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(2018) Kate Bush albums (remaster 2018)
Review:
Remastered versions of Kate Bush album catalogue. This is the first (and definitive) programme of remastering. The albums, many of which have been unavailable on vinyl for a decade, have been remastered by Kate and James Guthrie.
One of the most successful and popular solo female performers to come out of England during the last several decades of the 20th century, Kate Bush was also one of the most unusual, with her keening vocals and unusually literate and complex body of songs. As a girl, Catherine Bush studied piano and violin while attending the St. Joseph’s Convent Grammar School in Abbey Wood in South London. She also amused herself playing an organ in the barn behind her parents’ house. By the time she was a teenager, Bush was writing songs of her own. A family friend, Ricky Hopper, heard her music and brought Bush to the attention of Pink Floyd lead guitarist David Gilmour, who arranged for the 15-year-old Bush to record her first demo. With Gilmour’s help, Bush was signed to EMI Records at age 16, though the company made the decision to bring her along slowly. She studied dance, mime, and voice, and continued writing. She also began thinking in terms of which of the 200 or so songs she’d written would be part of her first recording, and by 1977, she was ready to begin her formal career, which she did with an original song, “Wuthering Heights,” based on material from Emily Bronte’s novel (and more directly inspired by Bush’s seeing the 1970 film directed by Robert Fuest and starring Timothy Dalton and Anna Caulder Marshall).
1978 The Kick Inside
Kate Bush’s first album, The Kick Inside, released when the singer/songwriter was only 19 years old (but featuring some songs written at 15 and recorded at 16), is her most unabashedly romantic, the sound of an impressionable and highly precocious teenager spreading her wings for the first time. The centerpiece is “Wuthering Heights,” which was a hit everywhere except the United States (and propelled the Emily Brontë novel back onto the best-seller lists in England), but there is a lot else here to enjoy: The disturbing “Man with the Child in His Eyes,” the catchy rocker “James and the Cold Gun,” and “Feel It,” an early manifestation of Bush’s explorations of sexual experience in song, which would culminate with “Hounds of Love.” As those familiar with the latter well know, she would do better work in the future, but this is still a mightily impressive debut.
1. Moving (2018 Remaster) 03:00
2. The Saxophone Song (2018 Remaster) 03:54
3. Strange Phenomena (2018 Remaster) 02:56
4. Kite (2018 Remaster) 02:57
5. The Man With The Child In His Eyes (2018 Remaster) 02:41
6. Wuthering Heights (2018 Remaster) 04:28
7. James And The Cold Gun (2018 Remaster) 03:36
8. Feel It (2018 Remaster) 03:02
9. Oh To Be In Love (2018 Remaster) 03:18
10. L’Amour Looks Something Like You (2018 Remaster) 02:28
11. Them Heavy People (2018 Remaster) 03:04
12. Room For The Life (2018 Remaster) 04:06
13. The Kick Inside (2018 Remaster) 03:35
1978 Lionheart
Proving that the English admired Kate Bush’s work, 1978’s Lionheart album managed to reach the number six spot in her homeland while failing to make a substantial impact in North America. The single “Hammer Horror” went to number 44 on the U.K. singles chart, but the remaining tracks from the album spin, leap, and pirouette with Bush’s vocal dramatics, most of them dissipating into a mist rather than hovering around long enough to be memorable. Her fairytale essence wraps itself around tracks like “In Search of Peter Pan,” “Kashka From Baghdad,” and “Oh England My Lionheart,” but unravels before any substance can be heard. “Wow” does the best job at expressing her voice as it waves and flutters through the chorus, with a melody that shimmers in a peculiar but compatible manner. Some of the tracks, such as “Coffee Homeground” or “In the Warm Room,” bask in their own subtle obscurity, a trait that Bush improved upon later in her career but couldn’t secure on this album. Lionheart acts as a gauge more than a complete album, as Bush is trying to see how many different ways she can sound vocally colorful, even enigmatic, rather than focus on her material’s content and fluidity. Hearing Lionheart after listening to Never for Ever or The Dreaming album, it’s apparent how quickly Bush had progressed both vocally and in her writing in such a short time.
