No Subject

As Kate herself has said:
"...this is
not an album to hear while you're washing the dishes.  It requires a
willingness of the listener to be captivated...and you don't know what
on Earth it's about 'til you start working with it..."

Hounds of Love  (1985)
----------------------

Fans waited an agonizing three years for Kate's next album to appear
on the market, and when it finally did, it was obvious that
Hounds of Love was as different from The Dreaming as The Dreaming
had been from Never For Ever and Kate's first two albums.

The first song on the album, "Running Up That Hill", was the album's
first and only really celebrated single; although cuts such as
"The Big Sky" and "Cloudbusting" were released as 12"
singles and were included later in Kate's The Whole Story
videocassette, none of them were received nearly as well commercially
as "Running Up That Hill".

The second side of Hounds
was very much a concept thing, telling the story of an individual who
falls through the ice while skating and spends the night in the icy
water.  Near death, the person is visited by three spirits who show
them what life would be like for their loved ones if they were to die,
and as a result the individual fights and eventually wins
the battle to survive.  This series contains some frightening and
almost violent tracks --notably "Waking the Witch" --
but others, such as "Jig of Life", "Hello Earth", and the closing
"The Morning Fog", are reassuring and optimistic.

The Whole Story  (1986)
-----------------------
In early 1986, The Whole Story
album and videocassette appeared on the market.
Aside from the one previously unreleased single,
"Experiment IV", the material on both the record and the video was
a sort of "greatest hits" compilation,
released seemingly as a means to satiate Kate's fans while they
waited for her next album to arrive.  While impossible to
select Kate's best material to include on The Whole Story,
most of her major works managed to get stuffed onto the hour's
worth of play time.  Appropriately, the work opens with Kate's anthem,
"Wuthering Heights";
the remaining material was arranged by Kate herself so that the
songs, rather than appearing in chronological order, "flowed" into one
another well.  Such classics as "Wow", "Breathing", "Army Dreamers",
and "Sat in Your Lap"
were included for the fans' listening and/or viewing pleasure.  All in
all, it was a rather nice sampler for the novice Kate Bush fan,
and provided a good way to get acquanited with Kate's more celebrated
material.

Later the same year, Kate teamed up for a second duet with Peter Gabriel
assisting him with vocals on Don't Give Up",
and also appearing in both versions of the song's accompanying videos.

In March of 1987, Kate performed "Running Up That Hill" and
"Let It Be" at the Secret Policeman's Third Ball
in England, and also contributed her positively lovely "This Woman's    k"
Work" to John Hughes' 1988 _She's Having A Baby_ soundtrack.

The Sensual World
-----------------

And so here we are in 1989, back to the year in which Kate finally
released her sixth album, The Sensual World,
to a breathless band of dedicated followers around the globe.
Four years in the making, World
is a definite reflection that Kate has done a great deal of expanding
and growing in that time.  Sure, the terrific voice is still there,
but there are
new rhythms and instruments that lend an entirely new sound to the Kate
we know and love; Irish fiddles, Uillean pipes, and Greek bouzukies
play side-by-side with the distinctive guitar of Pink Floyd's Dave
Gilmour.  And as bizarre and unlikely as all that may sound, the
result is spectacular, and one can see that Kate spent the last
four years making sure that everything on the album blended and
balanced to perfection.

The album opens with the title track; bells ring in celebration,
and the lyrics, derived from James Joyce's _Ulysses_ purr in
satisfaction: "Mmmmm.....yes...".  Ultimately, Kate was not able to
quote Joyce's piece directly, so the song became a story of
Molly Bloom stepping from the pages of the book and into
the real world where she's free to touch and see and smell
the world around her.  Hence, the sensual world.

The album's second track, "Love and Anger",
was, according to Kate, one of the most difficult songs to put
together and yet was the first one to be written.  She had written
bits and pieces of it, left them, and then came back to them about
eighteen months later to piece them together.  And although Kate says
it "doesn't really have a story", the song is basically about the
people you feel you can and cannot confide in.

Kate fans seem to view the album's third cut, "The Fog",
as the sort of Bush material they can't get enough of:
kind of dark and murky and mysterious,
with pipes and vocals that make the hair stir on the nape of the
neck.  Featuring Kate's father in a spoken bit, the song is about
growing up, but more specifically, about placing trust in another
person and being able to "let go" just enough to make it on your
own in a relationship.

Next on the album is "Reaching Out",
another song which deals with children -- and people in general --
reaching out to experience the world around them.  It's a rather
moving piece, with Kate's voice passionate and at its powerful best.

