Re: The Sensual World: maturing or icing?

[Dances With Voles <jondr@sco.COM>]

Yo! whitcomb@aurxc3.UUCP (Jonathan Whitcomb) raps:
>Turn this around.  Anyone over the age of 16 can relate to a song like
>"Between A Man And A Woman", whereas few will be able to relate to 
>a song about a story by Wilhelm Reich unless they've read it.  If Bush
>wants to write literary commentary, fine, but I (and I expect most people) 
>buy an album to enjoy the music.

If I want music that anyone with a semi-functional brain can appreciate,
then I can turn on the radio, or MTV or just stick my head in a lawnmower.
If I want something that requires a little mental effort on the part of the
listener, then I'll grab Kate, or practically anything else in my CD
collection (not that I don't have a large chunk of braindead music as
well...)

>I find
>the Ninth Wave embarassing.  A group of song fragments, loosely linked
>by an uninteresting concept and no coherent musical theme, and the
>listener is supposed to accept it as High Art?  This kind of pretention
>went out of style in the 70's.  I find that this is a result of Bush
>trying too hard to develop a concept, and forgetting to develop *songs*.

Oh dearie me.  Well, I don't know what to say here, other than the obvious.
You have a minority opinion.  What's so non-song-like about "And Dream Of
Sheep"?  It's practically nothing but Kate+Piano.  How is it different from
"This Woman's Work"?  Sure, ADOS serves a purpose as an introductory piece,
setting the scene for the rest of TNW, but it's also effective as a
stand-alone composition.

>Waking the Witch?  Noise.  Studio effects.  Horrendous lyrics.  

Uh oh, them's fighting words!  I love WTW.  Absolutely LOVE it.  What's
wrong with noise and effects?  Why are they less "song-like" then
drums/bass/guitar?  Is a composition less valid because it is rendered with
bells and helicopters than if it is played on a violin?  Who decides what is
then valid?

>Sure, her fans will eat this stuff up, but it won't help to expand
>her audience.  I would never have believed it if someone told me
>that Bush could turn me off after The Dreaming, but this did it.

Explain why "helping to expand her audience" is a desirable thing.  If it
means cheapening her art in order to include "mass appeal" then I don't want
to know about it, personally.

>The Dreaming worked because Bush added all the detail to songs
>that were strong to begin with.  On The Ninth Wave all we got
>was detail. 

I disagree.  I think that's about as far as we can take this discussion.

>>>The Sensual World continued in this vein.  Bush had become 
>>>very proficient in the studio, and the sound quality was great.
>>I think the sound quality is actually really bad.  [Specifics deleted]
>I was referring to musical arrangement and layering, not post-production.

OK, well, I think the arrangements are pretty bad as well, but whatever...

>The title track is perhaps the most annoying song in the past five years.
>Here is a prime example of something that works in print but fails as
>a song.  Melodically it is very weak.  Is it intended to impress or 
>entertain?  I'd argue that this really isn't so much a song as a tone poem.  

Well, whatever it is, it sent chills down my spine the first time I heard
it, so I guess it had an emotional impact.  This is, in fact, the highly
scientific Drukman Musical Analysis Test - if a Kate song, on first listen,
sends chills down my spine, then it's good.  If it doesn't, then it isn't.

>Are you criticising me for disliking it for the wrong
>reasons?  

I'm not criticising you for THAT, I'm criticising you for pretty much
everything else.  You can dislike TSW for whatever reasons make you happy.
On the other hand, if you're going to bad-mouth TNW you might as well have
some supportable arguments.

>Exactly what I'm talking about.  "This Woman's Work" can stand on it's 
>own without alot of fluff to prop it up.  Remember that this song was 
>not written for an album.  It was written for a film, and Bush wrote a 
>simple, direct *emotional* song based on the piano part.  I wish she would 
>write like this more often.

Nah, one per album is fine by me.  Why is there no room for other types of
expression in your world?

