FEATURE:
Do Enough People Know About One of Kate Bush’s Finest Albums?
A Look Back at 2005’s Majestic and Seriously Underrated Aerial
__________
AN album I have been discussing for a while…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity shot for 2005’s Aerial/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
I wanted to return to Kate Bush’s Aerial because of Hounds of Love. That album is back in my thoughts as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached number one in the U.K. (and other countries). It is rightly seen as a masterpiece because of its mix of the more accessible songs on the first half of the album, tied to the conceptual suite on the second, The Ninth Wave. Aerial has a lot of similarities. It is one of Bush’s favourite albums of hers. It is a double album with a conceptual suite, A Sky of Honey, takes up the second disc. It was talked about a lot when it came out in 2005, and yet Aerial is not explored much today. In terms of radio accessibility, there is plenty of it that warrants attention. The songs on the suite can be broken up, even if they are best enjoyed as a single piece. The album’s single, King of the Mountain, gets played now and then, though there are other great tracks that are either never played or very little. Alongside The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love, Bush did bring to the stage a lot from Aerial. Both albums have a conceptual suite, and yet Hounds of Love is widely known and rising in popularity, whereas Aerial seems more hidden or rarer in people’s thoughts. At sixteen tracks, it is a lot to listen to.
I think Aerial’s strengths come in the same way as Hounds of Love’s. I love the first album, A Sea of Honey, and the songs on there. Bertie, Mrs. Bartolozzi, How to Be Invisible and A Coral Room show Bush’s range of emotions, lyrics and sounds. There is barely a weak moment through Aerial. Maybe Hounds of Love is stronger, though I think Aerial is more detailed and has this richness that should be augmented and known about. I have been thinking about how we can get an album like Aerial more known. Rather than rely on a T.V. show like Stranger Things to get one of its tracks to number one, maybe an album listening party or a podcast about it would help raise its status and boost awareness. I really love Aerial and the fact it was her first album since 1993’s The Red Shoes. Touted as this big ‘return’ after years away, Aerial received a wave of affection. Even so, I still think that some were a little too reserved or did not get to the heart of the album. One very positive review came from The Guardian:
“These days, record companies try to make every new album seem like a matter of unparalleled cultural import. The most inconsequential artists require confidentiality agreements to be faxed to journalists, the lowliest release must be delivered by hand. So it's hard not to be impressed by an album that carries a genuine sense of occasion. That's not to say EMI - which earlier this year transformed the ostensibly simple process of handing critics the Coldplay album into something resembling a particularly Byzantine episode of Spooks - haven't really pushed the boat out for Kate Bush's return after a 12-year absence. They employed a security man specifically for the purpose of staring at you while you listened to her new album. But even without his disconcerting presence, Aerial would seem like an event.
In the gap since 1993's so-so The Red Shoes, the Kate Bush myth that began fomenting when she first appeared on Top of the Pops, waving her arms and shrilly announcing that Cath-ee had come home-uh, grew to quite staggering proportions. She was variously reported to have gone bonkers, become a recluse and offered her record company some home-made biscuits instead of a new album. In reality, she seems to have been doing nothing more peculiar than bringing up a son, moving house and watching while people made up nutty stories about her.
Aerial contains a song called How to Be Invisible. It features a spell for a chorus, precisely what you would expect from the batty Kate Bush of popular myth. The spell, however, gently mocks her more obsessive fans while espousing a life of domestic contentment: "Hem of anorak, stem of wallflower, hair of doormat."
Domestic contentment runs through Aerial's 90-minute duration. Recent Bush albums have been filled with songs in which the extraordinary happened: people snogged Hitler, or were arrested for building machines that controlled the weather. Aerial, however, is packed with songs that make commonplace events sound extraordinary. It calls upon Renaissance musicians to serenade her son. Viols are bowed, arcane stringed instruments plucked, Bush sings beatifically of smiles and kisses and "luvv-er-ly Bertie". You can't help feeling that this song is going to cause a lot of door slamming and shouts of "oh-God-mum-you're-so-embarrassing" when Bertie reaches the less luvv-er-ly age of 15, but it's still delightful.
The second CD is devoted to a concept piece called A Sky of Honey in which virtually nothing happens, albeit very beautifully, with delicious string arrangements, hymnal piano chords, joyous choruses and bursts of flamenco guitar: the sun comes up, birds sing, Bush watches a pavement artist at work, it rains, Bush has a moonlight swim and watches the sun come up again. The pavement artist is played by Rolf Harris. This casting demonstrates Bush's admirable disregard for accepted notions of cool, but it's tough on anyone who grew up watching him daubing away on Rolf's Cartoon Club. "A little bit lighter there, maybe with some accents," he mutters. You keep expecting him to ask if you can guess what it is yet.
Domestic contentment even gets into the staple Bush topic of sex. Ever since her debut, The Kick Inside, with its lyrics about incest and "sticky love", Bush has given good filth: striking, often disturbing songs that, excitingly, suggest a wildly inventive approach to having it off. Here, on the lovely and moving piano ballad Mrs Bartolozzi, she turns watching a washing machine into a thing of quivering erotic wonder. "My blouse wrapping around your trousers," she sings. "Oh, and the waves are going out/ my skirt floating up around my waist." Laundry day in the Bush household must be an absolute hoot.
Aerial sounds like an album made in isolation. On the down side, that means some of it seems dated. You can't help feeling she might have thought twice about the lumpy funk of Joanni and the preponderance of fretless bass if she got out a bit more. But, on the plus side, it also means Aerial is literally incomparable. You catch a faint whiff of Pink Floyd and her old mentor Dave Gilmour on the title track, but otherwise it sounds like nothing other than Bush's own back catalogue. It is filled with things only Kate Bush would do. Some of them you rather wish she wouldn't, including imitating bird calls and doing funny voices: King of the Mountain features a passable impersonation of its subject, Elvis, which is at least less disastrous than the strewth-cobber Aussie accent she adopted on 1982's The Dreaming. But then, daring to walk the line between the sublime and the demented is the point of Kate Bush's entire oeuvre. On Aerial she achieves far, far more of the former than the latter. When she does, there is nothing you can do but willingly succumb”.
There are a few Kate Bush albums that have never really been given their fair due. Aerial ranks high when it comes to critical lists. It went to number three in the U.K. It did feature in the top fifty of the U.S. Billboard 200. Maybe it does not pack as many hits and well-known songs as Hounds of Love or another big album, but I think the beauty and real angle of Aerial is these less propulsive and big songs that arrives from an artist who was a relatively new mum (her son, Bertie, was born in 1998). It is a stunning album that unfurls and reveals colours and so many magic moments the more you listen. I think I might do another couple of features where I return to various Kate Bush albums that are not as revered as they should be. After that, I may then get down to some anniversary features around The Kick Inside (this August, it will be forty-five years since the album was recorded). Nearly seventeen years ago, the world was bracing itself for a new album from Kate Bush – something many didn’t think we would ever experience again. Maybe I have Aerial in my thoughts, as we are in a similar position. It has been ten years since 50 Words for Snow came out. With its gorgeous suite, A Sky of Honey, taking us through the course of a summer’s day, there is a lot of potential in terms of translating it to the screen. The songs on the album’s first side/vinyl are wonderful. Aerial does deserve new acclaim and having its profile raised. To me, many more people need to know about…
A simply beautiful double album.