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[Neil Calton <nbc@vd.rl.ac.uk>]

Here are a couple more English reviews of 'The Whole Story'.  The
reviewers  (those below and in my earlier posting) are remarkably
consistent in their verdicts - which seem to  be  that  (1)  Kate
Bush  is  a major artist, (2) the record is a good summary of her
career to date, and (3) the early songs now appear (to  them)  as
twee or whimsical in comparison to her latest compositions.

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The Times  Saturday Nov. 22nd - Times Newspapers Ltd.

...  Kate  Bush  ...  whose  album  'The  Whole   Story'   neatly
encapsulates  her  12 best single releases, including the current
hit "Experiment IV".

When "Wuthering Heights" soared with such ease to No.  1  in  the
spring of 1978, many observers either imagined or hoped that the
success of the pouting 19 year-old  girl  with  the  caterwauling
vocal  style  and  preposterous  dance routines would be a short-
lived  novelty.   But  despite  some  of  her   more   offputting
mannerisms  -  the  babyish  gurgling  in "Army Dreamers" and the
strident screeching in "Sat in your Lap" - she has developed as a
writer  and  performer  of some depth. Despite the big production
job,  "Wow"  demonstrated  a  pleasing  sense  of   irony   while
"Cloudbusting"   and   "Running   Up   That   Hill"  revealed  an
increasingly sophisticated sense of rhythm, melody and  narrative
awareness.

                                                   David Sinclair
_________________________________________________________________

New Musical Express  22nd Nov. - Holborn Publishing Group.

It was Mark Smith of top pop group  (sic)  The  Fall  who,  in  a
typical  broadcast  of  dedicated  antitrendiness, announced that
vegetarianism helped one leave the trolley of  normality  behind.
Something  to do with vital enzymes only being available from the
flesh of murdered livestock.

Kate Bush is a vegetarian. And if Mark's MESsy  (sic)  theory  is
true, then it might account for the large quotient of strangeness
coiled inside the songs  and  sounds  that  make  up  'The  Whole
Story'.

Of course, being signed to EMI from the age  of  14  and  getting
career  guidance  from  zonked-out ex-Pink Floyd guitarists can't
have helped.  Listen to the early string-sugared  meanderings  of
'Wuthering  Heights'  and  'Wow'  (the  latter  now sounds like a
Spitting Image parody) and hear how despite  the  MORish  musical
arrangers  and  the  synthetic  touch  of session musicians, Kate
sounds like she'd been talking to the same ghosts as Ian  Curtis.
The  marketing  executives still saw her as a Carole King for the
Brothers In Arms, an Elkie Brooks who'd soon sort herself out.

But  Kate  just  got  curiouser  and  curiouser.  Rejecting   the
saccharin  sheen of pet poodle producers, she took total control,
coming up with a whiplashed  meditation  on  fame  ("Succeed  and
heaven  is  hell/Succeed and hell is heaven") called 'Sat in Your
Lap'. 'The Whole  Story'  really  stems  from  there,  the  early
inclusions  being just a way of making this a Christmas-targetted
hits collection.