FEATURE:
With a Beautiful Snowflake…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow
Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Thirteen
_________
MY final visit…
PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Bush/Fish People
to Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts takes in Among Angels. The final song on her latest studio album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, it is the only song on the album not related to snow and the cold. I will explore a song that has got a lot of attention recently. That is Snowflake. Now scoring an animated video featuring a little shew, the Little Shrew (Snowflake) radio edit is many people’s first introduction to the song. The opening track on 50 Words for Snow, I will come to the track in a bit. This is the second and final feature for 50 Words for Snow ahead of its thirteenth anniversary on 21st November. An album of seven songs set against the backdrop of snow, it is appropriate that we start out with Snowflake. Maybe Among Angels is after the snow has cleared. The penultimate track is the title cut. Where we get actually fifty words for snow. I like the narrative of 50 Words for Snow. For this anniversary feature, I am going to focus in on three of the key songs. I also want to take a look at the new Polar Edition and how the recent exposure of Snowflake in this new form should draw people to the 2011 album. How it would be great to have 50 Words for Snow as a single film with animation and this arc. There were animations for a few of the songs already. I like Kate Bush’s new direction on Snowflake (Little Shrew). That is a black-and-white video (well, maybe grey and white some would say). Maybe that then leads to a colour animation for the second track, Lake Tahoe. My first anniversary feature spent some time with an interview from 2011. There was some critical feedback too. In terms of the reviews, they were among the most ecstatic of Bush’s career. Up there with Aerial (2005) and Hounds of Love (1985) in some cases. I also will end this feature by writing how Bush has announced she wants to work on new material. Whether it will be anything like 50 Words for Snow.
I think that Snowflake is one of Kate Bush’s best album-opening tracks. I love how intimate Snowflake is. Even though we get this sense of the expanse of a street and snow falling from the sky to a person’s hand, there is this tenderness and ethereal quality. In terms of the personnel, we have Kate Bush’s young son Albert (Bertie) on lead vocals. Bush on backing vocals. She is also playing piano. The legendary Steve Gadd is on percussion. He was present through 50 Words for Snow and her previous studio album, Director’s Cut (also released in 2011). The late Del Palmer – who engineered the album and was part of Bush’s music and life since the 1970s – on bass. Bush’s partner Dan McIntosh on guitars. That connection between the players. Even though their parts are subtle, they create this powerful mood and set the scene. The spotlight is very much on Bertie. The fact that her tenth studio album starts with a voice other than her own is an inspired decision. Expectations are subverted. This beautiful and pure voice representing a snowflake. This is what Kate Bush said about the majestic opening track:
“When I wrote the song it was something that I wrote specifically for him and for his voice, and I guess there was a very strong parallel in my mind between the idea of this transient little snowflake and the fact that Bertie at this point… still has a really beautiful high, pure voice which soon he will lose… there seems to be this sort of link between the brief time that his voice will be like this and the brevity of the snowflake.
I think his performance on this is really powerful, and obviously I’m quite biased because I’m his mother. But it’s interesting how many people have reacted so powerfully to his performance, it’s, you know, I think it’s really something.
Depending on your preference, one of the best things about 50 Words for Snow is its collaborative nature. I am going to feature one track that features a legendary figure. Some people were not keen on the fact that we have Andy Fairweather Low, Elton John and Stephen Fry heavy in the mix. Maybe preferring Bush alone, her albums have always had some backing vocals. Perhaps many feeling one collaboration would have been enough. Snowed in at Wheeler Street is a duet with Elton John. It is good that we get this two-hander from two artists who admire one another. Stephen Fry lending his distinguished voice to 50 Words for Snow’s title track as he lists increasingly-ridiculous words for snow. Andy Fairweather Low appearing on Wild Man. Even if some critics felt the title track and Snowed in at Wheeler Street were weaker tracks – because of the collaborations or maybe they were not as engaging -, I do think it offers variation and new textures on the album. Rather than Bush taking solo vocals, you do have this mix of more explorative songs where Bush’s voice guides us. A few songs where others appear. I am going to come to Snowed in at Wheeler Street soon. However, prior to that, I want to concentrate on a song that fascinates. That is Misty. One of the least-streamed songs on 50 Words for Snow is also the longest. It is the third track. I always think of it as being the closest connection to Christmas. Even though many interpret it as a song where Kate Bush has sex with a snowman, I think it is more sensual than that. I always think of it as a dream. A woman dreaming of this encounter. However, the snowman eventually melts and the bed is wet. Misty is this truly wonderfully, strange song. I guess, when I say it reminds me of Christmas, I am thinking of The Snowman. Granted, this would be the adult version! We associate snowmen with Christmas. It does seem to be this retelling of that story. When speaking with John Wilson in 2011, Bush felt the song was a bit ridiculous. She wanted people to think of it as a dark and tender song. Wilson felt that the snowman was symbolic, but Bush came back jokingly saying it was real. I think it is meant to be symbolic. Such a fascinating track, it is strange people have not written about it more. You immerse yourself in the music. As I will come to, it would be great to have a full-length animation with this song.