1. Symphony In Blue (2018 Remaster) 03:36
2. In Search Of Peter Pan (2018 Remaster) 03:47
3. Wow (2018 Remaster) 04:01
4. Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake (2018 Remaster) 03:15
5. Oh England My Lionheart (2018 Remaster) 03:12
6. Full House (2018 Remaster) 03:14
7. In The Warm Room (2018 Remaster) 03:36
8. Kashka From Baghdad (2018 Remaster) 03:56
9. Coffee Homeground (2018 Remaster) 03:39
10. Hammer Horror (2018 Remaster) 04:40
1980 Never for Ever
Never for Ever has Kate Bush sounding vocally stable and more confident, taking what she had put into her debut single “Wuthering Heights” from 1978 and administering those facets into most of the album’s content. Never for Ever went to number one in the U.K., on the strength of three singles that made her country’s Top 20. Both “Breathing” and “Army Dreamers” went to number 16, while “Babooshka” was her first Top Five single since “Wuthering Heights.” Bush’s dramatics and theatrical approach to singing begin to solidify on Never for Ever, and her style brandishes avid seriousness without sounding flighty or absurd. “Breathing,” about the repercussions of nuclear war, conveys enough passion and vocal curvatures to make her concern sound convincing, while “Army Dreamers” bounces her voice up and down without getting out of hand. “Babooshka”‘s motherly charm and flexible chorus make it one of her best tracks, proving that she can make the simplest of lyrics work for her through her tailored vocal acrobatics. The rest of the album isn’t quite as firm as her singles, but they all sport a more appeasing and accustomed sound than some of her past works, and she does manage to keep her identity and characteristics intact. She bettered this formula for 1985’s Hounds of Love, making that album’s “Running Up That Hill” her only Top 40 single in the U.S., peaking at number 30.
1. Babooshka (2018 Remaster) 03:19
2. Delius (2018 Remaster) 02:51
3. Blow Away (2018 Remaster) 03:34
4. All We Ever Look For (2018 Remaster) 03:47
5. Egypt (2018 Remaster) 04:11
6. The Wedding List (2018 Remaster) 04:15
7. Violin (2018 Remaster) 03:15
8. The Infant Kiss (2018 Remaster) 02:49
9. Night Scented Stock (2018 Remaster) 00:52
10. Army Dreamers (2018 Remaster) 02:59
11. Breathing (2018 Remaster) 05:30
1982 The Dreaming
Four albums into her burgeoning career, Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is a theatrical and abstract piece of work, as well as Bush’s first effort in the production seat. She throws herself in head first, incorporating various vocal loops, sometimes campy, but always romantic and inquisitive of emotion. She’s angry and pensive throughout the entire album, typically poetic while pushing around the notions of a male-dominated world. However, Kate Bush is a daydreamer. Unfortunately, The Dreaming, with all it’s intricate mystical beauty, isn’t fully embraced compared to her later work. Album opener “Sat in Your Lap” is a frightening slight on individual intellect, with a booming chorus echoing over throbbing percussion and a butchered brass section. “Leave It Open” is goth-like with Bush’s dark brooding, which is a suspending scale of vocalic laments, but it’s the vivacious and moody “Get Out of My House” that truly brings Bush’s many talents for art and music to the forefront. It prances with dripping piano drops and gritty guitar, and the violent rage felt as she screams “Slamming,” sparking a fury similar to what Tori Amos later ignited during her inception throughout the ’90s. Not one to be in fear of fear, The Dreaming is one of Kate Bush’s underrated achievements in depicting her own visions of love, relationships, and role play, not to mention a brilliant predecessor to the charming beauty of 1985’s Hounds of Love.
