FEATURE:
The Black Sheep of the Family
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
Kate Bush’s Mother Stands for Comfort from Hounds of Love
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I am mixing things up…
by doing some more general features about Kate Bush and ones that narrow in on various songs. I covered Hounds of Love quite extensively when the album turned thirty-five in September but I have not spotlighted Mother Stands for Comfort. I think every Kate Bush album contains a song that is brilliant and worthy but it gets overlooked because of better-known and more accessible hits. The Kick Inside has the title track; Never for Ever has The Wedding List; The Dreaming has Get Out of My House, Houdini, Pull Out the Pin, and Leave It Open (quite a few!), whereas The Sensual World has Heads We’re Dancing – this is a song that I will focus on very soon. Mother Stands for Comfort is the only song from Hounds of Love’s first half that was not released as a single. Because The Ninth Wave, the second side, is a conceptual suite, releasing songs individually might not have worked. I guess And Dream of Sheep and one or two others could have worked - yet the first side of the album is much more single-ready and radio-friendly. The one song that does not really fit, in that sense, is Mother Stands for Comfort. I like the fact that there is a blend of optimistic and terrifying on the album. The Ninth Wave oscillates between more hopeful tones and something quite defeatist and lost. On the opening half, there is some sense of dread in Hounds of Love; a bit of sadness in Cloudbusting, and a hint of frustration on Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – The Big Sky is just pure joy!
The polar opposite of The Big Sky might be Mother Stands for Comfort. The Big Sky is Bush simply looking at the clouds and sky and being enraptured by its simple and flexible beauty. There is an innocence that is overturned on the very next track. I think the sequencing on the first half is very good. There are only five songs, yet they are arranged so that the very best experience is enjoyed by the listener! I have said this before, but Bush had to open the album with Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God); a song like Cloudbusting ends the first half with some energy and beauty – before the vinyl is flipped over and we get something very different! Hounds of Love needed to be the second track, as I feel its energy is closer to the opening track than The Big Sky. That leaves these two contrasting tracks besides one another. One is quite shocked hearing such emotional and psychological shift between the songs! I hear almost every song on the first half of Hounds of Love, but one hardly hears Mother Stands for Comfort. To me, it is a track that prefaces The Ninth Wave in its slightly edgy tones and heaviness. That side balances light and dark, but one can compare songs like Mother Stands for Comfort alongside Waking the Witch.
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
At 3:07, Mother Stands for Comfort is one of the shortest songs on the first half, and the fact that Cloudbusting is the longest track on that half means there is enough time to recover and decompress! I really love Mother Stands for Comfort as it is a song that could have easily featured on Bush’s previous album, The Dreaming. Apart from the Fairlight C.M.I. providing some ghostly and intense sounds, the track is quite bare and simple. There is some percussion and upright bass; just some kick and snare from the drums - which means that this rather naked and anxious sounds is created. It is amazing to witness Bush’s songwriting and production creativity on Hounds of Love; how she could write a song as fulsome as The Big Sky or as rapturous as Jig of Life, but she could then pen Mother Stands for Comfort! I think, if she wrote the song for The Dreaming, she might have put more layers on it and used the Fairlight C.M.I. more. In a better headspace and will more physical space, I think she was thinking clearer and decided that sparseness was most effective regarding getting the most out of the song. It is a wonderful song and, as I keep referring to MOJO and their special on Kate Bush earlier in the year, they ranked Mother Stands for Comfort thirty-eighth in the list of her best fifty songs.
When it comes to the story behind Mother Stands for Comfort, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia have us covered:
“Well, the personality that sings this track is very unfeeling in a way. And the cold qualities of synths and machines were appropriate here. There are many different kinds of love and the track's really talking about the love of a mother, and in this case she's the mother of a murderer, in that she's basically prepared to protect her son against anything. 'Cause in a way it's also suggesting that the son is using the mother, as much as the mother is protecting him. It's a bit of a strange matter, isn't it really? [laughs] (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums Interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.
I do wonder what started the process of Mother Stands for Comfort. Bush was often inspired by film, T.V. and literature, but I do not think there is any particular work that directed this track. It sort of makes me think of Bush writing songs for Hounds of Love and perhaps it was a cloudy day and quite moody. Alone with her thoughts, she came up with the incredible Mother Stands for Comfort! We do not know who the son murdered or really why. The first verse lets us into this impending drama and aftermath: “She knows that I've been doing something wrong/But she won't say anything/She thinks that I was with my friends yesterday/But she won't mind me lying/Because”.
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Perhaps there is this implied code of silence and the mother knew that this murder was going to take place. As Bush shows us the events after the killing and does not really fill us in, the listener is left to imagine and reason who was killed and why a boy who, at once innocent, would turn into the black sheep of the family! There are relatively few words in the song. The lines “Mother stands for comfort/Mother will hide the murderer/Mother hides the madman/Mother will stay mum” are repeated at the end, but I do love how there is this mystery, confidentiality and paranoia that stalks the song. The following verse really gets into my head and raises questions: “It breaks the cage, and fear escapes and takes possession/Just like a crowd rioting inside/(Make me do this, make me do that, make me do this, make me do that...)/Am I the cat that takes the bird?/To her the hunted, not the hunter”. Those words are so intriguing, and it is a shame that we never got to see Mother Stands for Comfort in a video. Maybe Bush felt that the song is a bit intense or too dark to be a popular single! I like the idea of classic albums have an overlooked track or song that stands out for an unconventional reason. On an album as varied and stunning as Hounds of Love, Mother Stands for Comfort underlines how Kate Bush is…
SUCH an immensely talented and varied creator.