Stereo Review review of _TRS_

[larry@hal.com (Larry Hernandez)]

c Parke Puterbaugh in Stereo Review magazine.  This right honorable review
  is reproduced here without kind permission from this noteworthy person... 
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BEST OF THE MONTH 

Kate Bush Stretches Out 

Few artists have so successfully bent musical trends and technology toward
them as has Kate Bush.  A pioneer in the use of the Fairlight synthesizer,
she artfully explored the potential of sampling as far back as 1982's
"The Dreaming."  Perhaps buoyed by the Utah Saints' prominent sample of a 
line from an old song of hers (Cloudbursting) [sic] in their recent U.K. 
rave hit Something Good [Parke, you can't be serious!], in her new album, 
"The Red Shoes," she breathlessly dives into dance-club beats, Celtic 
instrumentation, bluesy guitar-vocal dialogues, grunge guitar, Bulgarian 
chorales, sunny world-music tangents, art song, Princely funk, and 
incantatory trance music. [not to mention a film-grrrr...]

The album immediately goes for maximum liftoff with Rubberband Girl, which
captures Bush at her most rhythmically blunt and artfully infectious.  Over
a solid, rave-worthy drum beat underpinned by synthesizer swashes and 
marimba, she playfully enongates her vocals in a wish for emotional resili-
ence ("If I could twang like a rubberband/I'd be a rubberband girl"). 
Vocally, she's got more stretch in her than a slingshot, reaching for the 
top of her range with no loss of power on such numbers as the delirious
title track and Top of the City, a plea to climb above and beyond the filth
of city streets. 

A handful of special guests contribute to several tracks.  Eric clapton 
plays with exquisite feeling in And So Is Love, and the Trio Bulgarka and 
Prince join Bush for an ecstatic outpouring in Why Should I Love You?  Bush
herself rises to a crescendo of pure, uncensored feeling when she blurts 
out, "Just being alive/It can really hurt" in Moments of Pleasure and "I 
don't know if you love me or not" in Top of the City.  In Lily she assumes
the voice of an elderly sage, snapping "Child, take what I say with a pinch
of salt/And protect yourself with fire." 

Musically inventive, emotionally audacious, and entrancing in an all-too-
rare way, "The Red Shoes" will set your feet dancing and your head spinning.
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Larry (larry@hal.com)  HaL Computers, Campbell, CA. USA