FEATURE:
A Cast of Thousands
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the 1980 British Rock and Pop Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
Kate Bush and the Variety of Vocals and Vocal Characters in Her Music
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WHILST searching to see whether I have covered this…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978 in a Lionheart album outtake (different expression) by Gered Mankowitz at his photo studio on Great Windmill Street, London
in detail before, I have been listening back to Kate Bush’s best songs and am flabbergasted by the vocals throughout! Many people talk about Bush’s voice in the singular; in the sense that she has a voice that is unique and so different to anything we will ever hear. That is true but, through her career, we got a great mixture of a single Bush vocal taking centre stage and tracks where she layered her voice. In a previous feature, I have discussed Bush and how she brought more and unusual instruments into her albums after a while, but one can also see a certain confidence with her vocals; she was layering more and putting others into the mix. I will take this chronologically, but there are going to people out there who do not realise the fact that Bush has used so many different people through the years – everyone from Lenny Henry to her son, Bertie! I am going to focus purely on Bush’s music as opposed collaborations, but listen to her on Peter Gabriel’s No Self Control, and Games Without Frontiers (from his third eponymous album of 1980), and Don’t Give Up on 1986’s So. Even though there were six years between these recordings, Bush sounds so different on Don’t Give Up compared to Games Without Frontiers – even if she does only sing three words on Games Without Frontiers! I guess one can notice that shift and sea change in terms of her albums; the vocals we hear on Hounds of Love in 1985 and The Sensual World in 1989 are poles apart from the younger woman of The Kick Inside of 1978.
I will start with that debut album, as it is, to me, the most feminine/female album she ever recorded – even if some argue that honour should go to The Sensual World. In terms of backing vocals from others, there were fewer contributors than we’d hear on later albums. Bush’s brother, Paddy, lends some brilliant deep vocals to Them Heavy People (when he sings the song’s title in the chorus), and I think that alone adds so much to one of my favourite-ever Bush songs. On The Kick Inside, Bush’s voice is quite high for many numbers, and I think the blend of her higher register combined with lower tones from the likes of Paddy Bush adds a lot of weight and diversity. It is interesting seeing how Bush expanded both vocals and instruments on future albums. On The Kick Inside, backing vocals are provided by Paddy Bush, Ian Bairnson, and David Patton – the latter two provide lovely accompaniment on Oh to Be in Love. I will not rhapsodise too much about The Kick Inside, but I love how some carefully-deployed vocals from others give a couple of songs on the album a real kick and change! Maybe it is the fact that a lot of the vocals from Bush are so high-pitched than a bit of deeper incorporation takes you by surprise. Ian Bairnson would provide backing vocals on other songs from Kate Bush, but he and Patton give Oh to Be in Love’s title a real sense of movement and stutter (“Oh, a-oh, to be-be in love…”).
That song is one of my favourite from the album, and it is Bush at her peak in terms of passion and mystery (“Why did you have to choose our moment?/Why did you have to make me feel that?/Why did you make it so unreal?”). There is criticism from many people that Bush’s voice is quite unappealing and banshee-like through the album. That was an attitude held in the press by many in 1978, but I think retrospective examination is more sophisticated and deeper; people identifying the fact that Bush adopts myriad voices through the album. Listen to the quality of her lead on the album opener, Moving, but then how she adds in wordless layered vocals. Moving is one of her most powerful early tracks, because one is beguiled and sent a-shiver by the beauty of Bush’s voice and how she utilises it to maximum effect! I might do a separate feature regarding the way Bush delivers lines and how unconventional her style was, but we hear Bush’s voice dance, tip-toe and stretch through Moving – her backing vocals are balletic and almost child-like in their purity and sense of delight. I will come on to the two songs from The Kick Inside Bush recorded in 1975 – The Saxophone Song, and The Man with the Child in His Eyes – later, as the vocal there is very different to the other eleven tracks on the album. I sort of facetiously said how there is a cast of thousands in Bush’s music in this feature’s title, but that is not too far from the truth! She does not literally provide thousands of vocal parts, but one gets the impression of crowds and so many different characters through her tracks!
