FEATURE:
Divided by Time and History
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow
The Underrated Power and Beauty of Snowed in at Wheeler Street from Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow
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I will come to some reviews and interviews…
in a bit. I have previously explored the song, Snowed in at Wheeler Street. I talked about it last year. To me, it is an underrated song from a beautiful album, 50 Words for Snow. In terms of the best from Kate Bush’s most-recent album, people will mention Misty, Lake Tahoe, Among Angels and Snowflake. The seven-track album is gorgeous and so compelling. Longer songs that are much more widescreen and atmospheric than a lot of the music Bush produced earlier in her career, there is Art Rock, Jazz and Chamber Pop sounds. I will come to the song in question in a bit. I am going to mark ten years of 50 Words for Snow on 21st November. It is hard to believe that this is the date the album turns ten! Let’s hope there is more music from Kate Bush in the future. No wonder such a deep and stunning album won some incredible reviews! In their review, this is what The Guardian noted about 50 Words for Snow:
“But in one sense, these peculiarities aren't really that peculiar, given that this is an album by Bush. She has form in releasing Christmas records, thanks to 1980's December Will Be Magic Again, on which she imagined herself falling softly from the sky on a winter's evening. She does it again here on opener Snowflake, although anyone looking for evidence of her artistic development might note that 30 years ago she employed her bug-eyed Heeeath-CLIFF! voice and plonking lyrical references to Bing Crosby and "old St Nicholas up the chimney" to conjure the requisite sense of wonder. Today, she gets there far more successfully using only a gently insistent piano figure, soft flurries of strings and percussion and the voice of her son Bertie.
Meanwhile, Fry's is merely the latest unlikely guest appearance – Bush has previously employed Lenny Henry, Rolf Harris (twice) and the late animal imitator Percy Edwards, the latter to make sheep noises on the title track of 1982's The Dreaming. Equally, Fairweather Low is not the first person called upon to pretend to be someone else on a Bush album, although she usually takes that upon herself, doing impersonations to prove the point: Elvis on Aerial's King of the Mountain, a gorblimey bank robber on There Goes a Tenner. Finally, in song at least, Bush has always displayed a remarkably omnivorous sexual appetite: long before the Yeti and old Snow Balls showed up, her lustful gaze had variously fixed on Adolf Hitler, a baby and Harry Houdini.
No, the really peculiar thing is that 50 Words for Snow is the second album in little over six months from a woman who took six years to make its predecessor and 12 to make the one before that. If it's perhaps stretching it to say you can tell it's been made quickly – no one is ever going to call an album that features Lake Tahoe's operatic duet between a tenor and a counter-tenor a rough-and-ready lo-fi experience – it certainly feels more intuitive than, say, Aerial, on which a lot of time and effort had clearly been expended in the pursuit of effortlessness. For all the subtle beauty of the orchestrations, there's an organic, live feel, the sense of musicians huddled together in a room, not something that's happened on a Bush album before.
That aside, 50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having. Taking notions that look entirely daft on paper and rendering them into astonishing music is very much Bush's signature move. There's something utterly inscrutable and unknowable about how she does it that has nothing to do with her famous aversion to publicity. Better not to worry, to just listen to an album that, like the weather it celebrates, gets under your skin and into your bones”.
In their take on one of Kate Bush’s finest albums, Pitchfork were suitably impressed and were keen to have their say:
“The album's shortest song, the gorgeous closing piano ballad "Among Angels", clocks in at almost seven minutes. "Misty" rolls out its brilliant, funny, and bizarrely touching tale across nearly a quarter of an hour. It's not one second too long. During the 12-year gap between 1993's The Red Shoes and 2005's Aerial when she was raising her son Bertie, Bush gained a new level of compositional patience. She's now allowing her songs to breathe more than ever-- a fact reinforced by this year's Director's Cut, which found her classing-up and often stretching out songs from 1989's The Sensual World and The Red Shoes via re-recordings. So while "Misty" is an eyebrow-raiser about getting very intimate with a cold and white being with a "crooked mouth full of dead leaves," it hardly calls attention to its own eccentricities. Propelled by Bush's languid piano and the jazzy, pitter-pattering drums of veteran stick man (but relatively new Bush recruit) Steve Gadd, the song is about as appealingly grown-up as a song about having sex with a snowman can possibly be. In her early career, Bush sometimes let her zaniness get the better of her, highlighting her tales of sexual taboo and bizarre yarns with look-at-me musical accompaniment and videos. Those days are long gone. And her heightened sophistication works wonders here. So when the song's titular being is nowhere to be found the following morning-- "the sheets are soaking," she sings-- there is nothing gimmicky about her desperation: "Oh please, can you help me?/ He must be somewhere."
