Kate makes U.S. chart; reviews of the album (long)

[ed@das.llnl.gov (Edward Suranyi)]

This is going to be a long posting, so I'd better make a table of
contents:

1) According to _The Gavin Report_, Kate has entered a U.S. chart.
2) A very good review of the album from the Oct. 14 _Sounds_.
Interestingly, it only got three-and-a-half stars out of five.
3) An incredibly good review from the Oct. 14 _Melody Maker_.  This
one has to be read to be believed.  I don't think that even *I* could
have written a review *this* good -- and that's saying a lot!

1)  The Oct. 13 issue of _The Gavin Report_ shows "Love and Anger"
entering the Album tracks chart at number 50.  That song is the second most
added of the week, and _Gavin_ calls it the "Record to Watch".  They say,
"The Hounds of Love are sniffing at the American market.  Kate Bush enjoys
a big first week with adds and rotations, which is only a fraction of her
huge international stature."  Yes, I know that that last sentence doesn't
make sense.  But. . . who cares?

2)  The review from Oct. 14 _Sounds_:

BODY HEAT
KATE BUSH
"The Sensual World"
(EMI EMD 1010/CD) ***1/2

     Isn't the single absolutely withoug equal?  Especially the way the
"mmh yes" punctuation gets progressively more urgent as the song unwinds.
There is really no doubt about it, when Kate Bush says "The Sensual World"
is "a string expression of positive female energy" she isn't kidding.  
That 45 proves that she's come a long way from "Wuthering Heights" and is
now writing approximations of the soundtrack to _Body Heat_.  Stunning
stuff.
     That song is the best thing on this, her sixth album.  It's probably
her best song to date, although -- lyrically at least -- it's possibly
rivalled by "Rocket's Tail" and "The Fog" for classic Bush-like
unsettling, mesmerising undertones.
     The former, a powerful evocation of what can only be perceived as 
the madness of childhood, has backing vocals by The Trio Bulgarka, one
of several brave arrangements on the album.  She even gets old sponsor
Dave Gilmour to chip in on guitar.
     The latter, ostensibly comparing a love affair to the father/daughter
relationship, is all the odder for having lines of dialogue recited by
Kate Bush's actual father.  Does he know what he's supposed to be talking
about?  A weight of Celtic instrumentation (including violinist Nigel
Kennedy at last getting a chance to play something decent in the rock
sphere) provides one of her most enthralling musical tableaux.
     These are the album's best songs, although nothing on the record is
below par, not even the awkward punchline of "Heads We're Dancing".  To
expect a classic after a four year wait is to underestimate the demons
of experimentation that inspired Kate Bush to make, for example, the
outrageous monster _The Dreaming_ in 1982 when the world demanded some
of those nice piano ballads.  She's still the most inspired non-conformist
in commercial music.
     What you're required to deal with on _The Sensual World_ is just as
she says:  "my most personal and female album so far."  And, if you've
been listening since "The Man With The Child In His Eyes," you'll
appreciate that that makes this one pretty staggering in scope.  I can't
wait to see some of these wild and tormented songs making it into the 
charts.
                           -- David Cavanagh


3)  The review from Oct. 14 _Melody Maker_:

FULL BLOOM
Kate Bush
The Sensual World
EMI

     "When Lauren was a small girl, she would stand in the field and call
the cats.  Only by one they would come to her through the grass,
across which lay the ice of the coming winter; and she could see them in
the light of the moon. . . She herself wondered why they came.  They were
wild and heeded no one else; their thrashing in the fields did the farmers
no good and Lauren's father hated the howl they invested in the night,
like a thousand bleeding babies in the grass.  But they came for her and
it was certain therefore, because of that, that she was in some way
special.  Perhaps, she was to wonder 20 years later, they came for the 
same reason she came to see them, all crucifixes of shadow and the army
of lights like knives, and she was beautiful like that too" -- from
"Days Between Stations" by Steve Erickson.
     Even reading the record company's biography of Kate Bush -- that too
is like beginning a breathless windswept novel -- "her father is an avid
piano player and her mother is an Irish woman who takes much joy in music
and dancing.  Kate and her two brothers were raised with an open mind to
artistic experiments."  Signed to EMI before leaving school, Kate never
had to worry too much about real life.  I guess she never had to put the
muse on ice because a gas bill had to be paid.  Quite right.  Let's
protect the artists.  In 1977 her first single was "Wuthering Heights", 
her first album _The Kick Inside_, the rest is. . .
     We should be eternally grateful that Kate was never stiffed by
mundane reality, by having to get by, was always allowed complete freedom
of expression in a non-contemporary fashion.  Her confidence grows and we
benefit from a music which is so naturally *outside*, so gracefully
*above* the sweatings and strainings of those who *strive* to be
alternative, so instinctively *other*.  Because Kate Bush's music emanates
from a grander reality, an inner truth, from the breed of verity which is
being increasingly blitzed out and rendered nearly extinct by the
advertising age, the decade of computer games and fast everything which
Martin Amis lampooned so accurately in "Money".
     Kate Bush takes her time, acts like she lives in a leafy vacuum with
her heart, and every so often sends out a record as a message in a bottle.
Like all her best achievements, this album marries the physical honesty
and self-pride of Marvin Gaye to the querying passionate intelligence of,
say, Elizabeth Smart, and gives birth to a rare mystical and aesthetic
precision.
     Somehow "The Sensual World" is both the most feminine song ever
recorded *and* ethereally androgynous.  At no stage does its account of
female sensitivity and sexuality *exclude* the man, or sneer at him, as
do so many hamfisted attempts at a still largely untapped subject.  And
yet it's as womanly as womanly gets -- "All the *powers* of a woman's
body."  You can sense (with every sense) the singer's awareness of hips,
breasts, "sparks" -- it's both narcissistic and innocent.  Innocent
because total, unashamed.  Innuendo doesn't come into it.  Everything is
as pure and committed as. . .as a river.  Yes, it's a record which reduces
me to impotence in the face of similes.  It is, I now realize, *pure sex*.
It's that romantic.  Joyce's _Ulysses_ has been lured so far off the page
it's downing tools and damning academia.
     Kate Bush seems acutely conscious of the gap between the infinite 
potential of the dream and the finite fancies of reality (reality being
for her, as we have said, the life of the heart in the home).  There's a
song later, called "Never Be Mine", where she's making an apparently 
anti-love statement sound like love in bloom:  "I want you as the dream,
not the reality. . .this is where I want to be. . .the thrill and the 
hurting will never be mine."  It disturbed me that in our times, even
Kate Bush -- our last Bronte, our last Mishima -- was backing off from
_amour fou_, but gradually what the songs here demonstrate is that she's
neither a saucer-eyed dim dewy damsel who's read too many _amor vincit
omnia_ tomes *or* a sceptical she-puma suffering the first blast of doubt.
     She acknowledges both the successes and failures, the flourishes and
damp squibs of romantic idealism.  "Between A Man And A Woman" seems
indecipherable until you realise she's addressing a third party.  The
third party could as easily be what Jane Siberry calls "la jalouse" as
an animate entity, but if ever anyone could make ambivalence strike
and stick like psychosis it's Bush.
     "Love And Anger"  (again it's unspecified which she's praising, which
she's berating -- or is she equating the two?) is musically the closest
approximation to "The Big Sky", but "The Fog" is an unprecedented swirl
of strings and harps, which features her father teaching her how to "grow
up."  Such little-girl-lost tactics would be trite from most others but
Kate has the Gaelic knack and imaginative energy of the born storyteller.
     "Reaching Out" also seems obsessed with the family, with the child
and the parent, but drives its puzzles with a joyous chorus.  It has an
apropos grandeur that makes charming aspirants like All About Eve sound
like hooligans on crutches.
     "Heads We're Dancing" closes side one.  Here the young girl is
seduced by a shadowy Devil, who could well be Hitler.  Mmm.  Yes.  "It
couldn't be you, it's a picture of Hitler!"  I can't think of anyone else
who could get away with setting such high-blown and supremely dodgy themes
to pop music.  Her chief sleight of hand is that, despite the
orchestrations and overlays, it *is* pop music.  As it cascades out on a
repetition of "he go doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, he go mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh-mmh. . ."
Kate Bush represents both philosopher and love object.  Gertrude Stein
and, oh, Ava Gardner.  It is, need I tell you, a triumphant combination.
     "Deeper Understanding" coaxes us into the sparser second side.  It's
one of those heart-breaking poignant ballads she arranges so skillfully
to avoid corn, and whispers to avoid pomp.  A chilly tale of a lonely
someone who becomes obsessed with their personal computer "as the people
here grow colder", it almost lapses into Peter Gabriel terrain when The
Trio Bulgarka swan in, but our heroine's vocal range and risktaking keep
it on good terms with the alien inside us all.  The Bulgarians take up
more and more of the stage as the album climaxes.  She obviously wanted to
utilise them as an extra instrument.  So she does so.  When Kate Bush gets
it right, you get the impression everything's as effortless for her as
making wafting strides through Victorian snowstorm forests in loopy
videos.
     "Rocket's Tail" washes in on a flood of tears, exuding more _mystere_
than the average constellation.  Its story is a rather confused conceit
about someone standing on Waterloo Bridge wanting to be a stick on fire,
but by the halfway point you really wouldn't find it objectionable if she
was singing "Little Bo Peep" or "Blue Is The Colour".  In this context,
the most cliched guitar solo in rock history comes in and stabs your
lungs, Bush and the Bulgarians rise to a glorious vocal tussle which right
now sounds like the greatest East-West artistic collaboration of the
century.
     The coda is "This Woman's Work".  We're told this was written for a
John Hughes film.  Tarkovsky would be more fitting.  When Kate and her
piano are singing with so much heaven in their blood, the state of music
in 1989 is not a reference point.  Her excape within is so determined and
unqualified it's infectious.  And radiant with infections.
     Once every few years, the burning Bush completes a chapter in her
work and it's like a visitation from a guardian angel.  Like flowers are
never really out of vogue.  Like slow dancing with the lights out and the
windows open.  The Blue Nile have a challenger for the most impossibly
beautiful music of the year, but it's not a contest.  It's not even a
year.  Kate Bush is Kate Bush, and thank Christ for that.  She appeals
to the feral elemental child in every woman, and if you think she only
appeals to every man for one reason then frankly, you know nothing about
anything and I can't help you.  The sensual world is a world without end.
Let's get it on.
			    -- Chris Roberts

     
 

Ed (Edward Suranyi)        |  "I'll take Katie in my shelter any day"
Dept. of Applied Science   |              -- Bruce Pollock,
UC Davis/Livermore         |                 _Wilson Library Bulletin_
ed@das.llnl.gov            |    (in review of _The Dreaming_)