HOL Re-Release Reviewed

["Collinson, Wendy" <Wendy.Collinson@olsy.co.uk>]

I was hoping they'd feature this review in their website version but
alas no.  So here it is, the Q Magazine review of the re-release of HOL,
entitled:  KIND, THE MOMENT KATE BUSH JOINED MUSIC'S ARISTOCRACY.

"The early 1980's were not the happiest of times for Kate Bush.
Following the Number 1 success of her third album Never For Ever in
1980, the reclusive singer, songwriter and producer, amazingly still
only 22, took advantage of her hugely agreeable non-touring arrangement
by getting to work on what - in her mind - would likely prove her
masterpiece.

Self-arranged, self-produced, and released in 1982, The Dreaming was an
accomplished and heady affair, bursting with sonic trickery, ambitious
songwriting and a guest slot from Rolf Harris.  The only snag was, it
effectively killed her run of British hits.  Even if her ever-loyal
legion of followers ensured that the album debuted at Number 3, each
single pulled from the album would stiff.  The title track stalled at
Number 48.  Its follow-up, the bank-robbing fantasy, There Goes a
Tenner, failed even to register in the Top 75.

EMI, who seven years before had signed the 15-year-old school girl
Catherine Bush to a recording and publishing deal on the recommendation
of Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour - for the princely sum of ?3,500 -
understandably grew twitchy.  Particularly since the experimental nature
of the Dreaming and its endless hours of studio time in London's top
studios had resulted in her most costly album to date.  A rethink, it
seemed, was drastically necessary.

Early in 1983, in one of her sporadic missives to her fan club's
newsletter, Bush wrote:  "This year has been very positive so far.  It
doesn't have the same air of doom and gloom that '81 and '82 seemed to
hold.  The problem is that if I don't make an album this year, there
will be at least another two-year gap, and the way business and politics
are, it would be a negative situation.  I seem to have hit another quiet
period.  I intend just to keep on writing for the first part of the
year, so yet again I slip away from the eyeball of the media to my home.

Retreating to here 17th Century farmhouse tucked away in the leafy calm
of Kent, Bush once again turned to the protective bosom of her
remarkably close-knit family, and on her father's advice began to
remodel her creative operation as a cottage industry, outlining the
design plans for a state-of-the-art 48-track studio to be built in the
barn.  Even if there was a certain sense of urgency surrounding this
fifth album, Kate Bush had clearly grown weary of watching the studio
clock as it ticked off anything up to ?100 an hour.  As it turned out,
the dreaded two-year gap would come to pass, and in her prolonged
absence there were dark mutterings that the publicly svelte, dance-fit
songstress had begun bingeing on junk food and ballooned to an
elephantine 18 stone.

The truth, however, was somewhat less dramatic.  Already carrying a
reputation as an artist with a temperamental muse, Kate Bush had spent
much of this time re-organising her working methods.  Past albums had
been written on piano and then arranged during the laborious studio
stints.  Now, with her expensive acquisition of the Fairlight - that
Rolls-Royce of '80's sampling technology - she was composing directly
onto hard disk and master tape.  Having been something of a production
pioneer in her Floyd-like treatment of the stereo spectrum as a broad,
blank musical canvas (a helicopter sample appears "by kind permission of
Pink Floyd/"The Wall"), from now on her songwriting and keen attention
to aural detail would work in tandem, with many of the elements of the
original demo sketches for Hounds of Love making it all the way.

Seeking a closeted, intimate atmosphere in her workplace, most of the
sessions involved only Bush, her long-time beau and bassist Del Palmer
and an engineer.  And although there would be a lengthy procession of
musicians through the studio during the album's leisurely recording
period, it was perhaps this sense of intimacy that helped the
peak-and-trough mood shifts of Hounds of Love seem all the more
convincing and emotive.

Tellingly, when a change of location was required to break up the
sessions, the unit decamped to Dublin, a city which unarguably favours
the slow-lane approach.  Most of the lyrics were written here, so it's
perhaps significant that in this deceptively peaceful setting, Kate
Bush's head was burning with thoughts of "a crowd rioting inside", of
persecution and possession, of being hunted and haunted.  At some
points, the atmosphere is claustrophobic and suffocating.  At others,
it's manic and euphoric.

