Review of TSW from local paper

[Gregg Simmons <gatech!images.Waterloo.NCR.COM!gregg@EDDIE.MIT.EDU>]

Hi Love Hounds,

The following review of TSW appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record's
weekly Entertainment Guide.  It is by Neil Randall, who is an English
professor at the University Of Waterloo.  He may also be known to some of
you as the co-author (with Roger Zelazny) of "A Guide to Castle Amber".
A picture of Kate with the caption "Kate Bush continues to dominate her
musical genre" accompanies the review.

Although it's not mentioned in the review, it might interest you to know
that the first Canadian single from TSW is "The Sensual World".

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Kate Bush's World a Sensual sensation

The Sensual World
Kate Bush (Capitol)

If any one artist has consistently embodied excellence throughtout the 1980s,
that person is Kate Bush.  It's hard to believe that Bush's debut album, The
Kick Inside, was released a full dozen years ago, and it's even harder to
believe that she's released only five albums since.  Her music has dominated her
particular genre - whether you call it avant-folk or neo-artiste - so much that
her albums seem to have appeared in rapid succession.

But they haven't.  A case in point is the amount of time between The Hounds of
Love, her last album, and The Sensual World, her brand new one.  Hounds of Love
was released more than three years ago, yet the influence of that ground-
breaking album makes it seem completely contemporary.  Bush's videos have
influenced many artists, and her lush, dense, utterly absorbing writing and
performing have done at least as much.  Witness, for instance, Jane Siberry.

The Sensual World is everthing its title implies.  Yes, it's sensual, and, yes,
it's about the world.  More importantly, though, as Bush insists in the advance
publicity, The Sensual World is just as distinctively female.

Capturing the essence of female-ness has occupied poets and fiction writers
(particularly women) for a large part of this century, expecially during the
last two decades.  Popular music, however, has remained almost exclusively male.
Women have shone, certainly, but nearly always within a setting established by
male artists.  Understanding what it means to be female has never been much of a
concern in rock, because rock is still considered a boy's game.  Witness the
Rolling Stones, idolized because they refuse to leave adolescent malehood
behind.

Back to The Sensual World.  The title track, Love and Anger, Deeper
Understanding, This Woman's Work, and Walk Straight Down the Middle combine to
represent Bush's strong, gripping attempt to come to terms with creating a
woman's art.  The music is beautiful - it ranges from the lilting to the dense
and powerful - and the lyrics are contagious.  This is music by a woman who is
trying to convey to the world - not just to other women - what it means to be a
woman.

In other words, it's nothing short of indispensable.
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