Review Summary: The ingenious, sweeping bible of art-rock and alternative pop.
The first time I notice the name
Kate Bush, is when I came across a video that discusses about artists that have yet entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about a year ago, and found Kate Bush having a spot in the countdown. Her music was quite pop to say the least when I heard "Wuthering Heights" in the video, which made me scratched my head about why she is even eligible to enter the list at all, as I thought at the time the Hall of Fame should be only eligible to rock artist. However, when they switched to "Running Up That Hill", the chorus hit me real hard and made me gasp the enchantment of the song itself. After I completed the video, I decided to switch to iTunes store to discover Kate's discography. To be honest, I was astounded to this day about how enchanting Kate's music did to me after that day, especially her 1985 album Hounds of Love. As a result, I decided to dig deep and review this masterpiece.
To begin with, Kate enchant us immediately with the opening track and lead single "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)", an upbeat yet melancholy song about heartbreak, thanks to the Fairlight synthesiser to give a cold atmosphere and the galloping percussion to contrast against it, giving it a poppy yet somber tone. In the song, Kate asked her lover, "It doesn't hurt me/ Do you want to feel how it feels/ Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me/ Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making", apparently moaning about the lover cannot understand how does it feel of being abandoned or betrayed or hurt, in which she also asked, "You don't want to hurt me/ But see how deep the bullet lies". She hoped that if she only could make a deal with god, she would get the lover to swap their places, in order to make him understand the pain she experienced. The song could be another cheesy song about heartbreak if it fall in the wrong hand, but thanks to the unforgettable hook in the chorus, "Be running up that road/ Be running up that hill/ Be running up that building", and her sultry soprano vocals that moans about the devastating heartbreak and the mainstream gender-equality issues (“Is there so much hate for the ones we love?/Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?”), makes this song not only the daring one and most timeless one in the album, but also one of the most timeless one among her catalog.
The following tracks in the first side of the album is almost as enchanting as "Running Up That Hill", as she explained her encounter of romance in the title track with fear (she wails “It’s coming for me through the trees,”), as she afraid the hounds of love would rip her apart, yet she accepts it with anxiety("From nothing real, I just can't deal with this/ I'm still afraid to be there/ Among your hounds of love/ I feel your arms surrounding me/ I've always been a coward/ And never know what's good for me"), and eventually accepts the love("I need love, love, love, love, love, yeah"), with the assistance of progressive and joyous beats on the background, it's possibly the best pop song that celebrates a romantic crush;"The Big Sky" calls for union in race("That cloud, that cloud/ It looks like Ireland/ C'mon and blow it a kiss now/ But quick!" suggests about the separation of Ireland from England) and the rallying call of the repeatable lyric of "Rolling over like a great big cloud/ Walking out in the big sky", hoping we our individuals can be in the world like a (ding, ding) big sky, the pounding rhythm of the sound gives the song an anthem-like approach, another great highlight in the album; "Mother Stands For Comfort" is perhaps the creepiest cut in the first side, in which the "mother" in the song" knows the narrator commit a crime, perhaps murdering someone,("Mother will hide the murderer/ Mother hides the madman") yet she choose to protect the narrator from the conviction of the crime of murder ("She knows that I've been doing something wrong/ But she won't say anything/ She thinks that I was with my friends yesterday/ But she won't mind me lying"), the instrumental between the verse and chorus gives the song a more majestic and icier feeling, hailing the song a rather underrated song among her catalog.
Speaking of majestic, however, none of the songs in the album could rival the power of the final track of the first side, "Cloudbusting", was the absolute groundbreaker. The song, based on Peter Reich’s 1973 memoir A Book of Dreams, which explores his memories of his father Wilhelm Reich (the line "I still dream of Orgonon" suggests the reference), deals about children protecting their parents("I can't hide you/ From the government") by using simply imagination(“I just know that something good is gonna happen,”), with the sextet string section and the big drums, makes the hopelessness in the beginning ("I wake up crying/ You're making rain") to the a hopeful one in the end ("Like the sun coming out/ Look, your son's coming out/ Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen"), all in the while crowning the song a majesty in the song. It's no joke that Kate made an astonishing comeback with simply five songs in the first side alone, after the 1982 disappointment that is The Dreaming, and that's just the first side.
