Kate Bush // 50 Words For Snow

i'm wondering if Elton John then Stephen Fry next to each other might be flawed sequencing

Not if she intended to rely on our collective memory of their sexuality.

The Elton voice is supposed to be her alter ego, right? To my ears his Elton-ness is so overwhelming that neither he nor Kate sound particularly polymorphous.

in that Quietus interview i think she says they're supposed to be star-crossed lovers or something but i wdn't always take what she says to be gospel

re: the sequencing i guess i meant that the sound of those two tracks feels like an odd tangent when they're placed together in a way that maybe wdn't have happened if they'd been isolated from each other

Last night I gave in at a moment of weakness and downloaded '50 Words For Snow'. I thought I could hold out till it's release date, but a mini bottle of tequila had me craving new Kate Bush songs. I only made it through the first 3 songs and each surprised me. This is a beautiful record!! I loved all of Aerial and so far I love this one as much.

"Rubberband Girl" is one of her best singles though.

i think it's her worst!

i've only listened to half of this so far and can't wait to hear the rest

finishing up the 1st track right now. beautiful and moody, the vocals are great. those high notes are sensational. i wish the piano varied it up a bit more. i LOVE the piano hook, but it would hold more drama if it weren't repeated as much.

and i say this as an avid supporter and believer in the power of repetition.

like i totally got it in Mrs. bartolozzi, a song about cycles, and patterns.

The Elton voice is supposed to be her alter ego, right?

i assumed elton was the snowman X:

You can't get much more repetitious than snow falling.

yeah, i definitely see how the falling piano hook emulates snow. need to let it ruminate more.

I'm laughing at John Robb's review. If this is a work of genius or a "pinnacle in a career of pinnacles", then I'm Florence Nightingale. Maybe I need to listen again, but it sounds to me like overlong, bland New Age muzak.

How does it sound like that? You mean this sounds like a low key jam record made by stoned middle aged hippies? I mean, do you really think that or did it just sound like a good zing? If you do, care to point out which bits...

bland New Age muzak

I have no idea how you can even make a ridiculous statement like this. Have you heard Aerial? Are you a KB aficionado sincerely bitterly disappointed with the new album, or do you not care about her music anyway and just want to make a "case" by saying "this ain't all what the review promised me"? Or are you just trolling?

had the argument last time out when somebody called Aerial bland. such an empty, crappy word to use as criticism.

also obviously never listened to any New Age muzak

'bland' is fine where it's merited. Westlife are bland. A more accurate term for Kate would be 'polished'

I'm Florence Nightingale

nah, bland implies that there are certain aspects of art that are always bad and it's a fucking tedious punker cliche, blandness can totally represent a set of virtues. anyway, promise myself i won't have this argument every time somebody finds a Kate Bush album insufficiently rocking

Yeah fair enough, I struggle to think of any because for me bland = uninteresting but no particular wish to argue the toss. I can't remember where the Aerial argument landed anyway.

at this point i always recommend this

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10097

See I wouldn't call that blandness but no, I am not arguing further.

Geez, guys. It's perfectly cool to find fault with a new Kate Bush record. It's not Scripture or anything. There's plenty of room and reason to be critical.
I'm a long time fan and I found - and still find - much of Aerial to be a letdown musically. I thought Director's Cut was comparatively a step in the right direction: Kate letting her hair down again on some of the songs and being more compositionally and sonically inventive (Yeah - I love "Deeper Understanding" Mach II). And having only heard this new one twice I still stand by the first three songs as the strongest things on the record, minimal in approach as they are, while the rest is just pleasant at best (not counting the overlong, failed Elton John duet).

There's a massive difference between having an opinion and just being factually incorrect though. It's not bland new age muzak. That's a pretty dumb thing to say.

what's the difference between saying 'sounds like bland new age muzak' and 'this sounds like new age music'

i mean, thank you for pointing out that it sounded like the bad kind of new age music; that was nice of you

i heard this laraaji track the other week i thought was amazing

I'm quoting from the person who said it was bland new age muzak. Fuck me, it's not rocket science.