And so on to "Heads We're Dancing".
The song, although it starts out interestingly enough
with its neat little syntho-tech
sounds and rhythms, has actually stirred up most of its
attention due to the fact that it mentions Hitler.  As Kate has
explained, it was purely coincidental that the song should be
released in the year of World War II's 50th anniversary; she claims
to have written the song two years ago.  She does apologize to any
who may be offended by the mention of Hitler, but states that
the reason for writing the song came innocently enough:
"...it was all started by a family friend, years ago, who'd been to
dinner and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so
charming.  They sat all night chatting and joking.  And next day he
found out it was Oppenheimer.  And this friend was horrified because
he really despised what the guy stood for..."

And so, in the same way, Kate was fascinated with the whole idea
of being a girl at a dance party and having this handsome, dark
stranger come up to her and ask her to dance...and then the next
morning, she looks at the daily paper and sees that it had been
Hitler.  As Kate admits, the song's subject is a little sensitive.
But that still doesn't make the track any less audibly appealing.

By the time you get to the sixth track on The Sensual World,
you're into the album, sure.  You can already appreciate all the
stuff that Kate's etched on the vinyl so far.  But then you get to
this song, "Deeper Understanding."
And there are these damned *voices*, see.  The voices of the
all-woman, Bulgarian 'a cappella' trio, Trio Bulgarka, that
make you sit right up and take your feet off the coffee table.  And
when you juxtapose their somehow ancient voices beside the track's
subject matter of computer technology, *and have it work*,
you really have something special.

For Kate, the process of working with the Trio was incredible and yet
frightening, since she knew
no Bulgarian and the Bulgarian women didn't know a word of
English.  But still, Kate says that "she wouldn't have missed it for
the world."  And she obviously did a good job at communicating somehow
with these three older, amazing songstresses; the resulting harmonies
in this track are beautiful.

"Between A Man and A Woman" is the seventh track on World,
and deals with the delicate balance that exists between two people
in a relationship, and how such a balance can be disturbed by an
interfering, if well-meaning, third person.  Kate explains that the
song emerged from a line from The Godfather, which says
"...don't interfere, it's between a man and a woman."

The following cut, "Never Be Mine",
features another collaboration of Kate and the Trio,
along with Davey Spillane's haunting Irish pipes.  Kate explains the
song:
"...It's that whole thing of how, in some situations, it's the dream
you want, not the real thing.  It was pursuing a conscious realization
that a person is really enjoying the fantasy and aware it won't become
reality.  So often you think it's the end you want, but this is actually
looking at the process that will never get you there..."

Well, if the subject matter of "Never Be Mine"
was sentimental enough to bum you out a little bit, then the next cut,
"Rocket's Tail",will certainly put the grin back on your face.
Kate's strong foreground voice is there to tell the tale of a person
nutsy enough to try and shoot themselves like a rocket off a bridge,
while the extraordinary vocalizations of the Trio Bulgarka allow you to
almost *picture* the ensuing fireworks.
The entire first half of the piece is 'a cappella'. But
as nice as that all is, you're suddenly brought to a anti-climax as
Kate's voice is suspended for a second, and
then Gilmour's distinctive guitar is there hitting you in the face,
simply wailing a-la-Floyd.  Great stuff.  Spine-tingling.  Worth
playing loud on the Fourth of July.

Whew!  Now that you've gone flying around the night sky in "Tail,"
you're ready to come back down to Earth with the next track, the
gorgeous "This Woman's Work."  Written for the John Hughes film
She's Having A Baby,
the song is simple and emotional, with Kate basically sharing
the spotlight
only with her piano.  And although the lyrics may be tender, Kate's
voice is anything but; it's pure and it's powerful and it threatens
to pull your heart right out your throat.  And it's also a beautiful
way to bring an equally wonderful album to a close.

While the vinyl version of The Sensual World
contained only ten tracks, the cassette and compact
disc versions included an eleventh, entitled
"Walk Straight Down the Middle", which also appeared as the B-side
for the "Love and Anger" 7-inch single.  As Kate explains:
"...it's the idea of how our fears are sometimes holding us back, and
yet there's really no need to be frightened...it's about following
either of two extremes, when you really want to plough this path
straight down the middle, rather than being thrown from one end of the
spectrum to the other.  I'd like to think of myself as holding the
centre..."

We'd like to think that she'll continue to hold the centre, and
the spotlight, for at least a few more years.  But, you know...
we may have to wait another four years for the next bit of treasure
and wisdom from the fair Ms. Kate.  Another four years before we can
add another chapter in the continuing success story of Kate Bush.
But, somehow, Kate Bush fans everywhere know that the story
is far from over...