FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Reaction, Reception and Words from Its Creator
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THIS is a more general piece…
about The Sensual World before a final feature that looks into the songs. I will bring in a couple of critical reviews for the album. There are also interview segments from promotion in 1989 that give us more insight and flesh. Bush’s sixth studio album turns thirty-five on 16th October. I think it is important we herald and share thoughts on an album often seen as one of her best. I want to highlight something Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. He talks about the reaction to The Sensual World. How there is this subtext of disappointment in the reviews. I think many were expecting something like Hounds of Love. That same sort of feel and make-up. Four years after that album was released, how could anyone think Bush would produce another album like that?! One of the issues is that critics do not judge the magnificent album on its own merits. Instead, there is this comparison to Hounds of Love. A high benchmark that, if she fell below, would mean a let-down! Instead, what we got was a superb album with some of Bush’s best-ever material. Thomson is not a huge fan of The Sensual World. That is fair enough. He notes how the promotion was kind of dull. Scaled down hugely, interviews were either held in London hotels – with Del Palmer hanging around – or at recording studios. Very little T.V. or any other promotion, there were fifteen-minutes slots for journalists to get what they needed. Bush travelled to the U.S. in 1990 for promotion and was signed to Columbia. Even though it was a big label, it did nothing to really raise her profile there. She got a GRAMMY nomination, and The Sensual World charted at forty-three in the U.S. Not a huge breakthrough but still respectable!
I think those who loved Hounds of Love sort of feel like The Sensual World is a massive switch and move in a wrong direction. I think that it is a masterful album that warrants a lot of love. In the U.K. at the time, there was this issue of being unique. Many other artists around were being compared to Kate Bush. The climate had changed and Bush, now thirty-one, was not the ‘young’ Pop artist she was in 1985 – the industry seeing a woman as past-it or irrelevant if she is over thirty! The technology on The Sensual World gave it a different feel to what was popular in the U.K. in 1989. Also, the amount of promotion Bush undertook for this album was less compared with Hounds of Love. Graeme Thomson notes how The Sensual World is accomplished and has some fine moments, yet it burns at a lower temperature and with less ferocity than Hounds of Love. Autumnal colours and this sense of the smouldering and sensual, compared to the pulsation and depth of its predecessor. Conventionally and a reigned-in approach to some songs. One, Between a Man and a Woman, seen as plain dull. Some songs compared to tracks on Hounds of Love but inferior versions. Maybe not a masterpiece in the same league, though I would argue against there being much to disappoint on The Sensual World. The production over-compressed, especially the vocals, and the album lacking tactility. Songs having to be imagined rather than felt. Thomson felt that there was a slackening of intensity when it came to the production and songs. Bush realising that quality of life was more important than anything. That suggests someone who was not taking the album seriously. On the contrary! Bush knew that she could not work endless hours and almost kill herself every album. Something had to change…and it did.
I don’t agree that there is something to feel disappointed by. Bush was never going to align with what was fashionable in 1989. A remarkably evocative and fascinating album, I do hope that there is a lot of positive energy and respect for it. I shall come to a couple of the glowing reviews for The Sensual World. First, and briefly dipping back into my The Kate Bush Interview Archive, and there are two chats from 1989 I want to quote from. I want to start with extracts from an interview from Pulse! In 1989. Will Johnson spoke with Kate Bush about her exciting new album:
"Having the sort of creative freedom that I've now got," she explains, "having my own studio, taking the time to make albums, not putting something out 'cause there's pressure to, working very closely with Del as engineer, I just felt incredibly lucky to be in this kind of situation. It's a real privilege and I'd hate to abuse that. I think that the problem with writing songs is that you want to care about what you're doing, and sometimes the stuff you come up with is just so banal, you just have to really wipe through it. Get rid of all the shit, do you know what I mean? [laughs]. Hounds of Love was very much the main step, 'cause that was the first time we had our own studio, and I suppose the progression from that one to this is that we've upgraded the equipment. Also, on the last album, I was working with lots of different engineers who could only give me a certain amount of time, because they'd block-booked to someone else, and because I work so experimentally, I didn't want to block-book too far ahead or I wouldn't be ready for them. Working with Del, I've managed to get a bit closer again to the whole process. You know, if it's not working, then we can just go home. If I have an engineer in, it would be difficult to have that freedom and also to feel relaxed; there's a lot of time spent getting to know each other."