Track five on 50 Words for Snow features the brilliant Elton John. Snowed in at Wheeler Street is a song you almost have to defend. Perhaps the one highlighted most as being the weakest of the seven, I think it remarkable and fitting to have these two friends playing lovers who get separated through time. This is what Kate Bush said in a 2011 interview:
“The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart. (…) It’s like two old souls that keep on meeting up. (John Doran, ‘A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed’. The Quietus, 2011)”.
Not much is written about the song. From The Quietus (“Those synths imbue ‘Snowed in at Wheeler Street’ with a sense of frazzled foreboding that negates the potential cheesiness of Elton John’s throaty turn on a duet that casts him and Bush as a pair of lovers spread across time, doomed to separate at key points in history, wishing that could return to one mundane, snow bound day spent together”) to The Guardian’s three-star (where they listening to the same album?!) assessment (“It all begins beguilingly enough with the birth of a snowflake, sung by Bush's son Albert, who flutters down to a stately piano accompaniment. Their search for each other is echoed later in "Snowed in at Wheeler Street", an inferior duet between Bush and Elton John. Two lovers are torn apart by various historical forces – the sack of Rome, the second world war, 9/11; the best that can be said for them is that Bush's voice reaches some of its lushest temperatures”), it is all a bit lukewarm and perfunctory. Granted, not up there with Lake Tahoe, Misty, Wild Man or Among Angels, I think Snowed in at Wheeler Street is very special. Back in 2013, Kate Bush News reported on an article where Elton John discussed working with Kate Bush:
“In his “Soundtrack of my Life” features in The Observer Sunday 1st September, Sir Elton John noted Snowed in at Wheeler Street as “The song that was difficult to Record”:
“I did a duet with Kate Bush on this track for her last album. 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. She does come out socially sometimes and she came to my civil partnership occasion with her husband. There were so many stars in the room, but all the musicians there were only interested in saying, “You’ve got to introduce me to Kate Bush.” I remember Boy George saying, “Oh my God, is that Kate Bush?” I said, “Yeah!”.
On 21st November, it will be thirteen years since Kate Bush released her latest album. In a way, Snowflake ties us to the album and also to the now and future. As it was used in a new context, I think it will draw eyes to 50 Words for Snow. Opening this amazing album, I was fascinating by the animation that Bush paired with the song. How effective it was. However, as it has not been done yet, it would be great to have a single film of 50 Words for Snow. At sixty-five minutes, maybe it would need a slight trim. Cutting some of the longer songs down or blending them together. Think about the imagery we could get. Bush showed how effective a four-minute radio edit of Snowflake could be powerful and emotional with the right images. I envisage an album version/start of a film featuring a young child animated. Watching the snow fall. Maybe setting it at midnight at Christmas (so the very start of 25th December) and following it through to the evening. Even though Bush said 50 Words for Snow is not a Christmas album – she said that to John Wilson in 2011 -, there are mentions of the day: “We're over a forest/It's midnight at Christmas/The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you/I think I can see you/There's your long, white neck/The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you/Now I am falling/Look up and you'll see me”. From that opening in a street in the U.S., we now move to Lake Tahoe. Straddling Nevada and California, we would pan across the country. If the opening of the film is more romantic, tender and Christmas-tinged, the second song is more gothic and darker. That blend of light and dark. There would be some old-style fairy-tale imagery. Consider some of the lines: “No-one's home/Her old dog is sleeping/His legs are frail now/But when he dreams/He runs../Along long beaches and sticky fields/Through the Spooky Wood looking for her/The beds are made. The table is laid”. All the songs on the album beg for longer-form animations. As I say, if we have songs that are eleven or thirteen minutes, perhaps cutting three to four minutes off to accommodate a fifty-five-minute film.