The second side is a conceptual suite about a sailor floating in the sea struggling to survive, from the track "And Dream of Sheep" that opens the concept that is "The Ninth Wave", in which she details her hypothermia-induced limbo in the song that struggles between being awake and asleep("Ooh, I'll wake up to any sound of engines/ Every gull a seeking craft/ I can't keep my eyes open/ Wish I had my radio" and "I can't be left to my imagination/ Let me be weak, let me sleep/ And dream of sheep") while waiting for rescue("If they find me racing white horses/ They'll not take me for a buoy"). Thanks to some radio communication interludes and piano and orchestral arrangement, it's a melancholy song that laments about struggling to survive, lade the darkness and hopefulness of the rest of "The Ninth Wave".
The following tracks of the concept is decorated with mystique and coldness, with "Under Ice", the sailor imagines herself how is going to drown underwater under a thick layer of ice("There's something moving under/ Under the ice/ Moving under ice/ Through water/ Trying to get out of the cold water"), continuing the theme of hypothermia; the following "Waking The Witch" start to highlights the first part of the trilogy of her hallucinations, in which she initially heard many wakeup calls, then found herself being in the middle of a trial for involving a witchcraft in her past-life ("I question your innocence/ She's a witch!/ Ha! Damn you, woman/ What say you, good people/ 'Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!' "); then she shifts to the present in "Watching You Without Me", where she as a ghost sees her lover waiting for her("You watch the clock move the slow hand/ I should have been home hours ago/ But I'm not here/ But I'm not here"), desiring to come home to reunite with him yet hoping he doesn't know about the shipwreck ("Can't let you know what's been happening"); then she moves to the future in "Jig of Life", where she met her future self to convince her to survive ("She said, "C'mon and let me live, girl!"), gives an eerie feeling about surviving, all in the while becoming the most eerie cut in the album since "Mother"; then she drift her soul from her body in "Hello Earth", in which she sees the Earth (she greets the earth and played peek-a-boo with it), while lamenting she is dying by watching the storm forms in all over the world("Watching storms start to form/ Over America/ Can't do anything/ Just watch them swing with the wind out to sea") and finally calms the Earth to sleep; however, she finally survives the near-death experience in "The Morning Fog", where she claims "The light/ Begin to bleed/ Begin to breathe/ Begin to speak" and "Being born again/ Into the sweet morning fog", while realising how she loves her family and she should cherish them ("I'll kiss the ground/ I'll tell my mother/ I'll tell my father/ I'll tell my loved ones/ I'll tell my son/ I'll tell my sisters/ I'll tell my brothers/ How much I love them"). It may be arguable for the latter that the protagonist died and underwent a rebirth, but that doesn't matter: "The Morning Fog" still serves as a sweet, triumphant ending for the concept, and the album.
To be honest, there is no flaws that I could pick on in this album. As every note, she mixes technology and sweeping musical grandeur perfectly, making each one very memorable. Maybe because of it, artist such as the eccentric Icelandic queen
Björk,
Tori Amos and Florence Welch hailed her as an influence, and use such influence to make arty yet accessible music for future generations. Whether was it covering Kate's songs (you might know Tori Amos covered Kate Bush songs such as "Running Up That Hill" and "And Dream of Sheep" in live shows) or imitate her moves or language (Lorde's line in "Green Light":"I waiting for it, that green light, I want it!" is actually sort of a reference to Kate's line in "Suspended In Gaffa":"I want it all!"), Catherine Bush's influence is everywhere, both directly and indirectly.
Now, I really wished that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could stop stalling the induction of Kate Bush into the hall, given that she's snubbed again in 2017(!), because even though she's not really rock, she's as influential as many pop acts who entered the Hall of Fame such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, despite not having great commercial success like the two. If they do want more proof, I might just ask them to listen to this 1985 classic.
