FEATURE:
Feel It
The Texture of Kate Bush’s Albums
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I am racing through Kate Bush features…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1981/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith
as there is a lot to cover off before the end of the year! I have some Christmas-related features to explore. I wanted to discuss something different for this outing. I want to look at her albums in a different way. Influenced by something I read in Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, it has made me think about the textures of and in her albums. The feel of them. Think about all of her ten studio albums and the dynamics and compositional qualities. We can examine the songs individually and the sound and lyrics. Think more generally about the albums. Maybe I do not mean textures. I previously wrote how Bush’s albums tend to have their own colour schemes and palettes. Whether there is the pink and reds of love and femininity or the blacks, greys and darker colours through to the clear purple and silvers. This made me think about the sort of weather and dynamics you get from each albums. Let’s work from two particular ones and source our way back. Think about 2005’s Aerial. I have written about domesticity and motherhood is at the heart of this album (much like Laura Marling with this year’s Patterns in Repeat). Psychologically, Bush very much in a happier space after 1993’s The Red Shoes. Embracing nature, her garden and home more and sourcing inspiration from this environment, it is small wonder that you listen to Aerial and feel a lot of air and space. There is this physical sense of atmosphere. Natural sunlight and warmth that one gets from the music through the album’s second disc, A Sky of Honey. On the first disc, A Sea of Honey, there is space and embrace. It is a very personal record, and not one that excludes the listener. It is this undeniable sense of intimacy and tenderness, together with this real need to let songs breathe. I will come to The Red Shoes. That was a more eclectic and loaded album in terms of its layers and production. Aerial is an ambitious and majestic work, though it is one that consciously feels accessible and expansive.
Graeme Thomson notes how there was less need for percussive guidance and technological fuss. More traditional instruments on Aerial. A range of guitars, pianos and percussion. With Bush’s voice deeper, that also gives the songs more gravitas and this wonderful gravity. Aerial is abound with birdsong, leaves, wind, sunshine, the natural world and the fine details of home. A brown jug, a washing machine, the kitchen and dirty floor. The comfort of new life and the joys of new responsibility. Not that Aerial is a purely English album. In terms of its sonic palette, it travels far and wide. Spanish and Italian influences. The domestic is very much a touchstone, yet there is so much imagination and fancy. In terms of the texture and feel, you get this warm glow and distinct scents and emotions. One feels calmed and soothed, yet Bush as a producer and songwriter allows the listener to escape into her world. A Sky of Honey’s summer’s day. We can feel and hear the sunrise and the coming dawn. There are elements of this in Bush’s first two albums, 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Rather than think of those albums in terms of colours and shades, how about the emotions and textures. In terms of compositional elements, there are threads of Aerial. The use of piano, percussion and guitar. Quite sparse in some respects with plenty of space. However, I think that The Kick Inside especially is less international and wide-ranging than Aerial. Apart from a jaunt to Berlin in The Saxophone Song, we have this real sense of home. Domesticity playing a different role. If Aerial is more about home and new life and purpose, The Kick Inside is about exploration and embracing sexuality. As such, there is this feeling of eccentricity and sensuality. Bush’s vocals quite high on a number of songs. If Aerial has a slow pulse, The Kick Inside’s changes rapidly. We have calmer and more contemplative moments alongside shocks and sharp rises. Vocals that are gymnastic and flexible. Background vocals and this feeling of a cast. If Bush used the outside world and nature to create textures on Aerial, The Kick Inside and Lionheart is all about voices and personas.
At the centre if this teenage Kate Bush. This real sense of touch and feel. I think that it is the physicality of expression on these albums. When Bush sings of passion and sex. Thar real sense of urge and the tactile. I think the objectives on these first two albums was more about relationships and desires. The compositions less expansive and full of air and light. Graeme Thomson felt Aerial was about “pastoral sensuality” and the elemental. The younger Kate Bush much more concerned with the intricacies and complexities of love. Exploring the physical. There are characters and fantasies. There is horror and darker elements together with a sense of anxiety. I was compelled to think about the textural feel of each Kate Bush album as nobody has really expanded on it or written about it in that sense. You can definitely feel some of that air and space of Aerial on Never for Ever. A real sense of ethereal and dream-like. There is this mix of space and the compact. Think about how we get this on songs such as Blow Away (For Bill), Delius (Song of Summer) and even Night Scented Stock. Coupled with the sounds of Army Dreamers and Breathing. How the former is quite light and has a jaunty spirit yet is dark and about loss. Breathing is smoky and suffocating. The sense of impending destruction. Bush looking out to the world in a political way for the first time. Perhaps less personal than later works, Never for Ever is the sound of a woman still exploring her body and mind but developing as a producer. With one foot in her teenage past and one stepping ahead, it is fascinating to feel all the different textures on this album.
