Kate Bush:From Kick to Snow
THE KICK INSIDE
17th February 1978
Moving
The Saxophone Song
Strange Phenomena
Kite
The Man with the Child in His Eyes
Wuthering Heights
James and the Cold Gun
Feel It
Oh to Be in Love
L'Amour Looks Something Like You
Them Heavy People
Room for the Life
The Kick Inside
First thing you hear is whalesong, that's setting your stall out early I'd say. Its well known that she was only 19 when she recorded this but the vocal style that has served her ever since was full formed. To me that's a problem because the lyrics get lost. Even now there are bits of Wuthering Heights where I haven't figured out the words. On his recent Rocking Decades programme, Danny Baker alleged that there would be no Kate Bush without Prog Rock. Well maybe, but his guests didn't look like they were buying it and neither do I. She can do coherent tunes for a start and most of her stuff comes in well under 10 minutes.
The Saxophone Song includes some jazz noodlings that don't get out of hand. Kite features backing vocals that remind me of that Minnie Ripperton song about flowers that they always play on Gardener's World as Monty wanders around Great Dixter or somesuch. There are bits of The Man With The Child In His Eyes that are reminiscent of the strings on If You Leave Me Now by Chicago.
We all know about Wuthering Heights but the following track, James And The Cold Gun gallops along and is much more commercial, she clearly knew how to take risks even then. Same with Oh To Be In Love; catchy and immediate. Nice funky bassline on Them Heavy People (another pure pop tune). Last few tunes are a bit more challenging. When I was 19 I was farting around being a student in Sunderland. Can't deny that Kate spent her time more constructively.
LIONHEART
13th NOVEMBER 1978
Symphony in Blue
In Search of Peter Pan
Wow
Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake
Oh England My Lionheart
Fullhouse
In the Warm Room
Kashka from Baghdad
Coffee Homeground
Hammer Horror
First, the cover, Kate's been up to the attic and found the dressing up box. She's also discovered the crimpers. It's a bit literal I guess. According to my sources (Wikipedia), this was rushed out 9 months after The Kick Inside at the record company's insistence and includes a number of her second string songs that never made it into the debut. Apparently it's not that well regarded by Bush afficionados (Bushies? Lovehounds?) but it sounds pretty competent to me. Big hit is Wow, which I've always really liked. I think it is interestingly lyrically as well as musically. Oh England My Lionheart is (sort of) the title track and is a nice blend of olde English style and slight sadness.
Overall you might be tempted to say it's unremarkable, but you'd be judging it by KB's standards, it still sounds like no-one else (at least until Tori Amos came along). Nowadays we laud Adele for knocking out torch songs in a mid-atlantic vocal style at a similar age but to me Kate has the voice AND the creativity. Coffee Homeground swings all over the shop with a kind of fairground style behind it but is never boring. It closes with Hammer Horror which I understand didn't chart significantly but I remember it well from the time. It's certainly the song I'd have chosen as a first single due to the catchy chorus, and you can't beat a gong at the end of a song.
NEVER FOR EVER
7th November 1980
Babooshka
Delius (Song of Summer)
Blow Away (For Bill)
All We Ever Look For
Egypt
The Wedding List
Violin
The Infant Kiss
Night Scented Stock
Army Dreamers
Breathing
Starts with Babooshka, the video of which left many boys of a certain age at that time feeling 'confused'. You had to take your scantily clad female popstars where you could find them in those days, not like now. I love the effects in it, breaking glass or crockery and all that. It's followed by 'Delius (Song of Summer)' This has got a drum machine and is a bit trancey with lots of vocal shenanighans. Has a slight Kraftwerk-y feel to it.
Later on, 'All We Ever Look' for has Kate walking through my head as I listen on 'phones. Wedding List is interestingly jerky and the The Violin is full on Rock and Roll with some mad screaming vocals. She finishes up with a couple of singles, Army Dreamers, with another memorable video in which the camera shutter effect was synchronised with Kate's blinking eye if I remember correctly (without cheating by looking it up on You Tube) and then Breathing, which I don't really get at all, it just seems a bit dischordant.