1. Sat In Your Lap (2018 Remaster) 03:29
2. There Goes A Tenner (2018 Remaster) 03:24
3. Pull Out The Pin (2018 Remaster) 05:25
4. Suspended In Gaffa (2018 Remaster) 03:54
5. Leave It Open (2018 Remaster) 03:19
6. The Dreaming (2018 Remaster) 04:40
7. Night Of The Swallow (2018 Remaster) 05:22
8. All The Love (2018 Remaster) 04:28
9. Houdini (2018 Remaster) 03:49
10. Get Out Of My House (2018 Remaster) 05:25
1985 Hounds of Love
Kate Bush’s strongest album to date also marked her breakthrough into the American charts, and yielded a set of dazzling videos as well as an enviable body of hits, spearheaded by “Running Up That Hill,” her biggest single since “Wuthering Heights.” Strangely enough, Hounds of Love was no less complicated in its structure, imagery, and extra-musical references (even lifting a line of dialogue from Jacques Tourneur’s Curse of the Demon for the intro of the title song) than The Dreaming, which had been roundly criticized for being too ambitious and complex. But Hounds of Love was more carefully crafted as a pop record, and it abounded in memorable melodies and arrangements, the latter reflecting idioms ranging from orchestrated progressive pop to high-wattage traditional folk; and at the center of it all was Bush in the best album-length vocal performance of her career, extending her range and also drawing expressiveness from deep inside of herself, so much so that one almost feels as though he’s eavesdropping at moments during “Running Up That Hill.” Hounds of Love is actually a two-part album (the two sides of the original LP release being the now-lost natural dividing line), consisting of the suites “Hounds of Love” and “The Ninth Wave.” The former is steeped in lyrical and sonic sensuality that tends to wash over the listener, while the latter is about the experiences of birth and rebirth. If this sounds like heady stuff, it could be, but Bush never lets the material get too far from its pop trappings and purpose. In some respects, this was also Bush’s first fully realized album, done completely on her own terms, made entirely at her own 48-track home studio, to her schedule and preferences, and delivered whole to EMI as a finished work; that history is important, helping to explain the sheer presence of the album’s most striking element — the spirit of experimentation at every turn, in the little details of the sound. That vastly divergent grasp, from the minutiae of each song to the broad sweeping arc of the two suites, all heavily ornamented with layered instrumentation, makes this record wonderfully overpowering as a piece of pop music. Indeed, this reviewer hadn’t had so much fun and such a challenge listening to a new album from the U.K. since Abbey Road, and it’s pretty plain that Bush listened to (and learned from) a lot of the Beatles’ output in her youth.
1. Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) [2018 Remaster] 05:00
2. Hounds Of Love (2018 Remaster) 03:02
3. The Big Sky (2018 Remaster) 04:35
4. Mother Stands For Comfort (2018 Remaster) 03:08
5. Cloudbusting (2018 Remaster) 05:09
6. And Dream Of Sheep (2018 Remaster) 02:45
7. Under Ice (2018 Remaster) 02:22
8. Waking The Witch (2018 Remaster) 04:18
9. Watching You Without Me (2018 Remaster) 04:07
10. Jig Of Life (2018 Remaster) 04:03
11. Hello Earth (2018 Remaster) 06:12
12. The Morning Fog (2018 Remaster) 02:35
1989 The Sensual World
An enchanting songstress, Kate Bush reflects the most heavenly views of love on the aptly titled The Sensual World. The follow-up to Hounds of Love features Bush unafraid to be a temptress, vocally and lyrically. She’s a romantic, frolicking over lust and love, but also a lover of life and its spirituality. The album’s title track exudes the most sensually abrasive side of Bush, but she is also one to remain emotionally intact with her heart and head. The majority of The Sensual World beams with a carefree spirit of strength and independence. “Love and Anger,” which features blistering riffs by Bush’s mentor and cohort David Gilmour, thrives on self-analysis — typically cathartic of Bush. Michael Nyman’s delicate string arrangements allow the melodic “Reaching Out” to simply arrive, freely floating with Bush’s lush declaration (“reaching out for the star/reaching out for the star that explodes”) for she’s always searching for a common peace, a commonality to make comfort. What makes this artist so intriguing is her look toward the future — she appears to look beyond what’s present and find a peculiar celestial atmosphere in which human beings do exist. She’s conscious of technology on “Deeper Understanding” and of a greater life on the glam rock experimental “Rocket’s Tail (For Rocket),” yet she’s still intrinsic to the reality of an individual’s heart. “Between a Man and a Woman” depicts pressure and heartbreak, but it’s the beauty of “This Woman’s Work” that makes The Sensual World the outstanding piece of work that it is. She possesses maternal warmth that’s surely inviting, and it’s something that’s made her one of the most prolific female singer/songwriters to emerge during the 1980s. She’s never belonged to a core scene. Bush’s intelligence, both as an artist and as a woman, undoubtedly casts her in a league of her own.
