FEATURE:
Hunter's Dream
Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Ten
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THIS is a bit of a round-up feature…
where I am talking generally about Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow, with a great review and interview included. I have written about the album quite a bit this year. It turns ten on 21st November. It is her most-recent studio album. On its anniversary, I know there will be fans wondering whether the coming year will see Bush re-emerge with an eleventh studio album. There is never any rush, though the quality and impact of 50 Words for Snow definitely fuels desire! It is a stunning album with some of her most beautiful compositions, lyrics and vocal performances. Earlier in 2011, Bush released Director’s Cut - an album where she reworked songs from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). She wanted to re-version and record songs that she felt were not as good-sounding as they could be. That album sort of cleared the path for her to record new music. Going straight from one album to the next, one can feel this sense of freedom and renewed inspiration right through 50 Words for Snow. With seven beautiful tracks that each inhabit their own world, they are tied together by the theme of snow (expect for the final track, Among Angels, which was written before the other songs but has a place on the album). With vocal guests including Andy Fairweather Low, Albert McIntosh (her son), Elton John and Stephen Fry, it is real treat!
Every Kate Bush album that celebrates a big anniversary is something to get excited about. Given the fact 50 Words for Snow is her latest album makes it bittersweet. As I have said before, the album is magnificent, and yet there is that wondering as to whether we will ever hear music from her – or whether there is going to be a longer wait for a follow-up. 50 Words for Snow is one of the best-reviewed albums of Bush’s career. It is up there with Hounds of Love, The Sensual World and Aerial in terms of universal acclaim. I want to return to an interview I have sourced from a bit when it comes to 50 Words for Snow. The Quietus’ chat with her in 2011 is joyful to read! John Doran spoke with Bush about her then-new album. There are some exchanges from that interview that I want to highlight now:
“So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it - it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?
KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.
I’ve only heard the album today so I can’t say I’m completely aware of every nuance but I have picked out a few narrative strands. Would it be fair enough to say that it starts with a birth and ends with a death?
KB: No, not at all. Not to my mind anyway. It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow.
Fair play. Now some of your fans may have been dismayed to read that there were only seven songs on the album but they should be reassured at this point that the album is 65 minutes long, which makes for fairly long tracks. How long did it take you to write these songs and in the course of writing them did you discard a lot of material?
KB: This has been quite an easy record to make actually and it’s been quite a quick process. And it’s been a lot of fun to make because the process was uninterrupted. What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it I went straight into making this so I was very much still in that focussed space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch and the freedom that comes with that.
Now, ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ features the vocal talents of Sir Elton John and I was wondering, was the track written with him in mind?
KB: Yes. Absolutely.
How long have you known him?
KB: Oooh. I’ve known him for a long time. He used to be one of my greatest musical heroes. He was such an inspiration to me when I was starting to write songs. I just adored him. I suppose at that time a lot of the well-known performers and writers were quite guitar based but he could play really hot piano. And I’ve always loved his stuff. I’ve always been a fan so I kind of wrote the song with him in mind. And I’m just blown away by his performance on it. Don’t you think it’s great?
Yeah, he really gives it his all.
KB: He sings with pure emotion.
I love the way out of the fifty words that you come up with for snow, without a bit of digging round I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which words were real, which were made up, which were partially true and which were obscure, archaic or foreign. I know that the whole idea of Eskimos having 50 words for snow is false but at the same time I do know that the Sami people of Lapland do actually have hundreds of words for snow. But from your point of view where did the idea for such a beautiful and weird song come from?
KB: Well, I’m really pleased you like it. 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”.
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
There will be a lot of love fort 50 Words for Snow on 21st November. It is one of Kate Bush’s most interesting, extraordinary and immersive albums. I have been listening to it for a decade. I get something new every time I experience it. It is a true experience! Something that will stay with you. This is what The Independent wrote about Bush’s 2011 triumph:
“On Kate Bush's first album of new material since Aerial, she takes the more relaxed, discursive style she used on that album and eases it out further, so that despite containing just seven tracks, 50 Words For Snow lasts longer than an hour.
It's something of an exercise in musical evocation too, the individual tracks seeming to coalesce gently, like snow gathering in drifts: most consist of simple, unhurried piano parts, underscored by ambient synth pads, strings, and occasionally a touch of jazzy reeds, or Oriental-sounding twang. The result is a lush, immersive work which is sonically more homogeneous than her earlier albums, reflecting the conceptual solidity of its wintry theme, in which fantastical, mythic narratives are allowed to take shape under the cover of its snowy blanket.
On the opening "Snowflake", it's her son, Bertie, that takes most of the vocals, bringing echoes of the plaintive innocence of Aled Jones's "Walking in the Air" to the song of a snowflake yearning for human contact: "I was born in a cloud/Now I am falling/I want you to catch me." In "Lake Tahoe", Bush's oozing, jazzy delivery, combined with subtle reed textures, strings and an intriguing polyphony of classical backing vocals, lends a monochrome, film noir-ish quality to the ghostly murder mystery. Elsewhere, songs are populated by yetis, time-travellers and sentient snowmen, all half-hidden among the silent clouds of snow, like characters in snow-globes.
At 14 minutes, "Misty" is the longest track, with Steve Gadd's jazzy drumming swirling around the fairy-tale love-tryst between a woman and a snowman, whose inevitable dissolution is evoked in watery slide-guitar akin to a valiha. The empathy between human and non-human extends further in "Wild Man", where the search for a yeti is sketched with the geographical accuracy of an actual Himalayan expedition, Bush's softly voiced verses punctuated by more urgent refrains urging the beast's escape – its capture would mean death for the abominable snowman of myth and legend, now reduced to mere flesh and bone.
Elton John duets on "Snowed in at Wheeler Street", in which a pair of immortal, time-travelling lovers snatch a momentary erotic interlude under the cover of a blizzard, already regretting their inevitable separation as they each track their way through history: "Come with me, I've got some rope, I'll tie us together," sings Bush, as if they were emotional mountaineers. "I don't want to lose you, I don't want to walk into the crowd again."
But it's "50 Words for Snow" itself which offers the most engaging, genial development of the album's wintry theme, its scudding groove assailed by chilly wind as Stephen Fry enunciates the terms – mostly made-up by Bush herself – with quiet relish: "Eiderfalls... Wenceslasair... Vanillaswarm... Icyskidski...", while she stands on the sideline, occasionally jumping in to cajole him, like a coach boosting her player's morale. It's a fitting climax to a seasonal offering that manages to evoke the essential spirit of winter while avoiding all the dog-eared clichés of Christmas albums – or indeed, any overt mention of that particular fairy story. Which is some achievement”.
A happy tenth anniversary to a truly remarkable album that everyone should go and play in full now! I heard 50 Words for Snow in 2011, and I felt that Kate Bush had this new creative lease and direction. Although she returned to the stage in 2014 for Before the Dawn, and she remastered her back catalogue in 2018 (and brought out her first book of lyrics), there have been no new original songs. Let us hope that 2022 offers a bit of hope in that sense. When she releases an album like 50 Words for Snow into the world, then absolutely…
NOBODY can equal her.