THE DREAMING
13th September 1982
Sat in Your Lap
There Goes a Tenner
Pull Out the Pin
Suspended in Gaffa
Leave It Open
The Dreaming
Night of the Swallow
All the Love
Houdini
Get Out of My House
Kate’s ‘mad’ album. But then everything is relative. It is pretty mad, it must be said. The single ‘Sat in Your Lap' opens it up. All insistent drums and breathy vocals. Love it. I think the next track ‘There Goes A Tenner’ was also a single. She appears to be trying her hand at a bit of Lionel Bart Oliver! style with mockney accent delivery. Is it about a bank robbery? Later on, ‘Suspended in Gaffa’ features a bit of Oom Pah Pah and some proper screaming mad vocals.
About halfway through we come to the title track. Now, it does feature Rolf Harris on didgeridoo, so this one could currently be at risk of being purged from artistic history. He also crops up with a talky bit AND singing on her later album Aerial so Kate has a lot at stake at the moment. It’s a bit of a cartoonish take on Sun-a-rise, with KB determinedly singing through her nose in an Aussie accent. Certainly different. The Irish jig bit at the end left me rather nonplussed. Towards the end she’s edging toward barking (or should that be braying?) mad with properly screamy vocals in Houdini and, yes, donkey impressions in Get Out Of My House. Having said all that, it’s rather good in an utterly bonkers way
Hounds of Love
16th September 1985
Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)
Hounds of Love
The Big Sky
Mother Stands for Comfort
Cloudbusting
The Ninth Wave
And Dream of Sheep
Under Ice
Waking the Witch
Watching You Without Me
Jig of Life
Hello Earth
The Morning Fog
Do you remember how, when 'Running Up That Hill' was released as a single, everyone was saying. "Wow. Have you heard that new song by Kate Bush, she hasn't been around in ages". Well I do anyway. A 3 year hiatus in those days was tantamount to career suicide, whereas as now we might suspect her of risking burnout. It was a pretty radical change for her as well. Much more radio-friendly than the previous offering. Side 1 (note for the kids - records used to have two sides and you flipped them over halfway through - what's THAT all about?) follows a fairly standard album structure. 5 songs, all of which are, in my view, probably the best work she's done.
We all know Running… and Hounds of Love. I'll give a shout out to the Futureheads version of the latter here as I think that's great too.'The Big Sky' features a bit of warbling that she later revisited in 'Rubberband Girl' and some strident vocals borrowed from her earlier work. 'Mother Stands for Comfort' - the only non-single on side 1 - is much synthier than I remember.
And then we come to 'Cloudbusting'. This IS my favourite Kate Bush track, and it's down to a perfect storm (pardoning the pun) of a beautiful structure, great storytelling, slight weirdness and a video that probably rewrote the form. "Hang on. That's Donald Sutherland, innit?" we all cried. It was cinematic, touching and uplifting. Listening to the song now even the first line raises questions 'I still dream of Organon' Huh? I still love the repeated violin phrase to the chugging beat, which eventually resolves into the final steam train closure. It occurred to me that she may have been referencing the final scene of the Railway Children here ('Daddy!, My Daddy!') when the father returns from being spirited away by the 'men in power'. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Side 2 is the Ninth Wave concept-album-y thing.It's all of a piece but is still split up into individual tracks. I was surprised by how much of it I was familiar with. I had this vague theory that no-one ever really bothered listening to side 2. 'Waking the Witch' starts gently with lots of different voices saying 'wake up', then it jumps into a short section which sounds like Norman Collier's broken mic act as performed by Pinky and Perky before settling into the main bit about 'red, red roses' and so on. It's much more reminiscent of The Dreaming but just about avoids the transition from interesting to annoying. 'Watching You Without Me' reprises the stuttering at the end before launching into 'Jig Of Life', Irish influence to the fore. 'Hello Earth' starts with a bit of 'come in Houston' style astronaut chat - bit like the end of War of the Worlds and incorporates a bit of monastic chanting along the way. The closing track 'The Morning Fog' seems a little more standalone, in fact, having got to the end, it' not much of a suite at all, it's just that the tracks tend to run into each other. I would say this is her masterpiece, but I really rate Aerial too which is kind of the same in structure
THE SENSUAL WORLD
15th October 1989
The Sensual World
Love and Anger
The Fog
Reaching Out
Heads We're Dancing
Deeper Understanding
Between a Man and a Woman
Never Be Mine
Rocket's Tail
This Woman's Work
There's something about the Sensual World that I just don't get on with. For me it's her weakest album and yet it has some great songs on it. I think it's just a bit more even and uniform than her other work and with Kate, you just don't want that. Stand-out track is 'This Woman's Work', which always raised the question with me of 'Is this really what it appears to be, an account of childbirth from the man's perspective?'. The video featured Blackadder scenery-chewer Tim McInerney as the fretting father I think (I'm sticking to my no You-Tube cheating rule for now). There's an oriental/arabic feel throughout and features the Trio Bulgarika on a couple of tracks (I did consult Doctor Wikipedia on that one). World Music was big at the time and the album draws on that a bit. Special mention must go to 'Heads We're Dancing' where the female protagonist loses a coin toss with Hitler and has to dance with him. Now that's high concept.