At a time (1978) when most solo singers were writing very personal songs and singing in a very straight and conventional way, Bush’s songs mixed in different themes and angles that allowed her to adopt different personas and approaches. Consider a song like Strange Phenomena. The track talks of clusters of coincidence, menstruation and strange events. Although Bush’s voice is layered through the chorus, she doesn’t so much use different accents and tones, but the way she deploys the words and the physicality she adopts is staggering! Apologies if I have trodden on this ground before, but Bush is almost dancing her way through the songs. Emotionally, she embodies something spooky and ethereal right at the end; in terms of pace, the song gets faster as we get to the chorus, and one feels like we are listening to a chorus and choir rather than one woman! One cannot compare the sound of Bush’s voice on Strange Phenomena to the next track, Kite, where she, once more, interjects with these unexpected vocals sounds that gives the song so much personality. I am going to highlight a couple of songs from the second side before I mention three other tracks – then I shall move on to Lionheart. James and the Cold Gun is one of the rawest and rockiest tracks. Bush and her KT Bush Band performed this number in pubs before she headed into the studio to record most of The Kick Inside, and Bush would use a toy gun and ‘shoot’ people in the audience. She performed the song on her 1979 Tour of Life and, whilst it sounds bigger and more impactful live, on the record, there is still ample punch and quality.
I love how Bush adds in wordless interjection – like she does on many tracks -, almost portraying another character or a narrator chiming in. Her central vocal is less acrobatic, ironically, than on other songs on The Kick Inside, but Bush completely adopts a new role: here, we hear her embody ‘James’, and you can almost feel her toting a gun and racing through the streets! I am keen to move on, but I wanted to talk about those 1975 recordings, The Man with the Child in His Eyes, and The Saxophone Song. The former was written when Bush was thirteen, and hearing a then-sixteen-year-old sing a song of such maturity is astonishing! Even though the song’s hero is imagined, Bush once more changes her skin and inhabits a very different role compared to other songs. Her vocal is more controlled and deeper than on other songs, and it is testament to her talent that she could go from what we hear on The Man with the Child in His Eyes, and a track like Strange Phenomena. The same can be said of The Saxophone Song. If The Man with the Child in His Eyes is a young Bush pining for a man “lost on some horizon”, The Saxophone Song is Bush in a Berlin bar, slightly brooding as she watched a saxophone player from afar. On songs like this where Bush was not throwing in too many backing vocals and performing acrobatics, she delivers a simpler vocal, yet she manages to bring the listener into the songs in a very physical way because her vocal is so pure and demanding of our attention. Wuthering Heights is a literal case of Bush inhabiting a character – in this incident, Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights. Maybe it was the lure of literature and film that meant that, when it came to music, Bush approached her recordings more like performances and films – where she was keen to inspire listeners to envisage scenes and various images in addition to feeling the emotion behind the songs! I have written extensively about Wuthering Heights before but, when it comes to vocals where Bush pushes beyond the conventions of music and delivers something so much bigger and more bewitching, then this is the finest example!
Even though Lionheart is a rushed album – as she released it the same year as The Kick Inside -, I feel like Bush’s voice and sense of characterisation is broader here. Most of the songs on Lionheart were written long before The Kick Inside came out, but there are various songs where Bush really shines. I think there is less vocal layering through Lionheart compared to The Kick Inside – even though The Kick Inside has three more songs -, but the opener, Symphony in Blue, is similar to Moving in the way that Bush produces this singularly arresting lead vocal and then we get different tones and sounds when she provides backing vocals. Whilst Symphony in Blue is so beautiful and interesting (the song is, supposedly, about Bush’s own belief system. The descriptions of God, sex and the colour blue seem to be inspired by reading about Wilhelm Reich's theory in A Book of Dreams), I just love the subtle vocal shifts and layers that build up the wonder and intensity of the song. Full House - alongside Symphony in Blue, and Coffee Homeground - was one of only three new songs written for Lionheart. The lyrics for Full House seems to be autobiographical: an insight into psychological struggles she was encountering, with paranoia and self-doubt at the fore. Bush, on this song, gives one of her most frightening and physical vocals to that point! It seems to me to be very autobiographical, but one hears a very different woman on Full House to a song like Oh to Be in Love.
