FEATURE:
The Song of Solomon
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the video for And So Is Love (released as a single from 1993’s The Red Shoes)
Kate Bush and the Simplicity of Her Work
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THIS feature…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011 for a promotional image for Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
is going to be given over to Kate Bush’s music. More specifically, the simplicity of it. One might think that Bush’s music is layered and complicated. Granted, some albums are. She is someone who definitely puts a huge amount of effort in to make her songs stand out. Some of the albums are definitely a lot more layered than they are simple. However, there were points in her career when simplicity was required. When Bush began writing for The Red Shoes, she wanted to return to a more “rooted way of working”. Perhaps feeling that her previous couple of albums – 1989’s The Sensual World and 1985’s Hounds of Love – took too long or there was tussle in the studio, this was going to be easier. Bush went back to the piano and worked her songs over and over. If technology and the limits of the studio had been previously used to an extreme extent, this was not going to happen here. In fact, as I shall mention later, this approach was also used for 2005’s Aerial. Bush did voice her concerns that she feels her music was too complicated for people to take in. That they really had to work hard to understand it. She wanted the listening experience to be an easy one. Because of that, the dynamic and working routine for The Red Shoes would be different. As Graeme Thomson suggests in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, this was not just a commercial aspiration. Kate Bush was worried she wasn’t communicating as directly as she would have liked. This thing that she overloaded songs and stretched them. Could she do simply effectively? That was a conundrum that lay at her feet. Think about what we actually got on The Red Shoes.
If that album does lack the warmth and richness of her previously albums, the songwriting and sound is simpler than The Sensual World or Hounds of Love. Bush was seeking to have direct human connection. At a time when people around her were going through some hard times – her mother was ill and died in 1992 -, that negative energy needed to be transformed. Bush talked about the idea of being comfortable being the observed rather than the observer. At a fan convention in 1990, Bush told fans that she hoped – if things go well – that the songs she was working on for a new album would be toured. Even though that never happened, she did at least want to get out and see people. The ambition of her albums prior to The Red Shoes achieved what they needed to. Even if Bush’s aim was to be simple and direct with her music on The Red Shoes, there were there own issues. Songs that didn’t know when to stop. Why Should I Love You? overloaded and too packed. And So Is Love maybe too mainstream and stale. Perhaps accessible to listeners, was it possible for Kate Bush to keep things simple but also be remarkable?! If personal circumstances were different and life around her was happier and more settled then that experiment and ambition would have been realised more successfully. However, with personal loss and change – she broke from long-term boyfriend Del Palmer -, that was not to be. If her first five or six albums were Kate Bush displaying this girl-like innocence and wonder, The Red Shoes was this album from a woman. One trying to hang on to that innocence. However, as Bush said, when you lose your mother you are no longer a girl. I don’t think that the unhappiness round The Red Shoes led Bush to reverse her opinions.
Think about her albums since 1993. I do think Bush was genuinely tired of being in the studio too much. She could write quickly but the recording would take so long. Maybe things were not as rosy in the 1990s to allow an album that was easy for listeners to understand but also distinct. Cliches coming into her lyrics. The production sound being a little tinny and lacking soul. Graeme Thomson writes how there is a forced quality. Bush trying to achieve direct communication but everything being overstated. Not a writer who had the conversational gifts as, say, Joni Mitchell. Bush had a gift of suggesting an idea or vision that the listener then could imagine. The Red Shoes the first time she had to spell things out. However, I feel this is an album that marked a transition. The results more successfully captured for Aerial in 2005 and 50 Words for Snow in 2011. Look at those albums and one might jump to the view they are complex and a retreat to her previous mindset. When Bush spoke with John Wilson in 2005, he noted how there is a simplicity to the work. Though Bush stated that many of the compositions took so long to finish and it was frustrating, there is a directness to the music. Especially on the first disc/album, A Sea of Honey. Whether that is a paen to her son (Bertie) or the number-listing π (Pi), things were different. The writing more extraordinary and back to her best. The production sound different. Kate Bush definitely meant it when she said she wanted her music to be direct. A worry the listener was being alienated or had to work too hard to find the meaning in a song.
One can argue that Bush’s latter albums are the most successful and brilliant of her entire career. She has struck this balance. The songs sound epic and ambitious though they are not as layered or intangible as some of previous albums. It is a shame that she never toured in the 1990s, though she suffered loss so wasn’t able to do that. At a point in her career when things were getting too much. Yet I listen to an album like The Red Shoes and I can at least identify this artist trying to make her music easier to understand for those hearing it. If the results were a little mixed, that did improve. Maybe the compositions on Aerial seem quite nuanced, layered and huge. The lyrics and Bush’s performances are very much designed not to obscure or create too much mystery. With her being a mother at this point and enjoying family life, you can understand why she was less concerned with pushing things to the limit or taking songs to extremes. The same with Director’s Cut in 2011. Reworking songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. If she though the latter was an unsuccessful album or The Sensual World packed too much in, this was an opportunity to dismantle and rework. Several songs from Director’s Cut were new versions of older songs. The rest saw some element replaced. It was an older vocal and new take. Hounds of Love was a massive success and this masterpiece, yet you feel the labour and time invested was too much. To achieve something remarkable Bush had to sacrifice so much.
I do love how 50 Words for Snow is almost a return to the debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside. The piano very much at the heart of things. Not to say that the piano is symbolic of simplicity of directness. Kate Bush was at a point in her career and life where her working method had shifted. In terms of the hours she was spending working and in the studio. Still able to write and record in an ambitious and unique way, she had perfected the art of knowing what a song needed. There being this combination of the simple and almost otherworldly. Things being suggested rather than forced. A looseness that came through. I don’t think that Bush was compromising anything. I discussed this recently. Bush did want to start off the 1990s and see it as a blank page. Making her work easier to understand and the listener not feeling alienated. If The Red Shoes was perhaps dogged by issues many artists faced in the 1990s – the need to cram so much into a C.D.; a production sound that was digital and sounded unnatural -, into the new century, Bush could create music that was more direct and easy to appreciate but the quality was incredibly high. Aerial being this double album. John Wilson felt there was a simplicity to the music, though. A grand album that could be instantly loved and felt because it didn’t feel forced or was not pushing to be complex and ‘show off’ maybe. Bush never deliberately did that, though she was aware that she could take things too far. This was not to be the case for albums like Aerial or 50 Words for Snow. I suspect a new studio album will also follow these rules. Because of this, her albums sound and feel all…
THE better for it.