The Red Shoes (looks like Kate *has* lost it)

[feygin@sparc0a.cs.uiuc.edu (alexander feygin)]

Well, everyone is giving their song-by-song review of
the album.  I agree with many of opinions, many songs
are pretty "good", while others are weaker.  

I'd like to look at the album as a whole.

I think that Kate has lost the "magic" that she once
had.  And I don't think that her deteriorating voice
is really as much of a factor in her demise as song
writing and creativity.  _The Dreaming_ is perfection.  
Every song fits like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.  It 
demands to be played over and over again; there are 
just so many layers.  The only other album I can 
compare _The Dreaming_ to is Pink Floyd's _Dark Side 
of the Moon_.  _Never For Ever_ and _Hounds of Love_ 
are not quite as perfect, but excellent albums in 
their own right.  I enjoy  every track, and have the 
desire to play them more than once at a time.

Then something terrible happened to Kate, and she 
released _The Sensual World_.  This is not to say that 
it was a "bad" album.  There were many very good songs, 
and one excellent song, on the album.  But the magic
was lost.  The emotional pizzaz of the previous three
was non-existent.  Since there were still some cool 
tracks on it, it was a good, but standard pop album.

I was hoping it was only a trend... and I thought really 
liked TRS on the first couple of listens.  I really 
wanted to like it, but I just couldn't knowing that this
was the same Kate who put out _The Dreaming_.  The best
3 songs on the album (IMO), "The Red Shoes", "Lily" and 
"Big Stripey Lie", are a sad glipse at the old Kate.  
They would be sub-par songs on NFE, TD, or HoL.

The others wouldn't even make it.

Looks like the "magical" Kate is gone forever, and she 
has become just another above-average pop singer.


-- 
Alexander Feygin (feygin@uiuc.edu)   "I can do no wrong"--Pigface