Maybe, because of the sudden rise and pressure of fame, her new songs in 1978 did have that slight edge and sense of fear – even though Symphony in Blue enraptures one in its gentleness and sense of calm. Hammer Horror (the first single from Lionheart) references Hammer Films, a company specializing in horror movies. Bush was inspired to write after viewing the film, Man of a Thousand Faces - a biographical film about Lon Chaney starring James Cagney. Again, this is Bush and films connecting through song! You do get this sense of unrest and creeps from the composition and lyrics, but Bush really commits to the vocal and, once more, she showcases her astonishing range and prowess! The lead vocal is quite raw and deep, but she does throw in some higher-pitched little bits of vocals that give one the sense of paranoia and like we are walking through a scene in a Hammer Films production. By the time of The Sensual World in 1989, Bush was bringing more supporting artists into the fold to provide vocals, but I guess she felt her voice needed to be more in focus than it was on her first few albums. Paddy Bush delivers some nice harmony vocals on Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, Oh England My Lionheart, and Kashka from Baghdad. Similar to The Kick Inside, Paddy Bush adds a sprinkle of deeper vocals and another layer that elevates the songs and gives them an extra spark.
After The Tour of Life in 1979, I think Bush was keen not only to exert more control in the studio, but to perhaps bring more characterisation into the music. She wrote from her own perspective on some songs, but Bush herself has said how most of her songs are not really from the first-person; that she is writing from different perspectives all of the time. Co-producing with Jon Kelly on 1980’s Never for Ever, the discovery and usage of the Fairlight C.M.I. not only widened her musical imagination but you can hear that matched in her vocals. Her first two albums boasted beautiful and enticing opening tracks, whereas Babooshka – and the second single from the album - is much more character-driven and has a sense of intensity (especially in the chorus!). Paddy Bush provides some excellent backing vocals on the song – almost like he is the ‘husband’ character -, but it is wonderful hearing Bush adopt two different guises on Babooshka. This article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia provides some background to the song:
“It was really a theme that has fascinated me for some time. It's based on a theme that is often used in folk songs, which is where the wife of the husband begins to feel that perhaps he's not faithful. And there's no real strength in her feelings, it's just more or less paranoia suspicions, and so she starts thinking that she's going to test him, just to see if he's faithful. So what she does is she gets herself a pseudonym, which happens to be Babooshka, and she sends him a letter. And he responds very well to the letter, because as he reads it, he recognises the wife that he had a couple of years ago, who was happy, in the letter.
And so he likes it, and she decides to take it even further and get a meeting together to see how he reacts to this Babooshka lady instead of her. When he meets her, again because she is so similar to his wife, the one that he loves, he's very attracted to her. Of course she is very annoyed and the break in the song is just throwing the restaurant at him... (...) The whole idea of the song is really the futility and the stupidness of humans and how by our own thinking, spinning around in our own ideas we come up with completely paranoid facts. So in her situation she was in fact suspicious of a man who was doing nothing wrong, he loved her very much indeed. Through her own suspicions and evil thoughts she's really ruining the relationship. (Countdown Australia, 1980)”.
Another trusted backing vocalist, Ian Bairnson, is on bass vocals through Delius (Song of Summer) alongside Paddy Bush – who is the ‘voice of Delius’. It is a surprise to see Bairnson so underused on Never for Ever but, with musicians like Alan Murphy, Brian Bath, and Preston Heyman among a roster of many, I guess there was only so much he could do! Andrew Bryant and Gary Hurst provide backing vocals on All We Ever Look For (Hurst can also be heard on Babooshka), and percussionist Preston Heyman, wonderfully, lends his vocals to All We Ever Lok For, and The Wedding List.
Not to go off on a tangent, but I like how various musicians doubled and provided vocals rather than Bush bringing in singers especially. Bush, on Never for Ever, once more brings in different characters through the album, but she also widens her range in terms of pitch and emotion. Listen to her heavenly vocal on Delius (Song of Summer) and the gorgeous, swaying backing vocals on Egypt. In many cases, she is less providing character voices but adding atmosphere and emotion, but I feel like we are listening to other people in songs such as Egypt, and Night Scented Stock (a sort of segue track where Bush wordless coos, oohs and ahhs in beautifully). Never for Ever is crammed with Bush’s vocal genius and flexibility but, when it comes to her shifting character and mood, apart from Babooshka, we get perfect examples in The Wedding List, Army Dreamers, and Breathing. In all three songs, Bush does not layer her voice much, but there are backing vocals from Brian Bath, Paddy Bush (on The Wedding List, and Army Dreamers) and Roy Harper (a memorable turn on Breathing). In another film nod, The Wedding List sees Bush take the role of a vengeful bridge who wreaks vengeance on those who murdered her groom - the song was inspired by a François Truffaut film, The Bride Wore Black (it tells of a groom who is accidentally murdered on the day of his wedding by a group of five people who shoot at him from a window. The bride succeeds in tracking down each one of the five and kills them in a row, including the last one who happens to be in jail).
