Re: Has Kate already peaked?

[gondola@deltanet.com (E.B.)]

HAS KATE PEAKED?

Definitely (though I hope her next album proves me wrong). The Dreaming
and Hounds Of Love were the pinnacle. I've always blamed her decline on
too much technology. When she based her songs around piano and then
layered the extras on top, she was brilliant. But then she discovered her
Fairlight synthesizer, and it's been downhill ever since. Hounds Of Love
is amazing, but you can already spot the seeds of decline: Instead of
melodies, she's starting to work with "grooves" and samples. Actually,
it's the same fatal mistake Bryan Ferry made a while back. She started
PROGRAMMING her melodies rather than writing them, and her work has
suffered terribly. I think I've listened to The Sensual World and The Red
Shoes about twice. Granted, that's because I have a couple thousand other
albums and so not much that those records are THAT lousy, but if I listed
my favorite records of those two years, Sensual and Red Shoes would barely
make my Top 40s. I'm sorta lukewarm on Tori Amos, who's so pretentious she
makes Kate seem like the Go-Go's, but Jane Siberry's When I Was A Boy is a
much better "Kate Bush record" than either Sensual or Red Shoes. Jes' my
two cents....

Trying to stay faithful,

E.B.