THE RED SHOES
2nd November 1993
Rubberband Girl
And So Is Love
Eat the Music
Moments of Pleasure
The Song of Solomon
Lily
The Red Shoes
Top of the City
Constellation of the Heart
Big Stripey Lie
Why Should I Love You?
You're the One
Here's another story about a journey I associate with the record in question (see also The Rising in the Springsteen post). In those days I had just started working in London and was young, free and single (copyright 'Woo' Gary Davies (On The Radio) - someone will get it) with a decent disposable income. One legacy of my student days was support for Sunderland FC, so I spent a fair number of weekends travelling to away games whenever they were in the southern half of the country. On one occasion I was travelling down to Portsmouth, but got caught in a notorious traffic jam spot round the Devil's Punchbowl near Hindhead (the've put in a bypass now so it's not so bad). I had nothing better to do than sit there and listen to The Red Shoes, so in some ways I associate this record with sitting getting frustrated that I might miss the start of a match (I did as it happens, don't ask me to remember the result though). 21 years on, both this album and Sunderland have remained with me (at time of writing they are about to go up against Manchester City in the League Cup final), but I rarely go to the footy any more and if I do, I have to settle for Crystal Palace, but this is not about dragging you into my own personal hell.
So I really like this album, it's nice and quirky but has got really strong songs on it. The first single was 'Rubberband Girl', featuring some dopplering vocals as, presumably, Kate bounces up and down on her rubber band. 'Eat the Music' tends toward some fnarr fnarr double-entendres. My favourite track is Moments of Pleasure, which seems to be exactly what it suggests, a catalogue of Kate's happy memories, including the her mother's sage advice 'every old sock meets an old shoe' and 'the case of George the wipe'. It doesn't matter that we have no clue of the details of these memories, it's about how we can sometimes just remember and be happy.
I also really like 'Lily', which starts with a barely audible spoken piece by the titular person (one of her friends I think) before going on about the 'circle of fire' and being visited by various angels. Apparently Lenny Henry features on vocals on some of the tracks but I've always found him hard to spot. Kate still has occasional attacks of shouty-crackers singing, but it's never out of place.
This album was followed by a long period of silence before Aerial came along, but it was worth the wait....
AERIAL
7th November 2005
A Sea Of Honey
King of the Mountain
π
Bertie
Mrs. Bartolozzi
How to Be Invisible
Joanni
A Coral Room
A Sky of Honey
Prelude
Prologue
An Architect's Dream
The Painter's Link
Sunset
Aerial Tal
Somewhere in Between
Nocturn
Aerial
12 Years! God knows how many acts Cowell launched and ditched in the same period. Kate went forth and multiplied and eventually came back with this. Gone are the histrionics that characterized at least parts of all of her previous albums. This is a much more muted and personal album which has clearly been put together with loving care. As noted previously this is similar in some ways to Hounds of Love. It's a 2-CD release divided into 'A Sea of Honey' and 'A Sky of Honey'. 'Sea' is more of a collection of songs whereas 'Sky' is intended as more of a single piece. 'King of the Mountain' was the first single release. About Elvis we're told and there is a slight King-like quality in her vocal to back this up. 'Pi' is about a man obsessed by the value of the mathematical constant. I'm sure I've heard that her recitation of pi goes wrong somewhere, but who cares, you'd only know if you weren't captivated by the song (and a complete spod to boot). 'Bertie' is a love song to her son (in the purest sense) and her joy at being a mother comes through loud and clear in the lyrics and the delivery. Now, 'Mrs Bartolozzi' is a song to a washing machine, and is pleasantly unhinged with some great expressive lyrics "wishy-washy, wishy-washy, get that dirty shirty clean". There is certainly a more sexual undertone at the same time though. In 'How to be Invisible' she claims to have found a book on the eponymous subject, and you know what? I think she probably did. It draws a bit on MacBeth-y witches brew imagery. 'Joanni' and 'A Coral Room' round it all off and it's all very pleasant without being bland.