The ending of that song brings up another common thread through Snow, aside from its blizzard-y climate. This is an album about trying, oftentimes futilely, to find connections-- between Bush and her characters, reality and surreality, love and death. "Snowflake" is a duet with her 13-year-old son, where he plays the small fleck of white falling down from the sky, his high-pitched, choir-boy voice hitting the kind of notes his mom was originally famous for. On the track, Bush encourages her son-- "The world is so loud/ Keep falling/ I'll find you"-- and yet the plaintive piano that steers things is seemingly aware that, once the flake arrives, it'll either melt or disappear among millions of other icy bits. Similarly, while the lake-bound ghost of "Lake Tahoe" is overjoyed to find her long-lost dog-- coincidentally named Snowflake-- at the end of the song, the reunion comes with its own specter of bittersweet afterlife. The same sort of disconnect defines "Snowed in at Wheeler Street", an eerie duet with Bush's teenage idol Elton John about a star-crossed pair who have "been in love forever"-- literally. The time-traveling track finds its leads going from ancient Rome to World War II to 9/11, always losing each other along the way. It acts as something of a sequel to Bush's "Running Up that Hill", another tale of pained co-dependence. There's no happy ending. "When we got to the top of the hill/ We saw Rome burning," sings Elton.
While much of 50 Words for Snow conjures a whited-out, dream-like state of disbelief, it's important to note that Bush does everything in her power to make all the shadowy phantoms here feel real. Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space-- not so much innocent as open to imagination-- that never gets old. "I have a theory that there are parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up," she recently told The Independent. "Our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we're children, and if you're lucky enough to... hang onto who you are, you do have that at your core for the rest of your life." Snow isn't a blissful retreat to simpler times, though. It's fraught with endings, loss, quiet-- adult things. This is more than pure fantasy. When faced with her unlikely guest on "Misty", Bush pinches herself: "Should be a dream, but I'm not sleepy”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay
This takes me to the song itself. I suppose, when people were reviewing 50 Words for Snow, they were struck by the beauty and evocative nature of the compositions and moods. Maybe a duet between Kate Bush and Elton John was not as realised and as good as it could have been. I have been thinking about Elton John, as he has had to cancel his farewell tour due to injury. He is a massive fan of Kate Bush; she is a massive fan of him. He has credited her duet with Peter Gabriel., Don’t Give Up, with saving his life. She has professed her love and admiration of John. It was only a matter of time before the two worked alongside one another. I feel Snowed in at Wheeler Street is a gem from 50 Words for Snow. Some reviewers have commented how some of the lyrics are not that great. Others felt Elton John’s vocal was not as strong as it could have been - and the interplay between him and Bush lacks sparks and conviction. I think John’s vocal (in a deeper register) sounds wonderful. He and Kate Bush are magnetic together! The song is about these two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. They meet in Ancient Rome and they meet again walking through time. They are pulled apart at every turn and meeting. In a 2011 interview with John Doran, Kate Bush was asked about the song:
“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.
It’s good to hear him belting it out. Back when you were 13 years old and practicing playing the organ in your parents’ house and just starting to write your own songs and lyrics, what was the Elton John album that inspired you?
KB: Well, I love them all and I worked my way through them but my absolute favourite was Madman Across The Water. I just loved that record. I loved the songs on it and the production. It’s a really beautiful album”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John/PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Gibson
A complex, gorgeous song, Far Out Magazine published a feature recently where they discussed Elton John’s opinions regarding working with Kate Bush and the intricacies of Snowed in at Wheeler Street:
“John and Bush are close friends and have the utmost respect for one another in an artistic sense. However, admiration doesn’t necessarily mean that working together will be easy. Bush is an ethereal talent, one who has etched out a career in a distinctive manner, making her impossible to compare to anyone else – as has Elton John.
If you put together the lengths of their careers, it adds up to the best part of a century, and when you’ve been engaged creatively for such an extensive period, you get used to working in a certain way. For Elton, he initially struggled to get on board with Bush’s madcap methods. However, the final result made the frustrations worthwhile.
“I did a duet with Kate Bush on this track for her last album,” he explained to The Guardian about her 2011 track ‘Snowed in at Wheeler Street’. “That session with her was hard, because she doesn’t write easy songs. She’s a complex songwriter and this is a weird song, but I love it so much. I’m so proud to be on a Kate Bush record; she’s always marched to the beat of her own drum. She was groundbreaking – a bit like a female equivalent of Freddie Mercury“.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 50 Words for Snow
In an interview with Huff Post in 2011, Kate Bush was asked about working with one of her musical idols and what the experience was like:
“MR: That’s great. Speaking of beautiful voices, the album includes a track called “Snowed In At Wheeler Street” with Sir Elton John, right? What was it like working with him?
KB: It was fantastic. He is one of my great musical heroes, and when I wrote the song, I very much had him in mind and hoped that he would be interested enough to come and sing on the song. At the risk of sounding corny, it was like a dream come true having him come into the studio and sing so beautifully. I think his performance on the song is so fantastic; it’s so emotive. I love him singing in that lower key. I really couldn’t have been happier with what he brought to the track.
MR: It really is fantastic. His Elton John album is one of my favorites.
KB: I guess I love that album, but my very favorite album of his was Madman Across The Water. But I love everything Elton does”.
I do feel that many have given short shrift to Snowed in at Wheeler Street. One is engrossed by these two lovers who are divided and travel through history trying to connect and find one another. Both Bush and John deliver exceptional vocals. It is a definite highlight from 50 Words for Snow. I am going to write more features about the album ahead of its tenth anniversary in November. A remarkable collection of songs that ranks alongside her greatest works, there is not a weak moment to be found. Rather than Snowed in at Wheeler Street being a lesser cut from the record, I reckon it warrants…
FONDER appreciation and inspection.