The Dreaming is one of the most fascinating in terms of textural feel. It is a widely far-flung album. There is domesticity and the personal in a few of the numbers such as All the Love. Even though percussion and the Fairlight CMI are at the heart of the album, there is also more vocal layering than previously. Gravel and growl. Bush’s voice huskier and more dominating and hard-hitting then ever before. With very little space or air through the album, you do get this sense of tension and fear. The propulsion and nightmare of Get Out of My House gives The Dreaming this quite rough and gloomy feel. Maybe sparks of electricity. Some might think it quite a cold album, though I think that it is one that is full of different emotions and nuances. If the colour scheme is blacks and browns, you have all manner of complexity and layers. So many details and sounds mix with Bush’s most varied vocal palette. Such a stark contrast to her first two and most recent few albums. It is hard to put into words what sort of textures are on The Dreaming. Night and shadows. Fog and cigarette smoke. I think The Dreaming is one of Bush’s most itinerant albums. We follow a Vietnamese solider in the undergrowth and trees. The smell of war and the sticky heat. The overload of sound effects and sounds. Fretless bass, subtle time signature switches and this metallic haze. The Dreaming takes us to Australia; Night of the Swallow to Ireland. There is air and light on some numbers, yet the weather through Bush’s fourth studio album is stormier and wetter. A sticky heat and humidity. We race through history and time-zones. Houdini takes us back to early-twentieth century. There Goes a Tenner a London crime caper.
What to say about Hounds of Love and The Sensual World? The former sort of nods to what Aerial would sound like. There is nature and the natural world. Bush, influenced by the countryside around the family home at East Wickham Farm. She also wrote a lot of the album in Ireland. The landscape and emerald isle. A sense of the open. It is an album that is not quite as airy and warm and Aerial, though there are comparisons. This domestic sensuality. Bush very much rooted and inspired by home but taking us far and wide. The sea, salt and darkness of The Ninth Wave. There are fewer traditional instruments. Greater emphasis on the Fairlight CMI and its percussive elements. Irish instruments and more esoteric touches. It creates its own texture and dynamic. Inspirations from Ireland and further afield. However, I think Hounds of Love is Bush safe and happy at home. If her first few albums found Bush exploring her body, mind and sensuality, her fifth studio album is more about human relationships and something wider and deeper perhaps. The epic fight for survival and strength against the scariness of the deep sea on The Ninth Wave. What we think about and fight for when in that situation. Men and women exchanging places to understand one another. The way love can chase you like hounds. Bush, in her mid-twenties, more attuned to the capriciousness and complexity of love. There is plenty of sky and sunshine on The Big Sky. Plenty of weather too on Cloudbusting. Icier and skeletal notes on Mother Stands for Comfort. This DJ Mag feature from 2021 explores how the Fairlight CMI opened Bush up to electronic textures:
“The use of the word ‘tool’ is critical: The Fairlight was important for what it did, not what it was. And what it did was to open up Bush’s world to a new range of sonic possibility, as she explained to Option like a proto-Matthew Herbert: “With a Fairlight, you’ve got everything: a tremendous range of things,” she said. “It completely opened me up to sounds and textures and I could experiment with these in a way I could never have done without it.”
What is perhaps most striking about ‘Hounds Of Love’ is that, rather than settling down into a new electronic habit, Bush used her new digital equipment in a number of different ways, depending on the song’s demands. ‘Running Up That Hill,’ the album’s gorgeous opening song, uses a subtly propulsive, rolling tom pattern on the LinnDrum (the work of Bush’s collaborator and then romantic partner Del Palmer) that lays alongside cello samples from the Fairlight, which Bush manipulated to create both the main riff and backing strings”.
