No Subject

The story is of a woman paraphrasing part of The Song of Solomon; she
doesn't want the complications that come along with a relationship,
she just wants the spiritual and sexual pleasure of making love.  The
end of the song, however, finds her turning about and pledging her
eternal fealty to her lover.  It turns out that the heart won't allow
the sexuality without the emotional bullshit.  Stunning!  This is the
only song on the album where satisfactory use of The Trio Bulgarka is
made.  Grade: A (98.5)

Lily
----

More great emotive Kate sounds.  An army of Kates singing in harmony
with different voices.  Awesome!  This is Kate doing her own unique
brand of funk.  It's Katefunk!  The story isn't quite self-contained,
however.  The movie, I am sure will makes things clearer, but as it is
we can tell that the song describes a magical spell of protection:
"This is my space."  Grade: A (97)

The Red Shoes
-------------

Tells of the tragic fairy tale of "The Red Shoes" sung as a jolly
Irish ditty.  It has some charm, but it just doesn't work for me.
There's no emotional resonance.  Grade: B-

Top of the City
---------------

This song starts and stops in fits.  The arrangement and Kate's voice
change abruptly.  I think that Kate's been listening to too much 70's
Progressive Rock (e.g. ELP, Genesis, Yes).  I didn't think it was all
that great the first time around, and it's not all that great this
time around either.  The story: Kate's beau is apparently out with
another woman.  Kate wants to go to the tallest building in town and
hope that he will see her up there and climb the ladder she offers
him.  The plot, which is stolen from an archetype of cheesy fifties
movies, is not without its charm, but this song won't get him to climb
that ladder.  Grade: B-

Constellation of the Heart
--------------------------

Kate gets real funky on this one.  Has she been listening to
Funkadelic?  Or maybe it was just Paula Abdul.  Well, who cares?  This
silly pop ditty is tres catchy and funks home its message with classic
clever-Kate imagery.  Travel with Kate, Captain Kirk, and Jean-Luc
Picard on an ongoing mission to where all of us fear to trek... inner
space.  Your conclusion, Spock?  One doesn't need to read the
horoscope to figure out her love life--she has to do the dirty work
herself, by looking inside her heart, but "just being alive, it can
really hurt".

Kate slips in two self-references: "The Big Sky" and "the woman with
the key" (alluding to the cover of *The Dreaming*).  These two
references prove that the constellation of the heart orbits around
*The Dreaming* and *Hounds of Love*.  Grade: A-

Big Stripey Lie
---------------

A rusty swing, crunching guitar, feedback, shitloads of passion.  "Big
Stripey Lie" is everything music should be.  Kate sings a devastating
combination of patient, reasoned discussion, and unrestrained wailing.
Nigel Kenedy's violin is the final touch that makes this track a true
masterpiece.

"Big Stripey Lie" is about someone who is depressed and scared of
love.  The narrator offers herself as a buoy in the ocean of life's
grief.  The lie is that all of one's youthful dreams must drown in
this ocean.  We can keep our heads above the waves with some help.

"Big Stripey Lie" is the kind of song that seems to come around only
once every several years.  You hear it and for a few minutes it's as
if you had forgotten how to see colors, you had been living so long in
a monochrome world that you had forgotten how to see them, and now the
smoky film has momentarily been removed from your eyes, and you can
see beautiful colors in all their glory again.  The colors are so
beautiful and bright that they hurt and it makes you cry, but you
wouldn't trade this moment for anything.  Then the song ends and the
colors fade again to monochrome.  Over the next few weeks, you listen
to the song again and again, and each time it is another wonderful
experience, but each time, as the song becomes more familiar, the
colors get less intense, until eventually all you are left with is a
joyful memory of the colors.  Then you begin the long wait for another
song, which may come in a few years, or may never come at all, that
will bring the colors back.  And, ironically, you are not sure whether
or not you would be happier with or without the memory and knowledge
of those beautiful colors.  But this is what life is all about.
Grade: A+ (100)

Why Should I Love You
---------------------

The first time I heard this song, I thought that [insert bisexuality
symbol here] had ruined might have otherwise been a good song.  Well,
after listening to it some more, I've concluded that it's still a good
song, but I'd still prefer to have heard what Kate might have done by
herself.  Then again, a failed experiment might be better than none at
all.  Unfortunately, the Trio are wasted here.  Has Kate gone
Christian on us?  There's a lot of Christian references on this album.
I'm not sure what purple, red, and grey have to with anything.  Or why
it's the "O" of the Host.  But it sounds nice.  Grade: B-

You're The One
--------------

Boring!  You'd think if Kate went through something really bad, she'd
write something intense and powerful.  Well, not this time, baby.  The
Trio are wasted again, unlike on *The Sensual World*, where they were
used to perfection.  "You're The One" is slow and plodding, completely
predictable.  There are some musical references to Pink Floyd and The
Beatles, which is a laudable goal, but they just don't save this
stinker.  Send Jeff Beck and his cliched 70's sounding guitar from
whence they came.  What a bad way to end an album.  Real bad.  Grade: F


So... Overall it's a very good album.  (The GPA for this album is 85,
a solid B).  Would you expect anything less from Kate?  But if you
were expecting something approaching the dazzling heights Kate set on
*The Dreaming* and *Hounds of Love*, you will be disappointed.  Yes,
there are glimpses of that stunning perfection, but there are also
moments of mediocrity.  Kate, I guess, is following the path of most
great musicians: (1) Early, flawed material filled with promise and
hints of brilliance. (2) A golden period, while the musician is still
young, where she wants to blaze her own unique path in the world.
During this period a musician will create her best, most stunning
works.  (3) A plateaued period that remains for the rest of the
artist's life.  During this period, the artist has grown weary of the
emotional drain of always striving for something daring, something
new, and settles down into a comfortable niche, creating works of
excellence, but missing some of the passion and magic of the golden
period.

I think that Kate is in stage (3), and who can really complain about
that, since it happens to all musicians and still can yield wonderful
music.  Secretly, however, I hope that Kate at some point will make an
unprecedented swoop back to stage (2).  "Big Stripey Lie" proves that
the embers of stage (2) are still there, glowing quietly inside.

|>oug
   <nessus@mit.edu>

"Oh to be in England, in the summertime, with my love....
 close to the edge."