FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Among Angels
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FOR the final part…
of Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts, I am featuring a song that ranks alongside her best ‘recent’ work – from 2005’s Aerial to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. This late-career masterpiece is the final track on her most recent album, 50 Words for Snow. It ranks alongside her very best tracks ever. There are Kate Bush song ranking features, though Among Angels rarely features. When ranking Kate Bush’s fifty best tracks earlier this year, I was glad to see MOJO placed Among Angels in the very respectable place of thirty-seven (“Who you gonna call? Kate's supernatural support service. Concluding 50 Words…, this sparse, poignant torch song to a beleaguered loved one has nothing to do with snow but fits with the album’s atmosphere of glittering, supernatural reverie. Initially taking an unexpectedly grounded view of the problem (“Only you can do something about it”), the song soon thickens into a spiritual balm, Kate offering celestial comfort over tender broken chords: “I see angels standing around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer/But you don’t know it”). The only other time I have seen it in a rankings list is from 2023 where PROG included it in their top forty Kate Bush songs feature (“Stephen W Tayler: “I heard it for the first time when I was mixing the album 50 Words For Snow with Kate. The mood, simplicity, intimacy and emotion hit me right there and then. It’s such a profound and evocative song and such a stunning performance. “When I was invited by Kate to become the ‘Kate Vocal Navigator’ for the Before The Dawn live shows, we spent months with the crew and the band rehearsing and preparing. Every day at lunchtime, when the rehearsal stage was empty, Kate would come and practise a few songs at the piano with just me in the room, controlling her sound. One song she rehearsed every day was Among Angels. I was almost in tears every time she performed it. I was controlling her vocal live which was nerve-racking as it became a real struggle to concentrate. I was overwhelmed with emotion every time. You could hear a pin drop in the theatre. “I’ve heard Among Angels too many times to count, yet still feel the same emotions whenever I hear it, as if for the very first time”).
Among Angels is the only song on 50 Words for Snow not about snow and the cold. It was performed as the penultimate (before Cloudbusting) song of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. The only song from 50 Words for Snow included in the setlist, Among Angels provided a suitably emotional and phenomenal first song of the encore. Many fans would not have expected this song to be included. It gave new light and attention to a track (and album) many people have overlooked or have not investigated fully. I think it is a great deep cut that deserves more love, as it is one of Kate Bush’s finest tracks. At 6:48, it is shorter than the official single released from 50 Words for Snow, Wild Man. There could have been a radio edit, as I would have loved to have seen a music video for Among Angels. I have said in a previous feature how there could be this animated video for the song. If all seven songs got an animated video and it was part of a story, the final part would be for Among Angels. A video set in Los Angeles (the city of angels), I could imagine something powerful and tender. As the final song of her most recent studio album, Among Angels is also the final Kate Bush album track. Though not the last! She will be back with new material. With just Kate Bush at the piano, it is this sparse and beautifully intimate song. In terms of Kate Bush album tracks, there is less written about it then most. It was just Kate Bush and her piano. It has only one studio version and the live version from Before the Dawn. It was covered (quite well) by Grimeland as part of the collection, I Wanna Be Kate: The Songs of Kate Bush. That was released in 2020. However, I think that the original is by far the best and most striking. I love when people cover Kate Bush, though for a song as distinct and utterly Kate Bush as Among Angels, everyone else can hope for second best at most!
Even though there are fewer lyrics than many of Kate Bush’s songs, I think that Among Angels has this economy that works in its favour. There is this sense of a dear friend falling apart or in trouble but Bush is reaching out. This sense that we all go through tough times but come through. Giving strength and hope to someone. A sense of mystery and intrigue that sits along such beautiful words and powerful visions: “Only you can do something about it/There’s no-one there, my friend, any better/I might know what you mean when you say you fall apart/Aren’t we all the same? In and out of doubt/I can see angels standing around you/They shimmer like mirrors in Summer/But you don’t know it/And they will carry you o’er the walls/If you need us, just call/Rest your weary world in their hands/Lay your broken laugh at their feet/I can see angels around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer/There’s someone who’s loved you forever but you don’t know it/You might feel it and just not show it”. Pitchfork wrote in their review of 50 Words for Snow how gorgeous Among Angels is. NME noted (Among Angels) “has a spacious, sacred feel”. For Record Store Day, Lake Tahoe/Among Angels was released on a limited edition picture disc. One of the most detailed analysis of Among Angels came from Jude Rogers in a 2011 BBC review (“The album’s finale, Among Angels, is even better, a torch-song for a friend in need, with a stunning central lyric: "I can see angels standing around you / They shimmer like mirrors in summer / But you don’t know it." Throughout, the piano sets a magical mood, all dark, loud and heavy. Just after the song’s start, you also hear Bush stop for a second, take her fingers off the keys, and whisper the word "fine").
In a somewhat underwhelming and misguided three-star review – how could anyone give it such a mediocre score?! – this was what The Guardian said about Among Angels: “The final piano track, "Among Angels" should be pulling floods of tears from listeners' ducts but never quite locates the tap. This album is rather better when it is winking at you, rather than seeking to cryogenically preserve emotion”. I want to source from page 331 of Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. In his chapter on 50 Words for Snow - or the one where he goes into detail regarding her tenth studio album -, he discussed Among Angels. A song written some years earlier (than the other six on the album), it was unique in the sense it was not connected to snow. In an interview with BBC Radio 2’s Jamie Cullum – which is annoyingly removed from YouTube! – in December 2011, Bush said she felt Among Angels was atmospherically at home with its album siblings. After a false start and muffled aside – which she wanted to take out but friends convinced her to keep in -, Bush addresses love, faith, death, belief and struggle. It is one of her most inspiring and powerful songs. Thomson muses how Among Angels could be about her departed father (who died in 2008 and would have occurred around the time she wrote the song I guess) or her young son, Bertie. Maybe a friend that was in need. Interestingly, Thomson also notes how Among Angels has more in common with the pre-The Kick Inside demos (the Cathy Demos) and a pile of gems that included the likes of Cussi Cussi and Something Like a Song - the latter of which Thomson notes has a similarity with Among Angels. Her latest album sort of connects with her debut. The importance of the piano. Bush consciously thinking back to The Kick Inside and some of the tones and aspects of that album. Bush backed by a swelling orchestra and delivering this spinetingling song. Thomson summarises when closing his thoughts on Among Angels: “Elegant, exquisite, show stopping” (and a song that came before the show-stopping Cloudbusting in 2014). A stunning and unforgettable song that somehow transports us back to the music Bush recorded when she was a girl/young teen, Among Angels is truly…
A divine offering.