Army Dreamers is about young men sent to war and having their potential futures wasted. I sense Bush is playing the role of their mothers and she compassionately mourns their loss, and there is an anger that such promising men are being destroyed for no real reason or cause. On Breathing – a song told from the perspective of a foetus as nuclear war hangs in the air -, Bush inhabits a foetus, but her vocal is so ravaged and yearning. It is an amazing example (yet again) of her almost actor-like approach to music. I am not going to spend so long on each of her subsequent albums but, when looking at The Dreaming (1982), we get Bush’s most eclectic performances to date. Although the recording for the album was not ideal – Bush recorded at four different London studios and used various engineers -, the fact that she produced for the first time and opened up the Fairlight C.M.I. was matched in her vocal displays. I think different accents define The Dreaming. If her first three albums were more about the vocal changing pitch and being layered, Bush more noticeably adopts different accents now. The Dreaming’s title track is about the destruction of Aboriginal Australians' traditional lands by white Australians in their quest for weapons-grade uranium; Bush delivers an Australian accent and, perhaps, casts herself as an Aboriginal or an Australian citizen watching the destruction happen.
Taking the songs from the top and on the opener, Sat in Your Lap, we find Bush incorporate a bit of Lodger-David Bowie – the line “I must admit…” is very Bowie-esque. There Goes a Tenner is a crime caper where Bush is one of the robbers who is trying to steal the loot and make a getaway. It is a song I really like, but it was released as the third single from The Dreaming and was a disaster. Not explicitly influenced by a particular film, but I get the sense Bush was channelling a film like The League of Gentlemen (1960). Pull Out the Pin is a great example of Bush experimenting with her vocal. She double-tracks her voice electronically; starting quite calm and composed, it turns more aggressive and stranger before long. Bush inhabits the voice and body of a soldier, and it is one of finest vocal terms. Again, film and T.V. helped inspire the song. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia provides an interview extract where Bush discussed Pull Out the Pin’s inception:
“I saw this incredible documentary by this Australian cameraman who went on the front line in Vietnam, filming from the Vietnamese point of view, so it was very biased against the Americans. He said it really changed him, because until you live on their level like that, when it's complete survival, you don't know what it's about. He's never been the same since, because it's so devastating, people dying all the time.
The way he portrayed the Vietnamese was as this really crafted, beautiful race. The Americans were these big, fat, pink, smelly things who the Vietnamese could smell coming for miles because of the tobacco and cologne. It was devastating, because you got the impression that the Americans were so heavy and awkward, and the Vietnamese were so beautiful and all getting wiped out. They wore a little silver Buddha on a chain around their neck and when they went into action they'd pop it into their mouth, so if they died they'd have Buddha on their lips. I wanted to write a song that could somehow convey the whole thing, so we set it in the jungle and had helicopters, crickets and little Balinese frogs. (Kris Needs, 'Dream Time In The Bush'. Zigzag (UK), November 1982)”.
I recently wrote about Leave It Open, where Bush throws in some yelps, spooky layered vocals and builds this real intensity - and you get Bush stepping into yet another unique and different vocal personae. All the Love, literally, provides voices from an answerphone. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia helps out once more:
“This particular night, I started to play back the tape, and the machine had neatly edited half a dozen messages together to leave "Goodbye", "See you!", "Cheers", "See you soon" .. It was a strange thing to sit and listen to your friends ringing up apparently just to say goodbye. I had several cassettes of peoples' messages all ending with authentic farewells, and by copying them onto 1/4'' tape and re-arranging the order, we managed to synchronize the 'callers' with the last verse of the song.
There are still quite a few of my friends who have not heard the album or who have not recognised themselves and are still wondering how they managed to appear in the album credits when they didn’t even set foot into the studio. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)”.
