FEATURE:
To Where the Mellow Wallows
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Lionheart cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Kate Bush’s Underrated In the Warm Room
___________
IN a future feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
I am looking ahead to the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Kate Bush greatest hits album, The Whole Story. I am positing an alternate greatest hits collection and one that has a selection of lesser-heard tracks - and ones that are worthy of more love. I have talked about underrated Bush tracks that some overlook or do not mention. In the Warm Room is from 1978’s Lionheart. On an underrated albums, I think some have been unkind regarding In the Warm Room. It is not as accomplished as Symphony in Blue, but I like the fact that, as she did on The Kick Inside, there is this sensual song that mixes some great lyrics with some that are sillier and a bit more unusual. Before bringing in an article that is a little mixed towards the song, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia provides some background:
“Kate was asked to perform on the children's TV programme Ask Aspel, where she wanted to present the new song 'In The Warm Room', but the BBC felt this song was too explicitly sexual, so she opted for Kashka From Baghdad instead. As a result, there are no televised performances of 'In The Warm Room'. The song, however, was performed during the Tour of Life and one of these performances ended up in the Live In Germany TV special.
“I'm always getting accused of being a feminist. Really I do write a lot of my songs for men, actually. In fact, 'In The Warm Room' is written for men because there are so many songs for women about wonderful men that come up and chat you up when you're in the disco and I thought it would be nice to write a song for men about this amazing female. And I think that I am probably female-oriented with my songs because I'm a female and have very female emotions but I do try to aim a lot of the psychology, if you like, at men. (Personal Call, BBC Radio 1, 1979)”.
I do like the fact that Bush had this positive attitude towards men and wrote songs from the male gaze. Some might accuse her of not being a feminist, but that would be unfair. I feel many of Bush’s earlier tracks were unconventional and were very much from her perspective. The language on In the Warm Room mixes elements of the tender and absurd. I really love Bush’s vocal on the song and, whilst it is not strong enough to consider a lost single, it is a track that one does not hear a lot – one of those cuts that we should reinspect. Dreams of Orgonon had this to say about In the Warm Room:
“One of the quietest songs on the album is “In the Warm Room,” also one of the album’s acoustic songs. It fills the “Feel It” spot on the album, the one exclusively-piano song. “Feel It” used its slot on the album to explore sexual desire and seeking pleasure in ambiguous circumstances. “In the Warm Room” is just a dead end — a treacly, inept dirge of a love song. It actually is what male rock critics (a tautology if ever there was one) said her other songs were. It’s the nadir of the album, and a self-evident career low for Bush.
If this song sounds male gazey, that is intentional. Bush claimed she often wrote songs for men, giving them what they want, specifically citing “In the Warm Room.” Such a decision is backwards for Bush, who’s always been a tad conservative in her outlook but manages to hides it behind radically conceptual songwriting (she’s stronger at navigating aesthetics than politics). And it’s just banal here — it’s depressing to see someone who once wrote a musical suicide note for an incestuous woman settling for writing a song about a dude who likes to get laid with spooky dames.
Bush plays it with such po-facedness too: the song crawls, shapelessly wandering in various modes of A (switching between major and minor) as Bush croons the lyrics in a warmed over Billie Holiday impression. It’s terribly lumpy too — it’s difficult to outline a verse-and-chorus structure for this because there’s no tension or reward. “In the Warm Room” is trying incredibly hard to do nothing at all, while coming across as extremely self-serious.
This is what tips it over into the sublimely ridiculous. I mean, who can sing these lyrics with a straight face? How can you make “you’ll fall into her like a pillow/her thighs as soft as marshmallows/say hello to the warm musk of her hollows” work? This is a patently awful lyric and the best singer in the world couldn’t (and indeed can’t) make it work. It doesn’t help that the rest of the lyrics are nonsense like “but when you do/it’ll feel like kicking a habit.” “In the Warm Room” crawls, but it’s gobsmackingly silly”.
COVER PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
I do agree that there are some silly lyrics, but I think that gives the song its charm! Bush was a teenager when she wrote the song, so one could not expect the same sort of language and maturity we heard on albums like Hounds of Love, and The Sensual World. The simplicity of the composition allows the vocals to take the spotlight. I feel In the Warm Room is a far stronger song than it is given credit for. As I say, I will be putting some of the undervalued songs together in a feature - I feel many people focus on Kate Bush’s hits and do not spend time with deeper cuts. If you are a Kate Bush fan and have not listened to In the Warm Room, then give it a spin. The Lionheart album is a brilliant one; it never really gets the respect it has earned. Listening to In the Warm Room, and one rarely hears songs as charged and sensual as this today. We have the odd love song like it, but there has been a tempering over the years. I have a lot of love and time for Bush’s first couple of albums; I appreciate her use of language and how she articulates passion and lust. In the Warm Room is this immersive asnd tingling song that, despite a few weaker thoughts, is a terrific track! I am not sure what the eponymous room is or where it is located, but it does sound…
QUITE a special and beguiling place.