FEATURE:
Family, Secrecy and a New Vocal Sound
Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut at Ten
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EVEN though…
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut does not turn ten until 16th May, this will be my final feature about it – I will post songs/links closer to the anniversary to make people aware of it. This feature sort of rounds things up and ties up any loose ends. I do want to quote from a review for the album, in addition to a segment of an interview Bush conducted to promote Director’s Cut. There are a few things that I specifically want to talk about. Some say that Director’s Cut is inessential and unnecessary in many ways. Bush reworked songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. Why listen to an album where she re-recorded these songs when we can hear them in their original form?! That is a point, though Bush managed to transform a lot of the songs we hear on Director’s Cut. I think that both of the albums that she revisited have moments where they are slightly cold or intangible. Graeme Thomson noted, in his biography, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, that songs on The Red Shoes sound a little tinny. This was the 1990s, so Bush moved from analogue to digital recording. Although Bush, in 2011, was mixing digital and analogue, the songs that she reworked from The Red Shoes are warmer and much more physical in a sense – in that a listener feels part of the song and you are beckoned in.
Those who disliked The Red Shoes or felt that it was a little insubstantial will find new layers and improvements on Director’s Cut. That reason alone validates its existence – not that Bush would need approval or a reason to undertake the album, aside from the fact that it is something she had been meaning to do! Whilst The Sensual World did not suffer the same problems as The Red Shoes – in terms of the digital sound meaning the music was a little cold and tinny -, I think Bush’s voice in her fifties gave the tracks new insight, wisdom and maturity. Every singer’s voice undergoes change as they get older. When 2005’s Aerial arrived, one could not help but notice that Bush’s voice was noticeably different to what we heard in 1993 with The Red Shoes. In a weird way, as she was tackling older songs of hers, one focuses on the vocals more through Director’s Cut. Some reviewers picked up on the deeper tones and this ‘new’ vocal sound. My favourite album ever is The Kick Inside: an album where Bush’s voice, as a then-teenager, was quite high. I have a lot of affection for her vocals on Director’s Cut. It is the first complete album, in my view, where there is very little of the higher register and acrobatics. There is still some – Top of the City has plenty of kick; Lily is raucous and electrifying! -, though hearing Bush with a deeper voice makes these familiar songs sound completely new. I think her voice as it was in 2011 gives these tracks new depth and resonance. We would hear more of this in 2011’s 50 Words for Snow.
Director’s Cut had a smaller cast of musicians than her previous albums. First, Bush transferred the digital recordings to analogue tape. Bush had Pro-Tools in her studio, so she had the modern touches and convenience to ensure that she could record quite quickly and efficiently. Taking out the drum parts by Stuart Elliott and Charlie Morgan, she also took away the lead vocals and most of the backing. As Thomson notes in his biography, some songs required a little work; others had keyboard parts, bass lines and string arrangements removed. Now, she had all this space and much barer frameworks. Inviting hordes of musicians into the studio would risk her compromising her original vision regarding making these songs warmer – too many cooks in the kitchen could create overcrowded and dense tracks. Instead, she selected a few musicians and backing vocalists to help realise her vision. The recruitment of the legendary drummer Steve Gadd is crucial. He is someone who can be minimal and un-showy, yet he adds so much professionalism, feel and skill to a song. Gadd was contacted back in 2009, where Bush explained she wanted to revisit two older albums and did not want him to hear the originals. Thomson notes that, as usual, Bush was using a skeleton crew in the studio. However, look at the personnel for Aerial, The Red Shoes or The Sensual World, and one can see a lot of musicians, vocalists and technical staff listed in the credits. Director’s Cut was barer and more concise in terms of the people we see listed on the album. Del Palmer was there as usual. Her trusted engineer and friend, he was a key member of the team. Danny Thompson and John Gilblin provided new bass lines; her partner, Danny McIntosh, laid down guitar.