Inspired by The Shining, Bush inhabits the house which has been inhabited by a family and bolted up on Get Out of My House. Bush was really affected by the book, and it was the first that made her feel frightened. She does an exceptional job of giving this creepy house a voice. Her voice is guttural in some parts and there are so many different vocal changes and twists that makes the song so thrilling! On Houdini, Bush plays the part of Harry Houdini’s wife, Bess. In the song, the keys to his chains were passed on to him by his wife during a kiss. Once more, Bush takes on a new personae, but her vocal is very different to what we hear on tracks like Pull Out the Pin and, say, Suspended in Gaffa. The biggest cast of backing vocalists to date is employed for The Dreaming. Paddy Bush, Ian Bairnson, Stewart Arnold and Gary Hurst are heard on Sat in Your Lap; Paddy Bush appears on The Dreaming, and Get Out of My House, whilst David Gilmour (her old protegee) is on Suspended in Gaffa. Percy Edwards makes animal noises on The Dreaming; Richard Thornton is the voice of a choirboy on All the Love; Del Palmer and Gordon Farrell are on Houdini, whilst Paul Hardiman and Esmail Sheikh are on Get Out of My House – the former, alongside Kate Bush, provide Eeyore noises!
On Hounds of Love, I think the various instruments provide greater and deeper characterisation than various voices, but there is a tonal and vocal shift from Bush. The Dreaming is quite an edgy and layered album, and I think Hounds of Love is roomier and her voice is less processed. I am going to skip past Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), and Hounds of Love as I have written about those tracks – the latter taking its influence from film once more. Both are remarkable tracks, and I love the various interjections and different vocals that we hear on Hounds of Love’s title track. The Big Sky is inspired by Bush’s fascination sitting and watching clouds – as many of us can relate to – and how they form different shapes. I think her backing vocals and performance throughout the song is incredible! Perhaps the most remarkable display of Bush’s voice embodying different moods and people is on The Ninth Wave. On Jig of Life, like All the Love, we hear a variety of other people’s voice come into the mix, but Under Ice sees a nice see-saw between Bush’s deeper and higher-pitched vocals to give this sense of two different characters in the song. Waking the Witch has this weird vocal effect where Bush’s voice is put through the machine and it stridulates and is in fragments. At this point of The Ninth Wave’s concept, the heroine is at sea and there are a variety of voices – either a dream or hallucination – urging her to stay awake.
As the title suggests, Waking the Witch deals with witch-hunting:
“I think it's very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women's power. In a way it's very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she's committed no crime, and they're trying to push her under the water to see if she'll sink or float. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.
The Richard Hickox Singers appear on Hello Earth; Paddy Bush provides harmony vocals on Under Ice; Brian Bath and John Carder Bush can be heard on Cloudbusting. On her fifth studio album, Bush was as vocally-ambitious as on albums like The Dreaming, but she managed to sound completely different and almost like a different artist!
The Sensual World introduced The Trio Bulgarka to the fray! Whereas Bush herself was providing accents and different vocal tones to albums pre-The Sensual World, the Bulgarian vocal ensemble of Stoyanka Boneva, Yanka Rupkina and Eva Georgieva added a completely new vocal dynamic to Bush’s work. I think The Sensual World is less wild, experimental and varied as Hounds of Love, or The Dreaming, but its incredible beauty and brilliance is obvious! I am not going to cover Director’s Cut (2011) – where Bush re-recorded many songs from The Sensual World, and The Red Shoes -, but The Sensual World’s title track was reworked for that album, using only words taken from Molly Bloom's soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses, as Bush had originally intended whilst recording The Sensual World album. This version, re-titled Flower of the Mountain, finds Bush inhabit Molly Bloom, and she provide one of her most sensuous and stirring vocals. There are an array of interesting and unusual instruments on The Sensual World, but I really love The Trio Bulgarka on Deeper Understanding, Never Be Mine, and Rocket’s Tail. Bush’s backing vocals are evocative and striking on Love and Anger; so many different emotions and another great backing vocal comes on Reaching Out and, on Deeper Understanding, Bush plays both the role of someone glued to their computer and the computerised voice. Even though there are not as many vocal characters and shifts as on some previous albums, Bush is still remarkably broad and original throughout.
One of the most interesting songs from The Sensual World comes in the form of Heads We’re Dancing. The song’s background is really interesting, and the character that Bush plays in the song is really interesting:
“It's a very dark idea, but it's the idea of this girl who goes to a big ball; very expensive, romantic, exciting, and it's 1939, before the war starts. And this guy, very charming, very sweet-spoken, comes up and asks her to dance but he does it by throwing a coin and he says, ``If the coin lands with heads facing up, then we dance!'' Even that's a very attractive 'come on', isn't it? And the idea is that she enjoys his company and dances with him and, days later, she sees in the paper who it is, and she is hit with this absolute horror - absolute horror. What could be worse? To have been so close to the man... she could have tried to kill him... she could have tried to change history, had she known at that point what was actually happening. And I think Hitler is a person who fooled so many people. He fooled nations of people. And I don't think you can blame those people for being fooled, and maybe it's these very charming people... maybe evil is not always in the guise you expect it to be. (Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1, 14 October 1989)”.
