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[hound!gab@att.att.com]

What follows is a review of _TSW_ from "our country's paper of record" -
The New York Times. It was written by Stephen Holden and appears
in the >>Pop Life<< column in today's edition.

Molly Bloom's Reverie

When the English singer and songwriter Kate Bush asked
the James Joyce estate several months ago for permission
to set a portion of Molly Bloom's erotic reverie from
"Ulysses" to music, she was devastated when the answer
was no.

"I had been fascinated at how well the words fit to music,"
she recalled the other day in a telephone conversation
from London. "I found myself in a situation where I would either
have to shelf the song or rework it trying to keep the 
original sense. I gradually rewrote it, keeping the same rhythm
of the words and the same sounds but turning it into its own
story, which became the idea of Molly Bloom stepping out
of the song into the beauty of nature."

The completed piece became the title cut of Miss Bush's sixth
album, "The Sensual World" (Columbia). The song, she said, uses 
the chord sequences of a traditional Macedonian tune and an
arrangement dominated by uilleann pipes, an Irish bagpipe,
along with a bouzouki and fiddle. The richness of the language
and exotic instrumental textures that sound Indian-flavored,
blend gorgeously and make "The Sensual World" one of the year's
headiest records.

It was 11 and one-half years ago that Miss Bush, who was then 19,
had her first hit with "Wuthering Heights," a song with lyrics
inspired by Emily Bronte's novel. The song soared to No. 1 on the 
English charts. But America has been slow to warm to a singer
whose high vibratoless voice and enrapted lyrics suggest a
romantic English schoolgirl romping through the Jungian landscape
of her own dreams.

Finally, in 1985, her song "Running Up That Hill" became a 
middle-size American hit. The next year, "Don't Give Up,"
a duet with Peter Gabriel on his album "So," enlarged her audience.
With "The Sensual World," which this week entered Billboard's pop-
ablum chart at No. 84, Miss Bush's movement in this country may
have arrived.

One reason Americans may be resisting Miss Bush is that she has
never performed here in concert.

"I've always preferred to make albums, to be a songwriter and to work 
in the studio," she said. "We did one tour 10 years ago in England and 
and in Europe, and I enjoyed it. But there was no call to go to
America at that point."

Musically, Miss Bush said, she was influenced by Roxy Music, by the
Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Magical
Mystery Tour" and by Pink Floyd, whose guitarist Dave Gilmour paid
for the tapes that led to her first recording contract.

But more than other pop musicians or authors, Miss Bush said movies
have inspired her. Among film makers, she said she most admires
Alfred Hitchcock, Nicolas Roeg and Terry Gilliam.

"Their work has spoken to me as directly as that of any other
kind of artist,: she said. "Many of my songs I think of as 
very filmic."


- Gerard