Prior to getting to the next two songs – which could be blended and joined – we then move into a garden/house for Misty. Perhaps in Minneapolis (Minnesota). I was thinking of that place because Prince was born there. Kate Bush was a fan of Prince, so that would be a nice nod. There would be subtitles saying the place name or we would see it on a map of America. There was a short (two minutes and twenty-four seconds) animation to accompany a segment from the song entitled Mistraldespair. It was premiered on 25th November, 2011. I do like that clip, but it would be great to redo it and make it longer. Perhaps a seven or eight-minute version where we can go deeper into the song and have a longer-form animation. This film that sweeps across America on Christmas as the snow falls on various states. We would end up in California. I see us then flying over to the mountains and woodland of Montana for Wild Man. We find Bush playing this woman in the woods looking for this beast. Something seen as mystical or mythical. Rather than hurt it, she wants to protect it. It would be the first of a two-part story in the middle of the film. I envisage us panning out and that song being set in a snow globe. It would be the start of Snowed in at Wheeler Street. There is a Wheeler Street in Philadelphia. The largest city ion Pennsylvania has a Wheeler Street. I imagine representations of Kate Bush and Elton John in separates houses in Wheeler Street as there is a huge snow drift. We travel around the song and the various flashbacks. Maybe later in the evening, they both fall asleep and this is a dream. The start of the song sets the scene: “Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you but don't I know you?/There's just something about you. Haven't we met before?/We've been in love forever./When we got to the top of the hill we saw Rome burning”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush overlooking a scene from Misty
Various cities and places are named in the song. From ancient Rome through to Paris 1942 to the London smog , these lovers keep getting separated. These burning hills of Rome. Evocative images throughout. It is a dream sequence that could also be a twist at the end of the film. Is everything a dream or is the story as straightforward as we think? I kind of compare it to The Ninth Wave and how there has not been a short film for that. Also running at seven songs, it would be fascinating pairing them together. Having animated films of both. From the dream of Snowed in at Wheeler Street, we then flash to something a bit trippy and fantastical. Perhaps going to be a university in New York, Stephen Fry plays Prof. Joseph Yupik. Kate Bush was interviewed by The Quietus in 2011 and spoke about the song and these made up words for snow (“So the idea was that the words would get progressively more silly really but even when they were silly there was this idea that they would have been important, to still carry weight. And I really, really wanted him to do it and it was fantastic that he could do it. (…)”). I like the idea of Kate Bush playing someone dancing with the professor as the snow falls across New York. Being this Disney-esque fantasy where all the words come to life and we get this psychedelic nod to The Beatles too. It would then fade out as we get to the final song. Rather than there being snow, we would then go to California.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush visualising Lake Tahoe
As Los Angeles is three hours behind New York, we would be staying within Christmas Day. Maybe a scene at a family home. We then go to the street and a situation like It’s a Wonderful Life. A man on the edge or sad. Thinking of running. He then gets these visions and voices. Similar to the ones from Snowflake. That song starts from above as snowflakes fall into someone’s hands. Here, we get a similar vision. It could be part of a twist or narrative switch that takes us full circle. The opening verse compels so many 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 am thinking about heavenly voice from his late wife. The child from Snowflake could be his child that was separated and is living somewhere else. We get visions of that as he closes his eyes. I am going more into this song in a separate feature. I love the lyrics on this track and how affecting they are. How it is just Kate Bush and the piano. One of her most stripped-back and intimate moments on 50 Words for Snow. Kate Bush performed this song during the encore for her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. It must have been an amazing experience! Also, Among Angels. Los Angeles is the city of angels. All tying in! I love the lines “I can see angels standing around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer/But you don't know it/And they will carry you over the walls/If you need us, just call/Rest your weary world in their hands/Lay your broken laugh at their feet”. The mixture of the celestial and otherworldly within this doubt, turmoil and strain in Los Angeles as a man is on the edge. We would get a nice resolution and a twist as the film fades away…
It is well worth Kate Bush thinking about something larger for 50 Words for Snow. As she has invited the thought of a new album, it would be her last clearing of the snow before new work. However, as it took her a long time and so much effort to put together animation for Little Shrew (Snowflake), maybe it is too big an undertaking! The same with anything for The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love. I guess it is a possibility for the future. Many people have wondered what it would be like if all songs from the album were animated and there was a larger arc and this thread. A single story that goes around America on Christmas Day. From the early hours through to the evening, there would be no dialogue. Instead, you get introduced to various characters and vignettes. We would have some unexpected twists and cliff-hangers. I think it would also compel people to listen to 50 Words for Snow. As I said in the first anniversary feature for 50 Words for Snow, I noted how people rate the album low when ranking her work. It comes eighth or ninth (Bush has released ten studio albums). It is much stronger than that! People perhaps not having the patience to sit through a long album. Songs that unfold and evolve. Rather than there being these shorter and more conventional tracks. I think 50 Words for Snow warrants greater respect ahead of its thirteenth anniversary on 21st November. It is a simply wonderful album. I do think a new album, whenever that comes, will be different. I will speculate in another feature. However, I do also feel we will get a mix of piano-led numbers and this Jazz-Rock/Art Pop blend and something more orchestral and sweeping. It will be interesting. However, take some time and listen to 50 Words for Snow. Put this album on, close your eyes, and lose yourself…
IN this snow-filled and fantastical world.