I shall come to the backing vocals – in addition to an observation regarding Bush’s vocals – in a bit. I think it is great that her family were so involved! Her son, Bertie (who is credited as Albert), could be heard as a young child on Aerial. He provided backing vocals and programming for Director’s Cut - and he would appear on 50 Words for Snow. Her brother, Paddy, provided mandola, flute, whistle and backing vocals. He had played on his sister’s albums since the start…so it really was a family affair! One issue Bush faced was with her voice. It was deeper but less versatile than it once was. She found it hard to re-enter these songs with this new vocal sound. The key to unlocking that issue was to lower the key. Singing as she was then, in other words, rather than as she would have sounded in the 1980s and 1990s. Her new band and vocal approach gave all of the songs new skins and possibilities. The rhythm parts are more important and pronounced and, as she hoped, there is a lot more space to be heard on Director’s Cut. I do love how there was secrecy around the album. Bush has always been private about her work and did not want it announced. By 2011, social media and the Internet were much more powerful tools for spoilers and promotion as they would have been in 2005 (for Aerial). One of the backing vocalists, Mica Paris, was sworn to secrecy by Bush. Paris, alongside Ed Rowntree, Jacob Thorn, Michael Wood, Jevan Johnson Booth, add so much to the songs they appear on.
If there are one or two songs on Director’s Cut where the new vocal is throwaway or not as one would expect, Bush lowering her voice a tone or semitone really brought some songs to life. One example is Lily. Mica Paris is on backing vocals for that track and recounts – as I am still referencing Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush -, how Bush had this sharing energy and was open to suggestions. That said, she knew what she wanted and worked closely with Paris. Bush had already recorded her part so, when Paris arrived in 2010 for her day in the studio, it was a case of Bush working alongside Paris to get the backing nailed. There was also this sense that nobody could know about the album. Bush knew that information could easily slip regarding Director’s Cut, so Paris was very much asked not to say anything! Two particularly great reworkings came in the form of Moments of Pleasure and This Woman’s Work. The former was a song Bush had not played for twenty years. She wanted the song to be more of a narrative. A more snow-inflected and wintery song, the strings arrangements were gone. Now, the track was this tale of loss – something very different to the original. For This Woman’s Work, Bush extended the song and turned into something ambient and wintery. This sense of winter, as Thomson notes in his book, cleared a path for 50 Words for Snow. He also notes that, by revisiting older tracks, Bush sort of planted the seeds for her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn – another big reason why Director’s Cut is so important and undervalued!
It is debatable whether Bush would have returned to the stage in 2014 were it not for the experience of recording Director’s Cut. This is the first time she sat down with old material since, arguably, 1979. It would have been interesting if Bush brought these reworked songs to the stage in 2011 for, as Thomson moots, a one-off show for prosperity. There is a clear link between Director’s Cut and Before the Dawn. Thomson argues that Director’s Cut is not a classic. It has some flawed moments and cannot entirely be seen as a new collection of songs – as some are not great and Bush didn’t always succeed in her objectives. He did note how rare it was for Bush to wrestle with his legacy and revisit old material. Director’s Cut is a fascinating album. I think, as I have said a number of times, it is underrated and warrants new inspection and deliberation ahead of its tenth anniversary. Before bringing in a review for Director’s Cut, I want to quote a couple of question from a Pitchfork interview I have used before. I did not even mention how Bush set up her own label, Fish People. Director’s Cut was the first album released on the label (alongside EMI):
“Pitchfork: So you're still in the studio on a day-to-day basis?
KB: Yeah, I have been for a while now, because [Director's Cut] has been ready for quite some time. Although there were a lot of ongoing loose ends with this album, like the mastering and artwork, I went straight into making a new record when I finished it. I'm really enjoying working on new material. Director's Cut is kind of a one-off rather than a continuous revisiting of old stuff.
Pitchfork: Director's Cut is being released on your new imprint, Fish People. Why did you decide to start your own label now?
KB: Previously, I wasn't in a position to do so, but now I'm delighted with my own label because it means that I have more creative freedom, which is really what I want. Although I've always had a lot of creative freedom since my third album. But now, I don't have to refer to people at the record company for certain decisions that I might have before. In many ways, it's probably quite a subtle change. But with something like [the new "Deeper Understanding"] video, I really wanted to direct it without being in it and make it like a short film as opposed to a music video. That might have been something the record company would have questioned before”.
