"Back Door: Sue Hudson explores the unique poetry of Kate Bush"

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The following article was written by Sue Hudson, an editor of the
British magazine Hi-Fi & Record Review, and appeared in their December
1985 issue.

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    We've been holding our breath for a long time. Three years of playing
the old songs and wondering "whatever next?" Would it be even weirder
than _The Dreaming_? Would it leave more admirers by the wayside, shaking
their heads?
    The real fans will happily go along for the ride, even if she isn't
going the pretty way. For Kate journeys into new and exciting
territories. She is an original in a music world dominated by cover
versions, regressive movements and identikit superstars. The direct
opposite of the archetypal rock star: compulsively introvert in a world
of screaming extraverts, middle-class and deeply English amid
England's all-pervasive working class American ethos, boldly feminine
in rock's macho climate. Her melodic genius and articulate lyrics make
the rest seem moronically simplistic. Her instrumentation is far
removed from the traditional guitar/drum-kit set-up and predictable
synthesiser riffs. Instead, she brews a heady mixture of _musique
concrete_, multi-tracked chorus and acoustic instruments from the
digeridu to the balalaika; all skillfully appropriated to produce
precisely calculated effects. Her lyrics are also multi-diverser. After
a thousand songs on the theme of boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl or
Thatcher's Britain, exposure to her music comes as an imaginative
release as we go giddily flying into the limitless possibilities
of the poetic viewpoint. Here is talk of whales, of Peter Pan,
kites, Houdini, mysticism...
   Acquaintances have observed, "She lives in a world of her own."
But it's a world that lives within _all_ of us, and her songs shine
light into neglected areas of our minds. Using imagery nostalgically
familiar to fellow Englanders, her subjects come tripping from library
shelves, television and cinema screens and musty books of fairy tales,
the stuff that dreams are made of. She spins tunes that haunt, twist
and turn the mind, triggering long forgotten moods. Listening intently
to her albums is an experience akin to having a lucid and feverish
dream. Jungian symbols of youth, innocence, spiritual escape and the
dark, feminine realm abound. Ghosts haunt the black vinyl grooves.
Uncanny intimations disturb the sensitive. The spirit of Peter Pan
hovers over her work, sometimes overtly, as in "In Search of Peter
Pan," but also covertly, as a yearning for the human closeness and
heightened awareness of youth. The plangeant beauty of Irish and
English folksong lies at the heart of the music, working its ancient
magic. Magic, too, is the rich Celtic blood that Kate shares with so
many poets and spell-weavers.
    But it's not all brooding intensity. There are jokes, too: some
Ealingesque -- movie-obsessed bank robbers break into _The Dreaming_,
there's a Brechtian romp through _Arsenic and Old Lace_ country in
"Coffee Homeground", and those "Darling, you were wonderful!"
theatrics from "Wow". Teasing seduction has produced some adorable
songs, a poet's sensuality perfuming the lyrics. Images of silk and
lace, flickering candlelight, white rosebushes in a storm, dusty ivy,
plaiting hair by the fire, ravish the mind's eye.
    But don't imagine that her music is "wet." When multi-layered sonic
collage, Kate's own spectacular vocal tricks and chant-like Oriental
rhythms combine at the ends of the more fey tracks, the effect can be
as power-packed as the heaviest metal. The use of Eastern borrowings
in odd harmonies and interlocking, unfamiliar rhythms opens up and
strengthens the Romanticism. The lyrics, too, have Oriental influences,
in the shape of Gurdjieff -- a Sufic guru whose strange terminology
and mystic psychology are a recurring motif. While it must baffle most
listeners, it does lend a suitably mysterious distancing to her
deeply personal songs, sharpening an image that threatens to become
too sweet. It's a mischievous paradox that, while rock at its
ultra-macho best is exhilarating and energising, just at the moment
when it is most strident and loud, it leaves you needing something more.
Then along comes a shy doctor's daughter from Welling who out-screams
the best, out-powers the noisiest and tops it with the satisfying
impact of musical and psychological depth. It's almost Wagnerian.
    In a sense, the music is retrospective, since it uses the English/
Irish folk idiom that went, via country-and-western, to make up
rock and roll. The blues/gospel element of Kate's "rock" music is
very minor. The rhythms are more often Oriental or old-European than
African -- waltzes, jigs and ragas. So, to the European and the
Eastern ear, Kate's music has a sweet familiarity, especially for the
British, who learn their folksongs in school and still sing hymns and