I am going to move onto The Red Shoes. There is a split between the different other voices on the album and what Bush does with her own voice. In terms of contributors, the Trio Bulgarka are back on The Song of Solomon, Why Should I Love You?, and You’re the One – they add their stunning beauty and sublime voices; they match perfectly with Bush. On Why Should I Love You?, we hear from both Prince and Lenny Henry! Both are unexpected guests, but Henry turns in a particularly impressive vocal! Lily Cornford plays the narrator on Lily (Bush and Cornford became friends in the 1990s: “I met her years ago and she is one of the nicest people I've ever met. She is very giving and I love spending time with her. She believes in the powers of Angels and taught me to see them in a different light, that they exist to help human beings and are very powerful as well as benevolent forces. She taught me some prayers that I found very useful (particularly in my line of work), she helped me a lot and I guess I wanted to pass on her message about our Angels - we all have them, we only have to ask for help. (Kate Bush Club magazine, 1993”). Justin Vali provides some vocals on Eat the Music, and Paddy Bush pops up on Eat the Music, The Red Shoes, and Constellation of the Heart. One of Bush’s more underrated albums, I think her voice is especially impressive throughout – some of her lyrics strayed into cliché/conventional territory (something you could not accuse her of before) and one or two songs fail to ignite. On the opener, Rubberband Girl, her backing vocals are deep and elastic. I like how she layers in her vocals so that we get a very different sound in the lead and backing vocals. On Lily, Bush is especially stunning and she lingers long in the mind.
I want to move ahead to Aerial, and I am not going to mention Rolf Harris’ vocal contributions on the album, meagre as they are - his parts were performed by Bertie (Bush’s son) on future releases. Instead, from the very start of the album, Bush embodies different characters and scenes. I have investigated the album’s only single, King of the Mountain, where she inhabits the spirit of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley. It is nice to hear Bush let our her Elvis drawl, and there is a little bit of vocal backing from Paddy Bush too. In terms of other voices on the album, Lol Creme contributes backing vocals to π, and Nocturn; Gary Brooker is amazing on Sunset, and Somewhere in Between. If Bush lets the instruments and birdsong provide character and flesh the album out beautifully, there are these songs where she inhabits new characters. Mrs. Bartolozzi deals with Bush/a protagonist doing household chores, but the song is performed in such a sensual way that one cannot help but dive into the song themselves and see what is being described! Bush racks her voice less on Aerial, but I think that allows her voice to breathe more and we get to hear the icon really connect with the songs. How to Be Invisible, and A Coral Room are incredibly memorable, and I shall unpick these songs more ahead of Aerial’s fifteenth anniversary next month. What I love about Bush’s voice through Aerial is how nimble and flexible it is – so long after her debut album.
Aerial is a double album, and the second side/album, A Sky of Honey, grows in intensity. I think Bush’s voice is deeper when she sings on the first side but, through A Sky of Honey, there is some of the lightness and playfulness of old. She is tremulous and gorgeous through An Architect’s Dream; lighter on Sunset (where we get some great backing vocals from her); stunningly pure and swooning on Somewhere in Between and, on the closing track, Aerial, the intensity builds and we get the rawest vocal from Bush – not the same intensity as Breathing, or Get Out of My House but, as with those closing tracks, Bush ensures that she leaves the listener with a heady and really physical performance! I am going to finish off with Bush’s most-recent album, 50 Words for Snow. I love the album, because it is a chillier and more Jazz-orientated album (as I have said in a number of features), but it brings in some great collaborators. More than on any other album, Bush shares the spotlight heavily with both Stephen Fry and Elton John! The 2011 album spawned one single, Wild Man, where Bush delivers this hushed and whispered vocal that shows her in a different light. With seven tracks on the album that run in at over seven minutes each for the most part, there is less intensity in the performances, but I think there is more nuance and gravitas.