>I think you have gotten my idea backwards.  I'm not talking about stripping
>the production off of a song to judge it's merit, I'm talking about if
>the song has merit before you add the production on.  Remember, Bush's
>earlier work was usually written before she entered the studio.  Now
>she composes in the studio.  Very different process, and I think the
>reason I don't relate to her recent work.

First of all, I don't see any difference between "stripping the production
off of a song to judge its merit" and deciding if "the song has merit before
you add the production on."  For one thing, you're making the mistake of
quantifying production.  It's more than just adding sound effects.  It's the
whole approach - engineering, arrangement, everything.  How do you decide,
on something like The Dreaming, where the `production' ends and the song
begins?

>Take "Flight of the Swallow", for instance (or any song from The Dreaming).
>This is a complete song, and doesn't depend on the context of the album 
>for it's strength.  The song's arrangement builds and expands upon
>the song, and makes it greater than it was, but it could have worked
>without it.  "The Sensual World" would fall flat without it.

Well, I think it depends what you're talking about.  In TSW, the melody
isn't in the lead vocal, it's in the arrangement.  So, you could conceivably
play it all in a simple two-hand piano arrangement and get some of the
impact, but what's the point?  These aren't songs that are written to be
easily transposable to other interpretations - they are written to be
complete sonic experiences.  You can't separate out pieces and say, "this is
the SONG and this is the PRODUCTION."  The whole thing is a complete unit
and it has to stand or fall on its own.

>Forgive me.  I didn't mean "the absolute cutting edge" of the new
>technology, I meant using samplers, synths, effects and arrangements as 
>songwriting tools instead of production tools.  The point (again) being, 
>that she is worried about a song's presentation before concentrating on
>it's essence.

So what is the ESSENCE of a song?  Is your point that songs written out on
paper after being composed at the piano are intrinsically better because of
some weird Whitcomb-specific criterion that other people can't understand?
I strongly dispute this claim (if indeed you are making it) because TD and
most of HoL, not to mention practically every record I own, are
counter-examples.

>I don't know how I can make my point any clearer... instrument and
>studio technology are no substitute for good songwriting.

Instrument and studio technology are part and parcel of good songwriting.

>Are you saying that if you took any average joe songwriter into
>a studio and gave him a top notch producer that he could create a
>great album?  No! There are hundreds of examples of well produced
>trash that contradict you.  It takes outstanding songs to make an
>outstanding album, regardless of how the album is produced.

You didn't read what I wrote.  I said the songs are weaker and they need
work as well.  Obviously you can dress up crap in expensive production and
you'll have expensive crap.  However, I am not so snobbish as to think that
a well used production trick can't enhance an already great song.  We have
this discussion on the XTC mailing list at least once a year concerning this
little repeat echo on one word of a certain track.  One camp feels that this
is a totally gratuitous piece of trickery that does nothing.  The other camp
feels that it just puts the right punch at the right place and is thus
totally orgasmic.  Obviously I belong to the latter camp.  The airplane
screaming across the stereo field on Pull Out The Pin is very obvious, but
highly effective.  Would it be just as good a song without it?  I don't
think so.

>I think that you are of the school that thinks if you take any piece
>of music, be it Gregorian chant or nursery rhyme, wrap it up with 
>enough whiz-bang technology and effects, that you'll create a better
>song than you had before.  Nonsense.  A song has to stand up on it's
>own merit first.  Then you can enhance it with studio technology.  
>Like any process:  put crap in, you get crap out.  Sugar coat it and
>it's still crap.

Let's take this food metaphor to ridiculous extremes, shall we?  OK, first
we've got something like the piano demo of Babooshka which is bread and
butter - filling, vaguely nutritious and somewhat appetizing.  Turn it into
a real song and you've got a BLT (or a wheatgrass, avocado and creamcheese
sandwich for you Californians).  Now, TD and HoL are Full Seven Course Meals
with soup and nuts.  On the other hand, every once in a while you've just
got to grab a nice candy bar, which is all sugar and no nutrition.  Scritti
Politti records are the aural equivalent of candy bars and I must say that I
would never part with my Scritti Politti CDs.  The point is that there's a
place for everything.  I would not like to live on a diet of bread and water
for the rest of my life.