The Sensual World LP features 10 new Bush tracks, all written and produced by the enigmatic songstress, recorded by Del Palmer and mixed by Kevin Killen, whose most recent credits include Elvis Costello's Spike. ("Walking Straight Down the Middle," [sic] an atmospheric tale of the reluctance of human beings to face up to their fears that features some truly shrilling vocals by Bush, is only available on cassette and CD.) The first single, "Love and Anger," is probably the meatiest track on the LP. Throughout there's an African beat, the sound of Zulus raiding at dawn, interspersed by some slumbering fretless bass lines (courtesy of Eberhard Weber), and a "big" chorus orchestrated by the power chords of Pink Floyd alumnus Dave Gilmour and Bush bellowing as best she can. It took her a mere 18 months to piece together.
On "Heads We're Dancing," Bush warns the female of the alluring male: "They say that the devil is a charming man/And just like you I bet he can dance. .. A picture of you, a picture of you in uniform.. .. Hot down to the floor/But it couldn't be you/It couldn't be you/It's a picture of Hitler."
But it's the overall feeling of sensuality, of Bush's concept of the being and its relationship with the outside world, that underscores the entire album. In particular, it's the way in which the child comes to realize and experience his or her environment. The solo violin of the aforementioned Nigel Kennedy is accompanied by cello, Celtic harp, whistles, the mysterious Dr. Bush, and Kate's manic witch-like laughter on the eerie, "The Fog": "The day I learned to swim/He said, 'Just put your feet down child'. .. . The water is only waist high/I'll let go of you gently/Then you can swim wiht me."
"I do like the quiet life," she replies almost bashfully. "I do like having privacy; it's incredibly important to me, because I do end up feeling quite probed by the public side of what I have to do. I'm just quite a private person, really. You just end up feeling quite exposed; it's this vulnerability. After I've done the salesman bit, I like to be quiet and retreat, because that's where I write from. I'm a sort of quiet little person."
Which my explain why it's taken so long for this idiosyncratic yet compelling artist to break in the States. "Yes," she says perkily, "I've really had no success in America at all, apart from the Hounds of Love LP. That did quite well, and it was really exciting to think that there were people out there wanting it. But I've never seen it in terms of you make and album and then conquer the world. I must say it's never really worried me that I've not been big in America, but I'm with a new record company over there now, and I really feel good about the people -- they're lovely to talk to and to deal with. It's quite exciting for me. I just hope people out there will have the chance to know that the album's out. Then, if people want to hear it, they can. If they don't, well, that's absolutely fine.
"You know," she continues, "what I like about America is that there's a tremendous sort of hyper energy that I really like. Especially in New York -- there's a much stronger social setup, especially between artists. It's a very isolated setup here, because London's so spread out and everybody's off doing their own thing. You don't seem to bump into people the way you do over there; it's exciting to have that interchanging of ideas, just to talk to people who're going through similar things. It's real modern energy stuff. And also, I really like the positivity of the Americans. I mean here, although I love being here and I love the English, we're very hard on one another, very critical, whilst they have a wonderful willingness to give everyone a chance. We're really hard on people trying to get off the ground -- it's really unfair".
Prior to wrapping up and providing some reviews for The Sensual World, I want to bring in again some words from Phil Sutcliffe and his Q interview of 1989. Although there was not as much media promotion for The Sensual World as Hounds of Love, I think that Bush is still as considered, committed and engaging an interview subject:
“Kate Bush leads a quiet, fairly limited life so her options on subject matter my be relatively restricted. Although she has ventured into political issues with Breathing (nuclear war) and The Dreaming (Aborigine rights), she generally declares her own ignorance and refrains from writing songs that would only prove it. But she will often borrow a story and make it her own -- from books (Wuthering Heights, obviously, and Cloudbusting, from Peter Reich's memoir of his father called A Book Of Dreams), TV (Pull Out The Pin was inspired by a documentary about the Viet Cong), or films (the idea for Get Out Of My House came from The Shining).
The Sensual World is a song that translates the old ache to a different level -- with the invaluable help of James Joyce. "I had a rhythm idea with a synth line I took home to work on one night," she says. "While I was playing it this repeated *Yes* came to me and made me think of Molly Bloom's speech right at the end of Ulysses -- which I *have* actually read all through! I went downstairs and read it again, this unending sentence punctuated with 'yeses', fantastic stuff, and it was uncanny, it fitted the rhythm of my song." (The last lines of Molly Bloom's great stream of consciousness read: "then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.")
Although to Kate "it felt like it was meant to happen", when she applied through "official channels" (presumably the Joyce estate) for permission to use it, she was refused. But she wasn't to be deflected. "I tried to write it like Joyce," she says, smiling in self-mockery. "The rhythm at least I wanted to keep. Obviously I couldn't do his style. It became a song about Molly Bloom, the character, stepping out of the page -- black and white, two-dimensional, you see -- and into the real world, the sensual world. Touching things." She declaims exaggeratedly. "The grass underfoot! The mountain air! I know it sounds corny, but it's about the whole sensual experience, this wonderfully human thing. . ."