For the most part, time has been kind to Hounds of Love.  Only the
clanking, robotic omnipresence of Palmer's Linn drum machine (the pulse
of ever over-produced record of its decade) dates the sound, its size
tens trampling all over the insistent opener Running Up that Hill (A
Deal with God).  Overall though, the album's use of a pristinely
recorded array of acoustic instruments - the woody warmth of Danny
Thompson's double bass, the clipped precision of the Medicci Sextet,
with many balalaikas, bodhrans and bouzoukis besides - lends it a
certain timelessness.  On top of this, Bush's wonderfully expressive
vocals, whether in breathy close-up, or heavily effected and cooing, or
shrieking in the background, serve to provide the focus, even if they
remain too characteristically mannered for some tastes.

Side 1, in the old money - titled Hounds of Love - resides firmly in the
pop camp, and four of its five tracks, save the hushed balladry of
Mother Stands for Comfort, became singles.  But this, musically and
lyrically, is surely some of the most obtuse pop music to have graced a
chart rundown:  the taut industrial rhythms and nightmarish, moonlit
chase of the title track; the hyperventilating highs and driving,
thunderous bass (provided by Killing Joke's Youth) in The Big Sky.

And then, of course, there's Cloudbusting - not by an stretch of
imagination the stuff of the typical pop single.  For a start, its
inspiration lay in A Book of Dreams, the childhood memories of Peter
Reich, son of socialist Austrian psychologist Wilhelm "The Function of
the Orgasm" Reich, who believed that with his invention, The Orgone
Accumulator, he could alter the earth's climate and create rain on
command.  For the song's suitably cinematic video, in which Reich is
eventually arrested by US authorities for transporting his contraption
over state lines, Donald Sutherland played the scientist and Bush, in
boyish drag, his son, adding knowing twist to the closing refrain of
"Your son's coming out".  More remarkably, by this point Bush's
commercial fortunes had turned.  In October, 1985, Cloudbusting went
straight into the Top 20 and Top of the Pops screened the strange promo
in its entirety.

Even the six extra tracks included on this reissue (as part of EMI's
centenary celebrations; there's also a useless free EMI booklet) suggest
that Kate Bush was on something of a creative roll during this time.
Remixes of Running Up That Hill and The Big Sky betray a perhaps
harebrained marketing plot to make Bush's records a big hit in discos.
Be kind to My Mistakes, a soundtrack contribution to Nic Roeg's Castaway
is filmic in a meandering way, while Under the Ivy and Burning Bridge,
both album offcuts, were quite probably only left on the cutting-room
floor owing to vinyl album length.

And that length, undoubtedly, is down to The Ninth Wave, the ominously
conceptual song cycle that swallowed up the original Side 2.  The
recurring theme - water - finds our narrator falling into a gentle sleep
to Radio 4's shipping forecast ) And Dream Of Sheep), only to wake up
scratching at the underbelly of a frozen lake (the frantic Under Ice),
and being drowned as a witch (*the frighteningly demonic Waking the
Witch).  En route, she becomes a communication-frustrated ghost (the
mumbled Watching You Without Me), before eventually waking or being
reborn (The Morning Fog), depending on which way you interpret it.
What's more, aside from the heavy-handed traditional Irish passage Jig
of Life (featuring the spoken poetry of brother John Carder Bush), it
actually works, even with the heavy brogue of Robbie Coltrane sharply
interrupting the proceedings.

Against all reasonable odds, Hounds of Love proved an enormous artistic
and commercial success for Kate Bush, even reaching Number 30 in
America.  Its follow-ups, the Sensual World (disappointing) and The Red
Shoes (had its moments) would reveal a horrible truth.  Kate Bush would
always have her work cut out to top this. "

Reviewer:   Tom Doyle.
Rating:  ***** (Top "Q" rating:  Indispensable.  Truly exceptional.)

There is also a review of Maxwell's Unplugged album, making reference to
his "quiveringly beautiful cover of Kate Bush's This Woman's Work".  The
review accords Maxwell four stars and considers him a "virtuoso in the
making".

Also a short article about Paula Cole:  "After replacing Sinead O'Connor
on Peter Gabriel's 10-month Secret World Tour in 1995, Cole returned to
Massachusetts to work on This Fire, which combines the drama of Kate
Bush with the esoteric musing of Tori Amos."