neverseenblue's Full Review: Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
What can I say about Kate Bush? She's a force of nature, that woman. Despite the lack of airplay Kate's electrifying music has received over the past two and a half decades, she has garnered a surprisingly impressive amount of respect and critical acclaim. Along the way, she's inspired everyone from Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan to rapper Tupac Shakur and Big Boi of Outkast. The reason so many people hold her on such a grand pedestal becomes evident after listening to her music; it's clearly the product of an immensely inventive and talented woman. While nearly all musicians have at least one clear musical predecessor of sorts, Kate seems to be an exception to that rule. She's a true original.
Unfortunately, Kate managed to slip under my radar until quite recently. After hearing her hit single Wuthering Heights from her 1978 debut release The Kick Inside, I decided Kate wasn't for me. I just couldn't get past the shrillness of her young voice, so I pushed her to the back of my mind until my voice teacher suggested that I listen to The Man With the Child in His Eyes, from the same album. The simplistic beauty of that song won me over, and quickly after hearing it I took the plunge and bought Hounds of Love, her most revered release. That was undoubtedly one of the best rash music-buying decisions I've ever made. "Hounds of Love" is her most widely praised album for good reason. It showcases everything that makes her wonderful; her brilliant song writing, interesting compositions, and impressive vocal range. Gone is the shrillness of her voice that so many people find hard to take, and while I have come to love her upper range, I must admit it's nice to hear her singing "nicely" for a change. The album is "split" into two sections, divided by theme. The first, Hounds of Love, deals primarily with relationships of all sorts, while the second, The Ninth Wave, details a woman's journey to near-death as a result of drowning, and back again. Every second of it pulses with a kind of energy that draws the listener in completely, even after repeated listenings.
The more commercial Hounds of Love section opens with Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), which was a fairly big hit for Kate back in 1985, and deservedly so. It's one of those great songs that everyone likes regardless of whether or not they care for Kate Bush. My mother even told me to turn it up once when I was listening to it, and she thinks Kate is just completely mad and unlistenable, generally. The pulsing drums that open and continue throughout the song make for an impressive start to the album, and they create the impression that the character is striving to reach something. The song primarily deals with gender issues; the female character wishes for God to allow her to temporarily change places with her lover so she can understand him and therefore save their relationship. I initially dismissed the title track, Hounds of Love as a silly pop song, due to its somewhat dated music and the man's voice in the beginning of the song crying "It's in the trees! It's coming!" After a while, however, it became clear to me that there is much more to it than that. The song basically tells the story of a woman who is afraid to face love, but poignant lyrics such as "I found a fox, caught by dogs, he let me take him in my hands/his little heart, it beat so fast, and I'm ashamed of running away" carry a lot of weight, and those lyrics combined with the lovely cello line running throughout the song make for a moving piece. The Big Sky is sheer fun. Kate wails like the queen of the 80's she is, and although the song is about a dysfunctional relationship - "You never understood me/you never even tried" - , the jubilant music can't help but make you smile.
Mother Stands For Comfort is somewhat of a departure from the album's previous offerings. A subdued and lovely ode to a mother's love for her child, it takes on a slightly troubling nature when it is discovered that the mother in question is ignoring the fact that her child has murdered someone. Sounds of glass shattering add to the ominous feeling of the song; Kate often uses recognizable sounds to convey certain emotions in her songs. While Mother Stands For Comfort was about a mother's unconditional love for her son, Cloudbusting, the final song in the "Hounds of Love" segment, concerns a boy's father who is being pursued by the government due to some weather-altering experiments he has conducted. This song is a good example of Kate's tendency to sing through fictional characters' eyes in her songs; her lyrics are very rarely personal or confessional. Cloudbusting is a quiet epic of sorts. It has an almost matter-of-fact feel to it, spurred on by the monotonous and continuous drumbeat that is featured quite prominently throughout it.
And Dream of Sheep is a truly beautiful segue into The Ninth Wave. In it, the drowning woman expresses her desire to live and her simultaneous wish to simply give up as Kate sings "Let me sleep, let me be weak/and dream of sheep." The sadness of the subject matter is strengthened by a simple and lovely piano melody and Kate's fragile vocals, which really do tug at the heartstrings. Under Ice is one of the drowning woman's several dreams. In it, she is trapped under solid ice, reaching out for the world above and desperately calling for help. As a lone person notes that something could be moving under the ice upon which she skates, she investigates the situation and discovers that the one who is drowning is in fact herself. (I didn't gather all this from the song, by the way, Kate herself said this in an interview. Heh.) The song's clipped, panic-ridden verses are enhanced by male vocals provided by Kate's brother Paddy, who often assists Kate on her albums. Waking the Witch opens quietly, with a myriad of voices telling the now fairly unconscious woman that she "must wake up", over a haunting piano melody. It suddenly and severely changes direction completely, taking us into a dream world where the woman is apparently acting as a defendant in her very own witch trial. Synthesizers dominate the song, and a distorted demonic voice spouts off accusations while Kate sings "Help this blackbird/there's a stone around my leg." Weird, but good. Watching You Without Me is a very nostalgic song for the character, as she imagines peering into her home as a ghost and seeing her husband living without her. She pleads with him to hear her, but to no avail. The song is appropriately subdued and eerie, utilizing ethereal Middle-Eastern sounding vocals and music to great effect.
Jig Of Life is just fantastic. It is a frantic, Celtic sounding song in which the woman's future elderly self begs her to stay alive so she can, in fact, exist. Kate's other brother John Carder Bush makes an appearance on this track, contributing a rousing spoken-word segment complete with an Irish accent to close off the song. Hello Earth finds the woman reflecting on the storm that placed her into her predicament in the first place. Featuring an either Czech or Russian male chorus, it is a stunning and dramatic epic, and probably one of my favourites on the album. "Watching storm start to form over America/can't do anything/just watch them swing/with the wind out to sea." Perfect. The Morning Fog closes the album on a joyous note, as the character is finally rescued. She regains consciousness and thinks, "I'll kiss the ground/I'll tell my mother/I'll tell my father/I'll tell my loved one/I'll tell my brothers/How much I love them," obviously overjoyed to realize that she'll be able to see her loved ones once again. Its dull music renders this song the weakest of the lot, but nevertheless it is a satisfying end to an astonishing album.
On the remastered version of this album there a few bonus tracks, including remixes of Running Up That Hill and The Big Sky, as well as a few worthwhile B-sides (Be Kind to My Mistakes, Under the Ivy, Burning Bridge, and My Lagan Love.) Although all are fantastic except for perhaps the exceptionally cheesy Burning Bridge, Under the Ivy is the one that really stands out. It's one of my favourite Kate songs, a haunting piano ballad that manages to convey more emotion in just over two minutes than most songs I've heard. If you plan on buying this album, I'd definitely recommend the remastered version.
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