The Kick Inside

The Kate Bush fanatic who doesn’t own Wuthering Heights keeps it quiet. In anticipation of 50 Words for Snow, I recently rectified the problem and bought her debut album, The Kick Inside (along with The Red Shoes, reviewed here).

The Kick Inside (1978)

Now I have Wuthering Heights. This is a song which could barely be more familiar, after so much exposure and dancing along (we’ve all done it). What strikes me now is that it still sounds so strange. Even in the context of this album, that weird voice seems to come from a totally different place. Coupled with an undeniably wonderful and inspired lyric, the song continues to entrance and leap. Mainstream the rock arrangement may be, with a banal guitar solo tacked on the end, but without this grounding it perhaps would never have been a number one smash. It couldn’t help but knock everyone sideways on Top of the Pops.

Let me in

That rock presentation characterizes the album and is handled perfectly well, with piano leading alongside occasional strings, synthesizers and so on. This is the mid-70s, with Elton John and Roxy Music each coming to mind at times. But even the most straightforward tracks have their quirks and one should never be complacent about Kate’s singing. Listen to her playful backing vocals in the otherwise unsurprising James and the Cold Gun, or imagine how much power would be lost if L’Amour Looks Something Like You were stripped of her voice.

And sometimes there is liberation from the safety of four-square guitar-and-drums nestled in the mix. Featuring primarily Kate and her piano, these are the quieter and more exposed songs, such as Feel It and The Kick Inside. These tracks show better what later albums would hold. We are drawn more to the songwriting and remember with awe that Kate Bush was nineteen years old when this was released. In fact, the most famous of these calmer tracks, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, was recorded when she was only sixteen. It is a fascinating song, and the only one I previously knew besides Wuthering Heights.

Most of the rest of the album was completely new to me. The Saxophone Song and Strange Phenomena are exciting; Them Heavy People and Oh to Be in Love are fun. My favourite discovery is Moving, the opening song. Swooning and wheeling, Kate woos with a sensual lyric. The arrangement works well too, built around sparkling piano. Moving gives us the best of Kate Bush’s early work, before she grabbed hold of the production reins and went batshit with a Fairlight. Also, this is great:

There was much to come, but The Kick Inside still endures as a remarkable debut. The teenaged Kate had talent ready to explode.

8

50 Words for Snow

An intimate winter gift

This is Kate Bush’s first album of new songs since Aerial came out in 2005. That album is one I cherish and I lose myself again and again in the complex, beguiling washes of sound. Aerial is the perfect English summertime album. Subdued and whispering, 50 Words for Snow is a handsome winter counterpart.

Blown from polar fur

It is a calmer, more intimate album than we have come to expect. Of course, intimate moments abound on Kate Bush’s earlier records, but here the dominant sound is piano with fewer embellishments than usual. The layered, spacious soundscapes are absent. This is to be listened to holed up indoors away from winter storms, chilling and warming by turns. The songs are all built around the concept of snow and the music softly echoes its magical fragility. We are never trapped Under Ice.

New material from Kate Bush, so rare, is always exciting as she offers so much. Her voice is captivating, the production lush and meticulous, but I relish most the elements of play and surprise. The ideas are fully formed, the characters speaking as clearly as her Cathy in Wuthering Heights, but we are never sure what will happen next. Aerial gave us blackbird song, Renaissance viols and Rolf Harris. 50 Words for Snow is not so dazzling or puckish, but subtle twists still bring smiles and no less so for their quietude.

There are the small, teasing details. In Lake Tahoe, the music pauses and Kate gasps; at the beginning of Snowed in at Wheeler Street, speech melts into song; the wonderful chorus voices in Wild Man are startling. The lyrical themes are astonishingly varied, as usual. Although conceptually linked, they range from a night of passion with a snowman to yeti persecution.

The first track, Snowflake, may be straighter, but the part of a falling snowflake is played by Kate’s thirteen-year-old son Bertie, whose performance is half-spoken, half-sung. His crystal treble voice perfectly evokes the season and, together with Kate’s warm singing and gentle piano, brings winter light to a yearning, tingling mother-and-son track. It is beautiful. Strings unobtrusively fill out the sound, adding an occasional decorative flurry.

Indeed throughout the album, the orchestration never intrudes on the intimacy. Among Angels, the final track, is oblique and touching in the same way as Aerial’s A Coral Room. Strings enter midway, but the focus is always on Kate and the piano. In Misty, the core sound is piano, bass and drums, coolly recalling a classic Blue Note rhythm section.