>It's like going to a party where you don't know anyone.  The private
>jokes have no meaning to you.  Does Bush really expect us to go out
>and read a book just so we can appreciate her song?  I don't expect
>to pick up every reference, but when a whole song is based on one
>specific piece of generally unknown fiction, I don't buy it.  A
>reference to "Wuthering Heights" will be more generally recognized.
>I don't have to know specifics to enjoy "There Goes A Tenner". 

I've never read Wuthering Heights, and I still like the song.  I've never
read A Book Of Dreams and I still like Cloudbusting.  I'm working on
re-reading all of Ulysses now (only read part of it in college) but I still
like TSW.  What are you trying to prove?  Yes, There Goes A Tenner succeeds
on its own, but isn't it so much more resonant when you find out what
Strangeways is?  Or see some Monty Python episodes where the bobbies bust in
and shout "what's all this then"?  Or know who Edward G. Robinson is?  What
if you're an American and you don't know what a solicitor is?

>Do you really believe emotion = brainless?  Jon, I think you've missed my
>point.  Bush's great strength is her ability to tantalize sexually, stimulate 
>intellectually, and touch emotionally.  I feel that she has substituted
>studio wizardry for passion in her last two albums, and I miss the
>passion and honesty of her earlier work.

Well, when I said "brainless emotionalism" I meant in the sense of that
whole "laying bare the soul" kind of writing.  Where you just pour your
heart out onto the page and hope that there's enough drippy people out there
wanting their buttons pushed that way.  I think there's plenty of passion on
the last two albums, and sometimes it mixes with the studio wizardry in a
way that is completely satisfying.  On HoL, this is often the case.  On TSW,
it is less often true.

>>Always note the sequencer - this will never let us down.
> ^
> |
>This explains alot.

Have you got the slightest clue where I took that line from?  I didn't think
so.  Now drop it.

>Remember a few years when MIDI was introduced?  People claimed that now
>anyone could make a hit record.  It hasn't happened.  Technology doesn't
>produce great music.  Great composers produce great music.  Modern
>composers may take advantage of the new technology to explore areas
>that were not availible in years past, but they still need to rely on
>their talent, not the tools.  Kate Bush has the talent, but I believe
>that it's taken a back seat to the technology in her last two albums.  I
>eagerly await a return to form.

So, you're saying that whistling Beethoven's Ode To Joy is just as good as
hearing it performed by a full orchestra and choir.  It's great music by a
great composer, after all.  All this "it just has to be well written" cant
makes me want to go shoot someone.  It's like showing a pencil sketch of the
mona lisa and saying you don't need the full painted version, because all
the important stuff is here.  Choice of sounds, arragement, etc is totally
crucial to a song.  You can't have a good song without good production.
Listen to my Katemas Version of Running Up That Hill - it should be just as
good as Kate's version, right?  After all, it's got the same beat, the same
words, the same notes (almost in the right order, even).  So what's the
difference?  Attitude, production, maybe even "magic" (are you still
reading, Vickie?)...  A song is NOT good because the idea behind it is
good.  It is good because hard work and ingenuity went into the creation of
a total sonic experience.  If you have to reduce it to the level of a
spreadsheet and say that a song is only good if it is 80% melody and 20%
studio wizardry, then you have the soul of an accountant and deserve to be
locked in a room with a piano and Kate's sheet music for the rest of your
life.  What's the difference, after all?  All the good stuff is there.  It's
up to you to bring it to life.  As for me, I'll stick to my walk-in closet
which is crammed full of Kate, Public Enemy, Coil, Ministry, Fuzzbox,
Vivaldi, Skinny Puppy, Neneh Cherry, Bill Nelson, Propaganda, Muslimgauze,
ABC, Nurse With Wound, Gary Clail, Hawkwind, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Klaus
Schulze, Donald Fagen, Negativland...  The list goes on and on and on...

-- 
Jon Drukman (love pantry)                       uunet!sco!jondr   jondr@sco.com
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Always note the sequencer - this will never let us down.