Unless you were talking to the poster miles upthread, in which case. All apologies.

i was! i'm just curious about that kind of gesture -- why when you're doing a dismissive comparison to (x) you find it necessary to say "this is like bad x", when you don't know anything about x or even belive that good x exists

Well I guess if you don't really know anything about x it's good to specify what it is you imagine is bad about x when making the comparison.

Ironically both Aerial and 50 Words For Snow have, as a general rule, gotten stronger the closer the tend towards "bland new age".

Saying Aerial is bland is like saying freshly baked sourdough bread is bland or uniform, soft and smooth baby skin is bland.

What would constitute gnarly or terrifying new age I wonder?

xp

yeah for real. the first 3 tracks do feel the strongest at the mo, maybe the last one too, and it's notable that they're the most cohesive in terms of mood and texture.

blandcanbegoodblandcanbegood

50 Different Words For Bland.

Dispassionate (good)

that Fry track is a bit throwaway imo but i can't help but like the way he says "eraser dust", despite myself

every Kate album has some moments of sheer pleasure at pronunciation/intonation i think

x-p
does the bland in bland new age describe the new age in question or is it supposed to mean all new age is bland? in the first case you are wrong concerning this album as firstly i don't think it qualifies as new age and secondly the music surely is a little too subtle for being bland. the second case is just redundant metatalk which can be ignored totally.

redundant metatalk obv.

I guess possibly it is the former if the speaker imagines some kind of new age with orgiastic masturbatory panpipe solos that is not bland (if this exists please youtube).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToR1-CJ3q0s

New Age of Earth not really New Age tho, ironically

I think, by "bland new age", Zuleika is referring more to, like, Celtic Reflections CDs. It's not such a lousy opinion, really, if somebody prefers the spiky, gated drum sounds of Dreaming/Hounds to the velvet hand of Steve Gadd.

b-b-b-but gated drums are cool again!

No. What s/he said makes as little sense as saying, 'I hate this new banging acid house direction she's taken over the last two albums.'

It is not bland new age in any way imho, but I do agree with the sentiment that Kate seems to get closer and closer to more conventional pop music. The stuff of her last two albums is closer related to the music of artists like Elton John or Sting than the stuff from The Dreaming or Never for Ever. Peter Gabriel went that road too. And even Laurie Anderson. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. But I can imagine why people - especially those not familiar with the Kate (or Gabriel or Anderson) of yore - do not understand why people go so whoopee over new music that doesn't sound special or different enough to deserve all this praise.

"Lake Tahoe" carries much of the same vibe as "The Third Wave" off HOL- especially in the vocal sections which echo the Popol Vuh choral parts from Herzog's 'Nosferatu'. Truly gorgeous on headphones (how I'm listening at this moment).

Really the 2nd and 3rd songs on this, even with their stripped down instrumental pallette of mainly piano, bass and drums, are classic Bush in their lovely weirdness. Very powerful.

what's the difference between saying 'sounds like bland new age muzak' and 'this sounds like new age music'

i mean, thank you for pointing out that it sounded like the bad kind of new age music; that was nice of you

Because "New Age music" tends to cover quite a broad canvas. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and some half decent ambient often gets lumped in with the blander, more mediocre stuff.

I am genuninely amazed at the reviews this album is getting. This album sounds so much to me like bland, New Age muzak that I'm surprised at some of the hostile comments above. Just because KB isn't very "uptempo" these days obviously doesn't mean she has to be musically uninventive (which is what I meant by "bland" in case there are any more tiresome dissections of that word). I'll give it more listens, but it sounds to me insipid and very weak musically: not really pop, ambient or classical, but a mediocre mish mash of all three. On The Hounds of Love she created a fantastic blend of those things - now it sounds predictable and stale to me.