'A Sky of Honey' is more of a piece, Rolf crops up again in the 'Architect's Dream', doing one of his painting commentaries and then sings in a slightly droney fashion in 'The Painter's Link'. There are bird impressions along the way. My CD insert doesn't have the lyrics to 'Aerial Tal' or 'Somewhere In Between' - maybe it's an incredibly valuable rarity?! I love the half-rhymes of 'Nocturn'. "We stand in the Atlantic, We become panoramic". You can probably tell that I love this album. It's easily her most complete and controlled work, I just hope old Jake the Peg hasn't ruined it for everyone.
Addendum: My car was broken into recently and a lot of my CDs were nicked including my copy of Aerial. I replaced it and discovered that Kate had gently airbrushed Rolf Harris away, replacing him with son Bertie as the painter. Phew!
DIRECTOR’S CUT
16th May 2011
Flower of the Mountain
Song of Solomon
Lily
Deeper Understanding
The Red Shoes
This Woman's Work
Moments of Pleasure
Never Be Mine
Top of the City
And So Is Love
Rubberband Girl
This is a collection of reworked/re-recorded songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. It starts with 'Flower of the Mountain', which, in I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue style, is one song to the tune of another. It's essentially 'The Sensual World' with different lyrics. The new lyrics come from James Joyce's Ulysses apparently and are what she wanted to use originally but couldn't get permission. 'The Song of Solomon' is essentially the same as before but has more prominent backing vocal and at some points she threatens to break out into full Little Richard Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop interjections. The new version of 'Lily' beefs up the opening spoken passage and is a bit more funky. 'Deeper Understanding', features a new voice for the computer, her son Bertie I think, and is better for it. Kate does add in a few irritating effects that don't really serve any purpose toward the end.
'The Red Shoes' doesn't vary much from the original beside some funky gibbon-type 'whoop-whoops' and a deeper sound. Next 'This Woman's Work'. The production here is much more glassy with sparser instrumentation. I'll be honest, the original is hard to improve on and I don't think she's managed it. It just doesn't flow in the same way and doesn't convey the emotion any more. 'Moment's Of Pleasure' is a bit soulless too. 'Never Be Mine', 'Top of the City' and 'And So Is Love' don't sound substantially different to me other than a heftier production and more full-on vocal. It all ends with 'Rubberband Girl' which features a Pete Townshend-ish guitar riff and Kate enunciating poorly. The instrumental arrangement is good but the vocal does spoil it a bit. We lose the ambulance wails of the original though, so it's not all bad.
50 WORDS FOR SNOW
21st November 2011
Snowflake
Lake Tahoe
Misty
Wild Man
Snowed in at Wheeler Street
50 Words for Snow
Among Angels
Right at the start I cast doubt on Danny Baker's assertion that Kate Bush was a prog rock artist. Here she seems determined to finally prove him right. There are no tracks under 6 minutes long and it does go on a bit. The first 3 tracks are very piano heavy, and, whisper it, a bit dull. Things perk up a bit with 'Wild Man' which has a nice catchy refrain. The we get 'Snowed In on Wheeler Street' in which, as if by magic, Elton John appears. Now I'm in no hurry to investigate HIS back catalogue (stop it!) and have always maintained that while he's a decent songwriter, he's also a rotten singer. This isn't him at his pub-singerish worst but he'll never win me over. '50 Words For Snow' features Stephen Fry reciting, well, 50 words for snow, while Kate counts him down. The closing 'Among Angels; is unremarkable. Having listened to this one again, I'm promoting The Sensual World from bottom slot. This is frequently quite boring and has nothing that really stands out.