Misty is over thirteen minutes long. Kate Bush makes a snowman, with whom she then spends the night (“I kiss his ice cream lips”). In the morning he has gone, melted away. The music sustains the song, shifting to reflect the long narrative and featuring tremulous guitar and a noticeable huskiness in Kate’s voice. Lake Tahoe is similarly lengthy, but remains more static musically and doesn’t carry us in the same way, despite the inventive, ghostly words.

Robber's veil, creaky-creaky

The duet with Elton John, Snowed in at Wheeler Street, contains the strongest emotional breakout, telling a tale of lovers forever divided. The cathartic ending is forced perhaps, but till then it builds well on a menacing pulse and the star cameo from Kate’s own hero is interesting. Then, on the title track, Stephen Fry proposes a list of nonsense synonyms for snow, while Kate counts them off and in the chorus cheers him on (“Just 22 to go, let me hear your 50 words for snow!”). How strange and amazing. I was worried that Fry would break the spell with his familiar QI–Twinings purr, but he intones the words solemnly with just a hint of humour. Currently, my favourites are swans-a-melting, deamondi-pavlova and icyskidski.

In 50 Words for Snow, Kate Bush has produced hushed music which gleams in an icy hinterland. Like snow, it invites and unnerves, giving its gift quietly. I am enthralled by a musical vision which has yet to waver or disappoint. How lucky we are.

8.5

For more Kate Bush, read my review of The Red Shoes here... and The Kick Inside here!

The Red Shoes

The Kate Bush bonanza starts here

There are only four days to go before the release of Kate Bush's new album, 50 Words for Snow. The excitement is tangible. I completely devoured Director’s Cut earlier this year. It features reworkings of songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, in generally warmer, more intimate settings. I love The Sensual World and the new versions fascinated me, but I barely knew the seven selections from The Red Shoes. A shameful secret of mine had been cruelly exposed: I did not own all her albums. No Red Shoes, and no Kick Inside. In the spirit of generating anticipation, I recently rectified this.

The Red Shoes (1993)

This album does not have a particularly strong reputation. There are fewer classic tracks than expected and the digital production is famously of its time. Maybe this is why I had been hesitant, instead choosing yet again to whip out The Dreaming and hee-haw along. In fact, much of it is great, even if things fall apart towards the end. My approach was unusual. I had only a passing knowledge of the singles (Rubberband Girl, Eat the Music), but several album tracks I seemed to know intimately after their appearance on Director’s Cut.

A rubber band hold me trousers up.

Of these, most are not too different here. And So Is Love is still beautiful and The Red Shoes still skitters about. There are sometimes extra details I enjoy, sometimes bits I miss: I pine for the mad-Kate ferocity at the end of Lily. A little disappointing is Moments of Pleasure (heresy!). I fell in love with the mellower version on Director’s Cut and I am glad I heard that version first. Here, the pace is faster and lain over the top of Kate and her piano is a showy Michael Kamen string arrangement. It is needless and too busy, distracting from the beautiful words.

I am now crazy over Rubberband Girl. A dotty lyric is matched with classic Kate Bush production (in a 1990s guise). Layers are built, with chorused voices and crooked synths. Vocals are sped up and Kate makes noises as if indeed she were a rubber band (“Here I go...!”). Whilst it doesn’t hit the emotional highs of some of her exquisite earlier singles, it is still great fun. The sound is light and brittle, but it makes me dance. Eat the Music is less engaging, seeming more cluttered and less immediate, although the lyrics are rather glorious. I wonder what fruit they might have borne if used differently, in one of her sultry, passionate pieces (think of Running Up That Hill or The Sensual World).

The weakness of The Red Shoes lies in the final few tracks. Big Stripey Lie is a pleasing racket, but Constellation of the Heart misfires (despite Bush’s usually dependable shouting crowd). Why Should I Love You? is a collaboration with Prince (Prince!). The result sounds like a throwaway pure-pop track from his early NPG era, and I regret the missed opportunity. If only they had come together five, ten years earlier. Finally, You’re the One does a little better and features the Trio Bulgarka, who had previously illuminated The Sensual World. They are criminally underused on this album.

Overall, The Red Shoes is a pleasant surprise. It contains some vintage Kate Bush and reaches joyous peaks. My love for her is long-standing and remains undimmed. Four days to go...

7.5

PS My review of The Kick Inside will follow very soon. Ta x