FEATURE:
After an Ocean Rescue and a Glorious Summer’s Day…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush photographed for The Ninth Wave (from the album, Hounds of Love) in 1985
Might Kate Bush Record Another Song Suite Like Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave and Aerial’s A Sky of Honey?
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I must note two things before…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton/National Portrait Gallery, London
continuing on. For one, I have featured a lot of women on my site over the past week. That is never an apologetic thing: I understand I need to balance things a bit to include some guys soon but, with so many incredible female artists around, it seems only right to acknowledge them. The other thing I should mention is that, previously, I have tried to limit the number of Kate Bush-related posts on this site. I figured, even at one a month, it was a little excessive! Although my site is not a Kate Bush fan page, there are a lot of articles dedicated to her. Whilst I shall limit myself to two features concerning her this month, I have other angles I want to explore throughout this year. In fact, there is a relevance to his article. Apart from the news that Prime Minister Boris Johnson counts Bush as one of his five favourite women (and managed to do so in an unsettling way!), it is International Women’s Day. I have been celebrating female artists on a weekly basis, but today is especially important – and what better artist to write about than Kate Bush?! Now that I have cleared all that up, I am excited because, later this year, three of her albums celebrate big anniversaries. Her third album, Never for Ever, is forty in September; Hounds of Love is thirty-five on 16th September, whilst Aerial is fifteen on 7th November.
Of course, I will investigate each album closer to their anniversaries, but there are similarities between them that are worth noting. Both albums are, in a sense, crucially important. Hounds of Love was the album that followed The Dreaming. The Dreaming was the first album Kate Bush produced on her own, and it was her most experimental and challenging work to date – I don’t think she has made an album as loaded with texture and different styles. Although The Dreaming is an underrated masterpiece, it did divide critics, and there were big changes between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. Bush changed her diet and took up dancing again; she moved to the country and built her own studio. If The Dreaming was made in the city and has quite an intense feel, Hounds of Love reflects nature and is more open; an album containing different colours and an artist hitting her peak. Hounds of Love was the first Kate Bush album with a song suite/cycle. Before then, she was working with songs in a traditional format; Hounds of Love featured a first side of separate tracks, whereas the second was a concept called The Ninth Wave: a woman is alone at sea and, until her rescue, she battles to stay awake and, when it seems hope is slipping away, she remembers her family and yearns for the mundane comfort of daily life.
I have not done it full justice but, on an album where Bush was under a bit of pressure, she created this magnificent suite that is accomplished, cinematic, and unique. It was rare, in 1985, for a Pop artist to construct an album with two distinct sides – even in 2020, one does not see it too often. That idea of someone being lost at sea and you do not know if they are going to be saved…I think it is a fear, irrational or not, we all share. The Ninth Wave is one of many reasons why Hounds of Love is considered Bush’s finest moment. The second time she created a suite of songs for an album was twenty years later for Aerial. If Hounds of Love was a huge evolution and a return from, if not absence, then exhaustion, Aerial was a return from the wilderness. Of course, Bush was not idle between The Red Shoes (her 1993 processor to Aerial) and her 2005 comeback. She had a son, Bertie, in 1998, and was enjoying being a mother; in addition to preparing her first double album. Not only do Hounds of Love and Aerial celebrate big anniversaries later in the year, I think both albums represent a sort of creative, spiritual, and personal rebirth. Both are very connected to nature and, whilst Hounds of Love’s suite is about the water, morning fog, and the fight for life, Aerial’s A Sky of Honey is the course of a day; a look at the sunset, of nature, and a modern-day Classical piece that is among the best things Bush has ever written – A Sky of Honey was re-titled An Endless Sky of Honey in 2010 when Aerial was released for the first time on iTunes (I have embedded the 2018 remaster of Aerial, as Rolf Harris appears on the original release, on the tracks An Architect's Dream and The Painter's Link - Bush’s son, Bertie, replaces him on the 2018 version). It is a single piece of music, but there are separate song titles and movements we run through.
Bush has said in interviews – she was asked which of her albums she likes best in a 2011 interview to promote 50 Words for Snow -, how much she loves Aerial and the importance of Hounds of Love. Although the albums were released at different points in her life, one can analyse The Ninth Wave as, perhaps, being a subconscious reaction to the post-The Dreaming period and a sense of dislocation – in spite of the fact that the album is remarkable. Aerial’s light and captive sound seems to reflect Bush as the new mum; someone embracing the tranquillity of home, but someone who was also releasing her first album in twelve years. Bush combined both of her suites when she performed in Hammersmith in 2014; her Before the Dawn residency linked her simply brilliant Hounds of Love majesty with the incredibly beautiful A Sky of Honey (such a great title!) from 2005. I have been thinking really deeply about Hounds of Love and Aerial. It has almost been fifteen years since Aerial arrived, and nearly nine years since 50 Words for Snow, I wonder whether Bush’s next album will contain a suite. The remarkable and immersive Aerial appeared three albums after Hounds of Love – The Sensual World (1989), and The Red Shoes (1993) appeared between them -, and, if there is another Bush album, that would be the third after Aerial – 50 Words for Snow was preceded by interesting Director’s Cut in 2011.
I am not going to speculate when Bush might release another album, but I do feel she will explore another suite. Given the fact the environment is under great threat, could there be a sort of combination of The Ninth Wave and A Sky of Honey?! I do think some of Bush’s most vivid, spellbinding and immersive songs have come from her song suites. I am not saying her next album should be a concept album, but a sort of modern update of Hounds of Love or Aerial would be very intriguing. Of course, she may have already recorded new songs, so my curiosity is moot. In a time for music where singles are released so quickly and there is a flood of stuff out there, do artists feel like they need to put out material quickly, or they cannot spend too long releasing a song cycle that would require some serious attention? I love the usual format of an album and singles, but there is something wonderful about concepts and song suites. Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave took us from the discovery of a woman at sea to her rescue; A Sky of Honey is a single piece of music revelling in the experience of outdoor adventures on a single summer day, beginning in the morning and ending twenty-four hours later with the next sunrise. Maybe the fact Bush’s son, Bertie, is in his twenties and things have changed in the world drastically since 2005 will force her mind in the direction of a new chapter; who knows what could come?! When it comes to Kate Bush and her next musical steps…
YOU just never know what you’ll get.