Impossible to fault.īy 1986 Kate Bush was eight years into a highly successful career which had seen her rise to be the preeminent British female pop musician of the age which an international reputation. There's even a Celtic Jig in there (Jig of Life).Ĥ6 minutes of perfection. Highlights for me are, "And dream of sheep" and "Hello Earth".
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The story is of a woman/mother who has fallen through the ice on a frozen lake and is trapped, thinking of those left behind, as she fights to stay afloat and alive. A suite of seven songs based on the same theme, under the heading, "The ninth wave". It is Side Two that in my opinion the album flourishes. The subject matter is varied, including a mother's love for her son, who has committed murder, and exploration of dreams, with inspiration take from the Peter Reich memoir A Book of Dreams. Side 1 has a collection of "hits", including Running up that Road, Hounds of Love, The Big Sky and Cloudbusting.
#KATE BUSH HOUNDS OF LOVE REVIEW FULL#
It's worthy of a full user review, as it's a true classic.įor those who have lived under a rock, or are born this millennium, Kate Bush is considered a true genius and this is viewed my many, as her seminal album. This is one of my favourite albums of all-time. Every element is put towards that purpose - what will best tell this story? Your mileage may vary on how much of that you can stomach, but to me I see genius in her particular brand of storytelling.
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So it seems to me she’s not all that interested in what makes a song a song, rather what makes a song a story.
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But why does she not just write stories in text then? Bush’s genius is in making the music perform the other roles in her stories - antagonist, chorus, mood-generator, weather, scene-setter - it is the canvas (to further mix the mediums) on which she paints her characters. These are not songs, they’re stories, and her lyrics tell the inner lives of her characters: Cloudbusting is the yearning, revolutionary youth marching through her life (“The sun coming out… I just know that something good is going to happen… Your sun’s coming out…”) The dreamer, pushing away modernity and their companions in Big Sky (“We pause for the jet… What was the question? I was looking at the big sky.”). It just so happens that rather than write her baroque, gothic literature in text, she writes it in sound. Wisps of magic (the magic of nature, especially), bizarre imagery and metaphor entwine with the usual anxieties: love motherhood death making deals with God. She’s an author of strange, literary fiction.