I will end with a review from The Guardian. Director’s Cut found some a little mixed; others were keen to praise various songs. There were more than enough wonderful and hugely positive reviews for the album. It is hard to place Alexis Petridis’ review – though I feel it makes for interesting reading:
“In 2011, with the whole nonpareil musical genius/dippy woman who says "wow" issue firmly sorted out in most people's minds, her behaviour seems to grow more inscrutable still. Her new album, which admittedly took only half as long to make as its predecessor, isn't actually a new album, despite Bush's insistence to the contrary: it consists entirely of new versions of songs from 1989's The Sensual World and 1993's The Red Shoes. In fairness, you can see why she's chosen to point them up. They tend to be overlooked in her oeuvre, more because they separate her twin masterpieces Hounds of Love and Aerial than because of their content, although The Red Shoes is perhaps more muddled than you might expect, given her legendary perfectionism. Nevertheless, the decision seems to have bamboozled even her diehard fans, whose trepidation was not much mollified by the single Deeper Understanding. Again, you can see why she wants to point it up: its lyric about abandoning social interaction in order to hunch over a computer seems very prescient in the age of Facebook and Twitter. But the new version's decision to overwhelm the haunting vocals of Trio Bulgarka with Kate Bush doing one of her patented Funny Voices through an Auto-Tune unit seems questionable at best.
In fact, it's the only moment when you can honestly say the rerecording pales next to the original. At worst, they sound as good as their predecessors, which leaves you wondering what the point is, even as you succumb to their manifold charms. It was obviously a bind that the Joyce estate refused permission to use Molly Bloom's concluding soliloquy from Ulysses as the lyrics to The Sensual World, but whether it's a vastly better song for finally having them in place of Bush's facsimile is rather a moot point. Song of Solomon, on which Bush finally abandoned her apparently bottomless store of metaphors for female sexuality in favour of a direct demand for a shag – "Don't want your bullshit," she cries, "I'll come in a hurricane for you" – is a fantastic song whether the rhythm track features pattering tom-toms or a lightly brushed snare. Occasionally, the changes genuinely add something, usually by taking things away. The force of The Red Shoes' depiction of Bush's troubled relationship with the creative impulse was always a little blunted by its presentation as a kind of perky Irish jig: with the Celtic pipes shifted to the background, it sounds sinister and more urgent. Moments of Pleasure's rumination on death is more introverted and affecting stripped of its dramatic orchestration, while This Woman's Work – the rerecording of which caused the most unease among fans – is amazing: emptier, darker and quieter than before, it's even more heart-rending. Given that the original was heart-rending enough to soundtrack a charity campaign against child abuse, that's no mean feat.
Is it worth spending six years making an emotionally wrenching song slightly more emotionally wrenching? Hmm. If Director's Cut really was a new album, if you were hearing these songs for the first time, then it probably would be considered among Kate Bush's masterpieces: certainly, the sheer quality of the songwriting makes every recent female artist who has been compared to her look pretty wan by comparison. But you're not, which means the Director's Cut ultimately amounts to faffing about, albeit faffing about of the most exquisite kind. Still, as anyone who's watched her putting up with Richard Stilgoe will tell you, Kate Bush has earned the right to do whatever she wants”.
I shall leave things there. Ahead of its tenth anniversary on 16th May, I wanted to do one more feature about something that, whilst not a new album in a sense, is full of wonderful moments. It is definitely fascinating to read about. From the musicians and vocalists she brought in, to the fact that she had her brother, son and partner on the record, it is a real treasure trove of an album! I love Bush’s deeper voice - and, as she lowered the key and could tackle these songs afresh, nearly all of the songs sound very different to the originals. She completely transformed Lily. On Flower of the Mountain, she got permission from the Joyce estate to use words from Ulysses that she was denied when she recorded The Sensual World’s title track (I am not sure why she renamed The Sensual World to Flower of the Mountain for Director’s Cut - maybe a sign of triumph that she had gained writes to use Joyce’s words, thus she felt this was a totally new song?). Hearing her finally using Molly Bloom’s soliloquy on Flower of the Mountain is a great highlight. There are other big Bush anniversaries I will mark later in the year. Sat in Your Lap (from The Dreaming) is forty in June. The greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, is thirty-five in November. 50 Words for Snow is ten the same month. It is hard to believe Director’s Cut has been out a decade! I remember Bush promoting it so clearly and the excitement I felt when it came out. Though some find flaws on the album, Bush wanted to re-record songs that she felt were a little compacted or lacked necessary space. In that sense, she achieved her aims - and, with it, she was open to revisionism and reinspection in the form of 2014’s Before the Dawn. Not to mention how some of the arrangements and vocals on 50 Words for Snow were inspired by Director’s Cut – her tenth studio album is hugely celebrated and considered one of her best releases. Tasking all that into consideration, few people can…
ARGUE with that.