And lines like "his spark took life in my hand"?
"Yes, it is rather saucy. But not nearly as sexy as James Joyce." She looks concerned again. "I'd be really worried -- there's nothing I can do about it now because it's all part of the process -- but I would be worried if people felt this ambiguity between sensual and sexual.
"I definitely *became* a person when I left school and suddenly took control of my life," she says. "I felt like that was the first time I'd really been there. Do you.. .? It was the beginning of my life really.
"Now I think I get a tremendous amount of security from my work, through being able to write songs. Though perhaps I'm very insecure except when I'm working. There again I work so much.. . I'll have to think about this. I'll be thinking about it all day now. What I'm looking out for is to let go of being so damned obesessive about work that I just get sucked into it. It's important for me now for there to be some kind of, er, *lightness* about it.
"You know, it's only an album. That is what I keep saying to myself”.
Because The Sensual World turns thirty-five on 16th October, I will end with some celebration. Critics who lauded this beautiful album. Perhaps one of her most personal to that point. We got new sides and dimensions from Bush’s peerless songwriting. Even if there are a couple of tracks that one might deem to be inferior or near-filler, the consistency and incredible high moments make The Sensual World an album to adore. Rough Trade placed The Sensual World her third-best (Bush has released ten studio albums). NME also put it third. SPIN ranked it fourth. In all, critics have high regard for 1989’s The Sensual World. I want to start with The Quietus’ review of The Sensual World from 2019:
“The Sensual World, then, with its poetic allusions to Bonfire Night and the harvest, is her autumnal album. If Hounds Of Love, with its percussive and effect-heavy arrangements, is a budding fruit, The Sensual World is its ripened, fully mature successor. Where the drums were booming they are now accentual, where the synths were pulsating and fulsome with Fairlight wizardry they are now ambient and warmly textured. The rich instrumentation reflects the mood; Kate had flirted with Celtic arrangements on songs like ‘Night Of The Swallow’ from 1982’s The Dreaming and parts of Hounds Of Love (most notably ‘Jig Of Life’), but the Uilleann pipes of Davey Spillane and the various Celtic instruments played by her brother Paddy and by Alan Stivell (arranged by Bill Whelan) are woven into the very fabric of The Sensual World.
Meanwhile, the titanic, full-throated vocals of the Trio Bulgarka (an inspired choice of personnel) add a wise spirit to the music. The palette of bells and pipes, the imagery of setting fire to cornfields, synths that are somehow removed yet oddly comforting – it all adds up to a striking sound world perfectly evocative of this particular time of year.
Everything about The Sensual World exudes autumnal beauty – from the elegant arrangements to its dusky, monochromatic cover portrait of a wide-eyed Kate Bush; from the album title’s rusty-leaf text to the bells that fade in like a tender alarm call on a crisp morning. Her voice, an instrument that bloomed on The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, is exquisite throughout, alternately keening and soft, throaty and forceful.
Kate turned 30 during the making of the album and conceded that her personal circumstances influenced the mature themes of the album. "I think it’s a very important time from 28 to 32-ish, where there’s some kind of turning point," she told NME in 1989. "Someone said in your teens you get the physical puberty and between 28 and 32 mental puberty. Let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30, it does make you feel differently, I feel very positive having gone through the last couple of years." As such, it is an album of opposites, of dual nature – it speaks of loss and hope, of childhood and adulthood. It reflects the passing of time, and the contemplation of mortality, but also the freedom of exploration and the generous acceptance that comes with age. For an album with such themes, autumn is the perfect setting.
Gone is the light joy of summer, and the freshness of spring, but in its stead something more mature, more realised – perhaps still bristling with internal conflict, but with a newly-attained level of perspective. It is an album that suggests both the ending of childhood and the beginning of adulthood ("let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30") and the bizarre hinterland between the two – the tension between cutting cords ("just put your feet down child, cos you’re all grown up now") and yearning for parental security ("reaching out for mama"), not to mention the prospect of parenthood of your own ("now starts the craft of the father").
‘The Sensual World’ itself sets out the album’s autumnal stall immediately – soft, pealing bells give way to an arrangement that incorporates pipes, warm synth washes, and an insistent drum pattern; its accompanying video, following the singer through a forest of crimson leaves, is as seamless a supplement as could be. She told International Musician in 1989 how she had "had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Bloom’s speech at the end of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del [Palmer] had done a Fairlight pattern, and I’d done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought, ‘God this is just ridiculous, just how well it’s come together.’"
Amid the confusion and uncertainty, she finds humanity in the mundane – the song garnered attention at the time for its bizarre plot line of digital romance, but who can bet against Yanka Rupkina’s soaring, emotional solo vocal? Or the maze-like arrangement, a swirling kaleidoscope of fretless bass, electric piano, synth effects, and the robotic yet improbably cherubic vocals of the Trio Bulgarka? As Kate told Melody Maker in 1989, "When I was working on ‘Deeper Understanding,’ the idea was that the verses were the person and the choruses were the computer talking to the person. I wanted this sound that would almost be like the voice of angels: something very ethereal, something deeply religious, rather than a mechanical thing. And we went through so many different processes, trying vocoders, lots of ways of affecting the voice, and eventually it led to the Trio Bulgarka… it made absolute sense – you know, this loving voice – because they have a certain quality: their music feels so old and deep. It’s really powerful; such intense, deep music that, in some ways, I think it is like the voice of angels”.
I am going to finish with some words from Pitchfork from 2019. They noted how there were these intimate vignettes rather than fantasy and fairy-tale. Bush sounded more grounded and in control of her songwriting than ever before. Giving high praise and salute to an album one might not expect people to revere and find nuance in all those years after its release. It goes to show the depth and strength of Bush’s songwriting and incredible production talent:
“Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer.
It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick. On “The Fog,” she’s paralyzed by fear until she remembers the childhood swimming lessons her father gave her, his voice cutting through the misty harps like an old ghost. Relationships on the album can be sticky and thorny. “Between a Man and a Woman” is half-dangerous and half-sultry, its snaking rhythms mirroring the round-in-circles squabbling of a couple. When a third party tries to interfere, they’re told to back off. This time, unlike on “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” there’s no point wishing for a helping hand from God.
But if there are no miracles, there are at least songs that sound like them. For “Rocket’s Tail,” Bush enlisted the help of Trio Bulgarka, who she fell in love with after hearing them on a tape Paddy gave her. The three Bulgarian women didn’t speak English and had no idea what they were singing about, but it didn’t matter. They sound more like mystics during its a capella first half, and when it eventually blows up into a glammy stomper with Dave Gilmour’s electric guitar caterwauling like a Catherine wheel, their vocals still come out on top: cackling like gleeful witches, whooping like they’re watching sparks explode in the night sky. Its weird, wonderful magic offered a simple message: Life is short, so enjoy moments of pleasure before they fizzle out.
Perhaps that’s why there are glimmers of hope even in the album’s most desperate circumstances. “Deeper Understanding” is a bleak sci-fi tale about a lonely person who turns to their computer for comfort, and in doing so isolates themselves even more. But while there’s an icy chill to the verses, Trio Bulgarka imbue the computer’s voice with golden warmth. Bush wanted it to sound like the “visitation of angels,” and hearing the chorus is like being wrapped in a celestial hug. She pulls off a similar trick on “This Woman’s Work,” which she wrote for John Hughes’ film She’s Having a Baby, although her vivid, devastating interpretation of its script has taken on a far greater life of its own. It captures a moment of crisis: a man about to be walloped with the sledgehammer of parental responsibilities, frozen by terror as he waits for his pregnant wife outside the delivery room, his brain a messy spiral of regrets and guilty thoughts. Yet Bush softens the song’s building panic attack with soft musical touches so it rushes and swirls like a dream, even as reality becomes a waking nightmare. “It’s the point where has to grow up,” said Bush. “He’d been such a wally.”
She didn’t need to prove her own steeliness to anyone, especially the male journalists who patronized her and harped on her childishness as a way of cutting her down to size. Instead, The Sensual World is the sound of someone deciding for themselves what growing up and grown-up pop should be, without being beholden to anyone else’s tedious definitions. It gave her a new template for the next two decades, inspiring both the smooth, stylish art-rock of 1993’s The Red Shoes and the picturesque beauty of 2005’s Aerial. Like Molly Bloom, Bush had set herself free into a world that wasn’t mundane, but alive with new, fertile possibility”.
On 16th October, the wonderous and beguiling The Sensual World turns thirty-five. Bush’s first album in her thirties, we get to hear this new approach. Her voice somehow richer and slightly deeper. Songs that are very different to what she had written before. I really love The Sensual World and think that it should be celebrated – rather than seen as a pale Hounds of Love. In fact, there are layers and new details I am discovering on the album I have never noticed before! This magnificent album reveals hidden gems and details…
AFTER thirty-five years.