005), her first studio album in 12 years, marked a prodigious return to form. The first CD is a bit erratic, starting with a solemn meditation on Elvis Presley, King of the Mountain, flirting with electronica in Joanni, and peaking with the most personal tunes (Bertie, to her son, or A Coral Room, to her mother, or Mrs Bartolozzi). The second CD is virtually a concept album about the seasons of life, whose strongest moments (Aerial Tal Sunset, Somewhere in Between, Nocturn) weave her emotional vocals and instrumental beauty into a haunting kind of stream of consciousness.

50 Words for Snow (2011), her most ambitious work yet, was a collection of extended mood pieces a` la Jane Siberry. Unfortunately, Snowed In At Wheeler Street is a duet with pop star Elton John, basically a soul ballad (that she sings in the tone of a soul diva) slowed down to last eight minutes and counterbalanced with wavering electronics; the whispered electronic shuffle Wild Man is second-rate funk-soul fare; Snowflake is a ten-minute duet with her teenage son (on a simple repetitive piano pattern) that makes you miss the duet with Elton John, and the piano ballad Among Angels (the album's shortest song at seven minutes) is a folk song with strings that fails to harness enough pathos. The 13-minute prayer Misty stage an ecstatic crescendo with jazzy drums, guitar and bass that sounds almost orchestral by comparison with the skeletal arrangements of the rest; but it is still a far cry from the intensity of, say, a Van Morrison "sermon". The high points are the atmospheric and impressionistic eleven-minute Lake Tahoe (although limited again by rather simplistic piano playing), and, if one really likes the soul-diva impersonations, 50 Words for Snow, that at least boasts a hip-shaking syncopated rhythm (as well as, alas, some lengthy spoken-word sections). The problem is that, lacking strong music, many of these are not quite songs: maybe they would work better as academic lectures. There are moments of genius sprinkled around these high-tech sounds but also moments of painful tedium.

Director's Cut (2011) contains remixed versions of old songs.

The three-disc Before the Dawn (2016) was her second live album, documenting her first tour in 35 years.