1. The Sensual World
2. Love And Anger
3. The Fog
4. Reaching Out
5. Heads We’re Dancing
6. Deeper Understanding
7. Between A Man And A Woman
8. Never Be Mine
9. Rocket’s Tail
10. This Woman’s Work
1993 The Red Shoes
The album is a continuation of Bush’s multi-layered and multiple musical pursuits and interests. If not her strongest work — a number of songs sound okay without being particularly stellar, especially given Bush’s past heights — Red Shoes is still an enjoyable listen with a number of diversions. The guest performer list is worthy of note alone, ranging from Procol Harum pianist Gary Brooker and Eric Clapton to Prince, but this is very much a Kate Bush album straight up as opposed to a collaborative work like, say, Santana’s Supernatural. Opening song “Rubberband Girl” is actually one of her strongest singles in years, a big and punchy song served well with a horn section, though slightly let down by the stiff percussion. “Eat the Music,” another smart choice for a single, mixes calypso and other Caribbean musical touches with a great, classically Bush lyric mixing up sexuality, romance, and various earthy food-based metaphors. Another highlight of Bush’s frank embrace of the lustier side of life is “The Song of Solomon,” a celebratory piece about the Bible’s openly erotic piece. Those who prefer her predominantly piano and vocal pieces will enjoy “Moments of Pleasure” with a strong string arrangement courtesy of Michael Kamen. Other standouts include “Why Should I Love You?” with Prince creating a very Prince-like arrangement and backing chorus for Bush (and doing quite well at that) and the concluding “You’re the One,” featuring Brooker.
1 Rubberband Girl
2 And So Is Love
3 Eat The Music
4 Moments Of Pleasure
5 The Song Of Solomon
6 Lily
7 The Red Shoes
8 Top Of The City
9 Constellation Of The Heart
10 Big Stripey Lie
11 Why Should I Love You?
12 You’re The One
2005 Aerial
Fierce Kate Bush fans who are expecting revelation in Aerial, her first new work since The Red Shoes in 1993, will no doubt scour lyrics, instrumental trills, and interludes until they find them. For everyone else, those who purchased much of Bush’s earlier catalog because of its depth, quality, and vision, Aerial will sound exactly like what it is, a new Kate Bush record: full of her obsessions, lushly romantic paeans to things mundane and cosmic, and her ability to add dimension and transfer emotion though song. The set is spread over two discs. The first, A Sea of Honey, is a collection of songs, arranged for everything from full-on rock band to solo piano. The second, A Sky of Honey, is a conceptual suite. It was produced by Bush with engineering and mixing by longtime collaborator Del Palmer. A Sea of Honey is a deeply interior look at domesticity, with the exception of its opening track, “King of the Mountain,” the first single and video. Bush does an acceptable impersonation of Elvis Presley in which she examines his past life on earth and present incarnation as spectral enigma. Juxtaposing the Elvis myth, Wagnerian mystery, and the image of Rosebud, the sled from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Bush’s synthesizer, sequencer, and voice weigh in ethereally from the margins before a full-on rock band playing edgy and funky reggae enters on the second verse. Wind whispers and then howls across the cut’s backdrop as she searches for the rainbow body of the disappeared one through his clothes and the tabloid tales of his apocryphal sightings, looking for a certain resurrection of his physical body. The rest of the disc focuses on more interior and domestic matters, but it’s no less startling. A tune called “Pi” looks at a mathematician’s poetic and romantic love of numbers. “Bertie” is a hymn to her son orchestrated by piano, Renaissance guitar, percussion, and viols. But disc one’s strangest and most lovely moment is in “Mrs. Bartolozzi,” scored for piano and voice. It revives Bush’s obsessive eroticism through an ordinary woman’s ecstatic experience of cleaning after a rainstorm, and placing the clothing of her beloved and her own into the washing machine and observing in rapt sexual attention. She sings “My blouse wrapping itself around your trousers/Oh the waves are going out/My skirt floating up around your waist…Washing machine/Washing machine.” Then there’s “How to Be Invisible,” and the mysticism of domestic life as the interior reaches out into the universe and touches its magic: “Hem of anorak/Stem of a wall flower/Hair of doormat?