There is a more masculine energy to Hounds of Love. The Sensual World would change things. A move towards the feminine. Bush proclaiming it to be her most female album at that time. Also, there was more in the way of traditional instruments. Perhaps a slight return to and update of her first few albums. The production on The Sensual World is over-compressed. Something Bush would address when reworking songs from that album for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Even though there is less jumping around through time and space compared to The Dreaming or Hounds of Love, we do get more Irish influence. Especially on the title track. The Trio Bulgarka bringing Bulgarian music and vocals to several numbers. Graeme Thomson also notes in his Kate Bush biography how the sensuality is more imagined and less tangible. A less tactile record. The heat and flame simmering at a lower temperature. There is this warm and sensual hue that never ignites but is a constant. Perhaps a less mechanical percussion sound than on albums like The Kick Inside or 50 Words for Snow, there is this different tone and texture. A simmer and smoulder rather than a red-hot fire. Maybe Bush wanting The Sensual World to be more female meant there was this lack of punch and percussive power. Not reigned-in or conventional, there was this feeling of a deliberate shift. The Red Shoes is perhaps less tactile than The Sensual World. Perhaps the production sound contributed to that. However, there is a sense of the variegated on The Red Shoes. The flavour and scents that dance from songs like Eat the Music. A host of less traditional and more international instruments. Bush once more taking us around the world when it comes to the sounds. Moments of Pleasure could have been a song from The Sensual World. This is still this sense of discovery and need to pleasure; touch and togetherness. However, The Red Shoes has this sense of division and loss. Things ebbing away. Cracks starting to form.
Let’s finish with Kate Bush’s most recent album, 50 Words for Snow. An album once more open with plenty of space. In a different way to Hounds of Love and Aerial. If Hounds of Love took us to the sea and clouds, Aerial had this domestic joy and the slow reveal of a summer’s day. 50 Words for Snow is a chillier album by themes and lyrics, though there are complexities working in the songs. Bush stripping things down to mostly piano, guitar and percussion. The drumming of Steve Gadd key to so many songs. That perfect heartbeat that gives 50 Words for Snow its distinct tone and timbre. I do want to take slightly from Graeme Thomson’s observations in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush about 50 Words for Snow. He notes how Bush was no longer concerned with Pop’s repetition, hooks and and conventions. Working more on the outskirts, her tenth studio album is more Chamber Jazz. The relationship between piano and drums essential and crucial. Bush exploring the wilds and wilderness. Drawing comparisons to artists like Scott Walker or John Martyn. In terms of spirit rather than sound. The softness and purity of Snowflake. How there is a contrast between the two vinyl sides. The second half more upbeat and energised. The first half unfolds more. Longer songs that take time to unfurl. Among Angels taking us back to Bush and her piano. Comparisons to Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave in some spots.
Although, as Thomson notes, the water is deeper and icier. There is mythology throughout the album. The unknown or the undefined. The transient nature of snow. If previous albums had a tactility linked to sensuality, nature and passion, there is more of the ephemeral on 50 Words for Snow. However, there is a tactility to the album. A distinct warmth that might not be instantly obvious. There is this seasonal quality to the album. Whereas the energy, passion and excitement of her previous albums are not tied to time or place, 50 Words fort Snow feels more appropriate this time of year. Winter and Christmas. It has sadness, softness and sensuousness. It is not a downbeat album, though the records throughout feel the cold. You can immerse yourself in the snowy landscapes and the colder environments. The pulse is slower but there are genuine moments of expansiveness and the epic. Sweeping and tender at the same time. It makes me think about the future and the possible texture and dynamics of a new Kate Bush album. Will the stories be far-flung and widespread? Will we have air and space or will there be a denser feel in terms of the instrumentation and production? Is the album going to be a warmer and more domestic affair or steeped in imagination and the otherworldly? A return to more of the Pop and Art Rock of her previous albums or move more to the fringes, albeit with some new twists and scents? I was intrigued to explore the textural feel of Kate Bush’s albums and the differences between them. How you do get distinctly different feels and experiences with each album. How some of her later albums like to her earliest work. The connective chemistry of an older songwriter bonding with her younger self. This being Kate Bush, there is this sense of mystery and enigmatic. If she does grace us with a new album in the next year or two…
WHO knows what will come!