carols in the traditional settings.
   Her talent was precocious. The "Saxaphone Song" and "The Man With
a Child in his Eyes" were recorded as demo tapes when Kate was still
at school. The first album, _The Kick Inside_ (1978), cased tremendous
media interest and is still the public's favourite. Her voice,
criticised at the time, _was_ small and childlike, the range erratic,
if impressive. Since then it has improved enormously, deepening and
gaining power and flexibility, until now it is a great asset, individual
and capable of both subtle and stunning effects. The fleshing out of
the basic material has also improved with experience, the moods
becoming more atmospherically defined, with more sophisticated
instrumentations and extrapolation of themes.
    The second album, _Lionheart_, was made at the height of her
popularity and is almost extravert in tone, with a strong dash of
theatricality. Its hit-that-never-was, "Hammer Horror", has fun with
the ghosts and ghouls that lurk in the dark corners of her more sombre
songs. "Symphony in Blue" is optimistic and self-affirming. The title
track is a beautiful lullaby for a sleeping nation.
    _Never For Ever_ came next and starts in happy mood, with a
summer night of a cha-cha-cha tribute to a new-found hero, Delius.
The philosophic "All We Ever Look For" creates a remarkable and rare
mood of reassurance and upbeat resignation, a Bush specialty. We end
Side One with a hippy tour of Egypt, but Side Two plunges straight
into gloom with a violent Western. The dark continues with the
shiveringly ghostly "The Infant Kiss", based on Henry James's
_The Turn of the Screw_, and the bittersweet "Army Dreamers", with
its ingenious use of waltz time. The end comes in the horrifying
"Breathing", a vision of the nuclear holocaust through the eyes of
an unborn child.
    On to _The Dreaming_, a strange, alien album full of mysticism
and obscuranti. Its impact owes much to sheer production quality.
Kate has gradually taken over this aspect of her records since
_Lionheart_, and each LP is technically more impressive. Her voice
here is forward and strong and, in "Leave It Open", deliberately
distorted to create a surreal effect. "Get Out of My House" is a
shattering trip into madness, with a stunning culmination which finds
Kate braying like a mule amid a chorus of Indian drum talk.
    The new album, _Hounds of Love_ breaks new ground for Kate with
the "B" side. This is a story -- _The Ninth Wave_ -- told in a series
of songs, like a Pink Floyd concept album. Free from the necessity
of setting a fresh context for each track, the lyrics are more spare,
more integral to the music, and her talent blossoms. The strong
storyline, with its claustrophobic, mystic theme, has possibilities
beyond a mere side, as do many of Kate's ideas. Such a fertile
imagination is quite capable of keeping our interest in one situation
for an hour, or longer. Her musicianship is now skilled and inventive
enough to sustain more instrumental episodes and linking themes.
And as mistress of mood, she has the right combination of talents to
stretch out beyond the limiting confines of pop into more "operatic"
form.
    Casual listeners will miss the depth of the music. You must sit
down with the lyric sheet and find out what's going on. All the vocal
acrobatics and weird sounds click into place when you know what ideas,
stories and situations they are expressing. In most rock and pop, the
music and words may be linked, but are basically separate. Kate
creates, more and more, a fusion between the two -- the sounds directly
expressing the subject. this is a throwback to Wagner's music-drama,
with its leitmotifs, turning music into an idea. The Beatles revived
the technique, and bands of the hippy era like Pink Floyd carried the
banner. But only since the development of electronics, which put
virtually the whole world of sound at the fingertips of the "player"
of a Fairlight, has there been such flexibility to allow individuality
and encourage creativity. Kate is fast becoming a master in the use
of this sonic montage, perhaps because the ideas she is using are
far more complex, have more "resonances", than those of her
contemporaries.
    But Kate will never be an academic artist, drily applying
intellectual music theory to the delight of a handful of peers,
forging into new areas for the sake of "progress". Her style is
personal, individual, impressionistic. Like Delius, her music will
always flow from poetic necessity, breaking from the confines of
tradition because expression demands it. I just hope that she will
have the confidence to follow her instincts and not be discouraged
by the music press, who in the main are baffled and annoyed by her
uniqueness. Unable to pigeon-hole her music, they turn instead to
ridicule and condescension to fill the pages. Which is a disservice
to the British public, who to their undying credit, have made Kate
Bush such a popular success.

-- Sue Hudson

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-- Andrew