/Is that autumn leaf falling?/Or is that you walking home?/Is that a storm in the swimming pool?” A Sky of Honey is 42 minutes in length. It’s lushly romantic as it meditates on the passing of 24 hours. Its prelude is a short deeply atmospheric piece with the sounds of birds singing, and her son (who is “the Sun” according to the credits) intones, “Mummy…Daddy/The day is full of birds/Sounds like they’re saying words.” And “Prologue” begins with her piano, a chanted viol, and Bush crooning to romantic love, the joy of marriage and nature communing, and the deep romance of everyday life. There’s drama, stillness, joy, and quiet as its goes on, but it’s all held within, as in “An Architect’s Dream,” where the protagonist encounters a working street painter going about his work in changing light: “The flick of a wrist/Twisting down to the hips/So the lovers begin with a kiss….” Loops, Eberhard Weber’s fretless bass, drifting keyboards, and a relaxed delivery create an erotic tension, in beauty and in casual voyeurism. “Sunset” has Bush approaching jazz, but it doesn’t swing so much as it engages the form. Her voice digging into her piano alternates between lower-register enunciation and a near falsetto in the choruses. There is a sense of utter fascination with the world as it moves toward darkness, and the singer is enthralled as the sun climbs into bed, before it streams into “Sunset,” a gorgeous flamenco guitar and percussion-driven call-and-response choral piece — it’s literally enthralling. It is followed by a piece of evening called “Somewhere Between,” in which lovers take in the beginning of night. As “Nocturne” commences, shadows, stars, the beach, and the ocean accompany two lovers who dive down deep into one another and the surf. Rhythms assert themselves as the divers go deeper and the band kicks up: funky electric guitars pulse along with the layers of keyboards, journeying until just before sunup. But it is on the title track that Bush gives listeners her greatest surprise. Dawn is breaking and she greets the day with a vengeance. Manic, crunchy guitars play power chords as sequencers and synths make the dynamics shift and swirl. In her higher register, Bush shouts, croons, and trills against and above the band’s force. Nothing much happens on Aerial except the passing of a day, as noted by the one who engages it in the process of being witnessed, yet it reveals much about the interior and natural worlds and expresses spiritual gratitude for everyday life. Musically, this is what listeners have come to expect from Bush at her best — a finely constructed set of songs that engage without regard for anything else happening in the world of pop music. There’s no pushing of the envelope because there doesn’t need to be. Aerial is rooted in Kate Bush’s oeuvre, with grace, flair, elegance, and an obsessive, stubborn attention to detail. What gets created for the listener is an ordinary world, full of magic; it lies inside one’s dwelling in overlooked and inhabited spaces, and outside, from the backyard and out through the gate into wonder.
1. King Of The Mountain (2018 Remaster) 04:52
2. Pi (2018 Remaster) 06:09
3. Bertie (2018 Remaster) 04:19
4. Mrs. Bartolozzi (2018 Remaster) 05:58
5. How To Be Invisible (2018 Remaster) 05:32
6. Joanni (2018 Remaster) 04:56
7. A Coral Room (2018 Remaster) 06:12
8. Prelude (2018 Remaster) 01:25
9. Prologue (2018 Remaster) 05:41
10. An Architect’s Dream (2018 Remaster) 04:54
11. The Painter’s Link (2018 Remaster) 01:35
12. Sunset (2018 Remaster) 05:58
13. Aerial Tal (2018 Remaster) 01:01
14. Somewhere In Between (2018 Remaster) 05:04
15. Nocturn (2018 Remaster) 08:29
16. Aerial (2018 Remaster) 07:54
Media Report:
Genre: art rock, pop
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits |
