FEATURE:
A New Bloom
Kate Bush’s The Sensual World and a Distinct Maturation
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IN previous features regarding The Sensual World…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
I have focused on particular songs but not really explored a general impression of the album. This is going to be another – expect more – feature tied to the Record Collector edition where we got a loving insight into all of her studio albums. Elizabeth Aubrey wrote about The Sensual World, and she mentioned how this album was one where maturity and something more grown-up was at the fore. The title track, as Aubrey noted, rings similar to Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights. Both songs concern windy moors and something very charged. If Wuthering Heights is a wilder and untamed song, The Sensual World is a nuanced and measured song. I guess every artists matures and their voice changes, but one can see a marked difference between Kate Bush in 1978 (when Wuthering Heights was released) and 1989 – the year The Sensual World came out. Bush’s voice is still evocative and stirring, but it relies more on a controlled extraction of emotion and desire rather than the more spirited and exhilarating gymnastics of a song like Wuthering Heights and Bush’s earlier work. Take The Sensual World as a standout track. Whilst the song has a beauty and utilises uilleann pipes to give things and Irish flavour, Molly Bloom (the central character) is a very sensual and sexual character. I have covered the title song in more depth but, whilst Bush could not get clearance to use James Joyce’s original words from Ulysses, one did get to hear words from the text used in 2011 on Director’s Cut – the song was retitled Flower of the Mountain.
I do really love that song, as Bush sounds incredible and manages to evoke so much passion and emotion without letting her voice take off (or throw too much into the mix). One can hear distinct sonic and vocal shifts from 1985’s Hounds of Love onwards, but I think there was this big maturation and change on The Sensual World. Bush noted how people say one gets a mental puberty between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-two and, as she was thirty-one when The Sensual World was released, one can understand that and apply it to the album. One might assume that a growing-up must signal songs that are less imaginative and boring. Whilst the tracks do seem more rooted and not as exciting as many of the songs on Hounds of Love, I think The Sensual World is incredibly satisfying and relatable. Aubrey observed how women, traditionally, are represented in music as secondary characters and not as important as the men – they are referred to as lovers and muses but not often fully-realised. Throughout The Sensual World, there are so many full, inspiring moments where women – whether Bush was speaking directly or playing characters – are much more fleshed-out and important. For those looking for the more out-there moments of earlier albums, songs such as Heads We’re Dancing – which I covered recently – provides something suitably unusual and imaginative. Aubrey also stated how The Sensual World features charterers grappling with their identities and place in the world.
Previous albums had a bit of this, but I think the themes of finding one’s place and learning from experience was relatively new. Even as recent as Hounds of Love, there were these child-like moments and a very different tone. Maybe it was passing into her thirties that led Bush to think and create in a new way. There is trauma and loss through The Sensual World, in addition to awakening, lustiness and personal growth. Bush told NME in 1989 that one song, The Fog, was about trying to grow up. I am not sure what made Bush re-evaluate and think more deeply about subjects like responsibility, family, maturity and hope. Maybe there was a subconscious desire to settle down or, at the least, new feelings about motherhood – Bush gave birth to her son, Bertie, in 1998. This Woman’s Work is about potential loss of pregnancy and seeing a tense situation unfold through a man’s eyes (as he seems helpless). Bush always had this great affection for men in her music, and I especially like how This Woman’s Work does put the woman at the front, but the narrative and perspective is from the expectant father. There are songs that stray away from solid realism – such as Deeper Understanding and its messages of how reliant we are on computers (strangely prescient in 1989) -, but it is the way real-life concerns, relationships and struggles are more present than they ever were that resonates with me.
Hounds of Love’s first side was largely told from characters’ perspective, and it felt like we were hearing different stories and short films being performed that mixed fantasy, film and love. On The Sensual World, one can feel more of Kate Bush come through in her songs – even if she was writing from other people’s viewpoints at times. There is less escapism and fantasy on The Sensual World; more of Bush looking inside herself and putting that onto a record. It is a fascinating shift between Hounds of Love in 1985 and The Sensual World four years later. One can feel and hear Bush grow and mature in that time and, whilst that is not a bad thing, I also get the feeling that she was looking to spend some time away from music and concentrate on herself and take some time out – 1993’s The Red Shoes was her next album; she would take another twelve years to release Aerial. I sort of avoided The Sensual World for a while because I felt the songs lacked the spark and feverishness of many of Bush’s other albums. Listen carefully to The Sensual World and one can hear passion and sensuality together with responsibility, tenderness and characters and lines that we can all connect with and appreciate. There is trauma and sadness but, overall, there is hopefulness and strength. The Sensual World is the album I have been coming back to most during lockdown and pandemic stress. It has connected with me harder than ever, and I wonder if there is a particular reason.
I want to round things off by bringing in an interview from BBC Radio 1 conducted on 14th October 1989, where Bush spoke with Roger Scott. It is a really insightful interview, but there are two sections that really caught my eye. Bush talked about one of my favourite songs, The Fog:
“KT: No, it's not. Again, it's quite a complex song, where it's very watery. It's meant to be the idea of a big expanse of water, and being in a relationship now and flashing back to being a child being taught how to swim, and using these two situations as the idea of learning to let go. When I was a child, my father used to take me out into the water, and he'd hold me by my hands and then let go and say "OK, now come on, you swim to me." As he'd say this, he'd be walking backwards so the gap would be getting bigger and bigger, and then I'd go <splutters>. I thought that was such an interesting situation where you're scared because you think you're going to drown, but you know you won't because your father won't let you drown, and the same for him, he's kind of letting go, he's letting the child be alone in this situation. Everyone's learning and hopefully growing and the idea that the relationship is to be in this again, back there swimming and being taught to swim, but not by your father but by your partner, and the idea that it's OK because you are grown up now so you don't have to be frightened, because all you have to do is put your feet down and the bottom's there, the water isn't so deep that you'll drown. You put your feet down, you can stand up and it's only waist height. Look! What's the problem, what are you worried about?”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Perhaps the most revealing answer underlined how Bush, more and more, was pulling away from recording and endless promotion. She was understanding how life and finding some space was more important:
“RS: Just to conclude, you said earlier that the making of this album and the years of work that have gone into this, that one thing that came out of it, you did learn a lot about yourself. What sort of things have you learnt about yourself over the past three or four years?
KT: Um, well that's a very "up front" question there, Roger! And I suppose, I don't think I would have said after the last album "this is just an album". That's a very important thing for me to have learnt: I am very obsessive about my work. I spend most of my time working, and I think this is something that I've really looked at in the last few years: there's a lot more to life than just working and just making an album. It is just an album, it's just a part of my life. It's not my Life. And I think it was, you know... making albums was my life and it doesn't feel like that is any more. And that's tremendous, the sense of freedom that that gives me. It's so good and I think it's really healthy and much better for me, to try and put these things into perspective, you know”.
I do think The Sensual World was a pivotal album where Kate Bush was redressing the work-life balance and thinking more deeply about things that were peripheral or suggested on previous albums. We can hear this still-vibrant songwriter undergo new bloom and discovery on one of her most nuanced and fascinating albums. The Sensual World is a divine offering, an endlessly-fascinating album and…
A gorgeous maturation