Bush fully inhabits the songs, and Wild Man is a terrifically interesting song. It is to the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia once more for exposition:
“Well, the first verse of the song is just quickly going through some of the terms that the Yeti is known by and one of those names is the Kangchenjunga Demon. He’s also known as Wild Man and Abominable Snowman. (...) I don’t refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it is meant to be an empathetic view of a creature of great mystery really. And I suppose it’s the idea really that mankind wants to grab hold of something [like the Yeti] and stick it in a cage or a box and make money out of it. And to go back to your question, I think we’re very arrogant in our separation from the animal kingdom and generally as a species we are enormously arrogant and aggressive. Look at the way we treat the planet and animals and it’s pretty terrible isn’t it? (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
Many reviewers noted how Bush developed a warm and husky voice for 50 Words for Snow, which is perfectly appropriate given the wintery themes of the album. There are fewer backing vocalists on 50 Words for Snow compared with albums like The Red Shoes, but I think there is greater economy.
Kate Bush’s son, Bertie, provides a gorgeous choirboy vocal for the album’s opening track, Snowflake – Bertie must have been about twelve or thirteen when the song was recorded. Andy Fairweather-Low is exquisite on Wild Man, and he blends beautifully with Bush’s backing vocals on that song. Throughout 50 Words for Snow, Bush vividly takes us into the songs and makes them feel so alive because her voice is always moving forward and surprising you. Perhaps less showy and bold as earlier albums, she still shows enormous command, confidence and range throughout. If we are talking about Kate Bush in terms of vocal characters and how that adds to the music, then one has to acknowledge her duetting with one of her music idols, Sir Elton John, on Snowed in at Wheeler Street. John sounds deeper and huskier than he ever has, and the two put together an impassioned song that is about two divided lovers who keep meeting at various moments in history but never quite make it together. The sense of distance and frustration of being apart is especially emotional and apropos at times like this. Not since Don’t Give Up has Bush shared so much vocal spotlight with someone else and, to be fair, that is a Peter Gabriel song. John was keen to perform with Bush, but he did not want to see the song’s lyrics before arriving at her home/studio.
I am going to end by talking about the penultimate track from 50 Words for Snow: it is the epic and fascinating title track. This is a rare occasion of there being a character in a song and someone other than Bush vocalises them. Few would have predicted, if you had suggested there is a special guest on 50 Words for Snow, that it would be Stephen Fry! Fry plays Prof. Joseph Yupik on the song, and it is literally him reciting fifty made-up word for snow – the title track and album title derives from the fact that it is a myth that Eskimos have fifty different words for snow. Bush was literally writing different snow words until Fry turned up as she was not happy with some of her earlier attempts! Fry delivers these increasingly-mad words with dignity as Bush counts down the numbers. Bush does not leave it until the closing track to give the traditional impassioned and raw vocal. She breaks up Fry’s different words to deliver a terrifically powerful vocal interjection – “Come on man, you've got 44 to go” is the first round. For the last time, it is thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia for a snippet of Bush discussing the title track and why she chose Stephen Fry for a crucial part:
“Years ago I think I must have heard this idea that there were 50 words for snow in this, ah, Eskimo Land! And I just thought it was such a great idea to have so many words about one thing. It is a myth - although, as you say it may hold true in a different language - but it was just a play on the idea, that if they had that many words for snow, did we? If you start actually thinking about snow in all of its forms you can imagine that there are an awful lot of words about it.
Just in our immediate language we have words like hail, slush, sleet, settling… So this was a way to try and take it into a more imaginative world. And I really wanted Stephen to read this because I wanted to have someone who had an incredibly beautiful voice but also someone with a real sense of authority when he said things. So the idea was that the words would get progressively more silly really but even when they were silly there was this idea that they would have been important, to still carry weight. And I really, really wanted him to do it and it was fantastic that he could do it. (...) I just briefly explained to him the idea of the song, more or less what I said to you really. I just said it’s our idea of 50 Words For Snow. Stephen is a lovely man but he is also an extraordinary person and an incredible actor amongst his many other talents. So really it was just trying to get the right tone which was the only thing we had to work on. He just came into the studio and we just worked through the words. And he works very quickly because he’s such an able performer. (...) I think faloop'njoompoola is one of my favourites. [laughs] (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
I would urge people to listen to Kate Bush’s albums in full, as you hear how her voice has developed and changed through the years. From The Kick Inside, through to 50 Words for Snow, Bush has not only brought in other vocalists to add characters and different shades to her music, but she has inhabited characters herself, layered her voice and marked herself as one of the most talented and inventive vocalists ever! From Moving’s first notes to the final embers of 50 Words for Snow’s final track, Among Angels, Bush has beguiled, intrigued and blown our minds with…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performs Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) at The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball in 1987
HER remarkable voice.