All You Cruisers - THE KATE BUSH VOTING THREAD (ilm artist poll #24: deadline Saturday 25 August)

I wish I liked more of her stuff... I love Hounds of Love SO much, but the other records I've checked out I've been somewhat "yeesh, that's a bit much"... Maybe I'll try and pull together a ballot, though. I probably just need to spend more time with her other work.

enjoying the "yeesh, that's a bit much" is key, i think

only really came around in kate w/in the last year

uh, "on kate", yeesh

enjoying the "yeesh, that's a bit much" is key, i think

― contenderizer, Tuesday, August 21, 2012 9:21 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Clarke If you approach The Dreaming as P.I.L. record and enjoy it on that level, then at some point enjoy it without needing it frame that way, you're probably set for everything else she did.

Moments Of Pleasure might just be the best song ever written from the point of view of someone who's just been through the grief process. imho.

speaking of "that's a bit much," "get out of my house" is a lock for my top ten

re PIL, i love how Lydon is a big fan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV25-V1cYN4

Not sure if you're any better with "on" than "in" there, tend... Tim, love that idea; I have that and The Kick Inside at home so I'll give it a try later on. Thinking back, side two of Hounds took a while for me to get into, but now I think of it as one of the most distinctive and singular sides of a record I know of. So amazingly transportive, but without such a heavy-handed "we're going on a JOURNEY now!" thing.

yeah Get Out Of My House easy in my Top 10.

a bit much of...what?

get out of my house vs waking the witch, battle of the two most terrifying kb songs

Super-theatrical vocals are something I've always had a little trouble getting into... So Kate can be a little tough for me at times, though I pretty much always really love the music.

The reaction to how someone responds when told Kate Bush imitates a donkey determines whether I talk to them again.

Clarke, I tend to agree (I prefer the post-'80 material) but even on the early stuff Bush isn't Scott Walker.

And thank Christ for that!

did folk realise she was in the *Top 10* this week in the UK? http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles

I need to think more about what it is about her particular theatricality that gets to me... I mean, it's not like I always have a problem with histrionics. I love Freddie Mercury, Bruce Dickinson, etc...

I didn't realise xp 'til I read her wiki earlier. It reckons the new version's been transposed down a semitone to fit older Kate's range - I'm no singer, but that seems hardly worth it?

mm i couldn't see the point either.

i imagine the conversation went something like

- can you play the closing ceremony kate
- no
- go on, it'll be special
- no
- pleeeeeaaase
- no
- well can you just do a little something, maybe a special olympic version of your song
- if you must *makes most minor change possible* now leave me alone

EEEEEYOHHH
EEEEYOHHHH

"Suspended in Gaffa" is a good song for coming to love Kate's, er, wilder vocals, in a pop song.

Likely on my ballot:

Breathing
A Coral Room
Suspended in Gaffa
Experiment IV
And Dream of Sleep
Cloudbusting
The Big Sky (12" mix)
Top of the City
Love and Anger

I love "The Morning Fog" so much.

I need to think more about what it is about her particular theatricality that gets to me... I mean, it's not like I always have a problem with histrionics. I love Freddie Mercury, Bruce Dickinson, etc...

― Clarke B., Tuesday, August 21, 2012 2:37 PM (38 seconds ago)

i often have trouble with theatrical approaches that combine precision of vocal delivery, refined art music aspirations, a sense of intellectual distance, and what seems a "genteel" manner. such styles remind me too much of estate gardens and conservatories, a suffocating sort of upper-crust fussiness.

kate bush might seem to fit comfortably in this reductive ballpark, and that's what kept me away for years, but once you get through the distinctly mannered surface, her music is extremely direct and emotionally expressive. and catchy, inventive, otherworldly, etc.

The reaction to how someone responds when told Kate Bush imitates a donkey determines whether I talk to them again.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 21, 2012 9:33 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read an interview with Kate a few years back where she complained about how everyone told her she should take off the donkey and she was like "but.... that's the best bit!"

Something really lovely about how sensible she seemed about her own musical oddness, she didn't try to romanticise it at all.

she's consistently given the impression that she's just a bit baffled anyone might consider her odd at all

indeed. She has flaws but preciousness isn't one.

Fact: The Dreaming is the sexy-funniest album cover ever.

i sometimes wonder whether liking the Lionheart cover so much might make me a potential furry. I think it's more likely that it's just that Kate is the greatest human that's ever lived.

^ one of the first album covers i was ever, uh, struck by

remember staring at it for quite some time c. age 14

remember staring at it for quite some time c. age 14 31

i often have trouble with theatrical approaches that combine precision of vocal delivery, refined art music aspirations, a sense of intellectual distance, and what seems a "genteel" manner. such styles remind me too much of estate gardens and conservatories, a suffocating sort of upper-crust fussiness.

kate bush might seem to fit comfortably in this reductive ballpark, and that's what kept me away for years, but once you get through the distinctly mannered surface, her music is extremely direct and emotionally expressive. and catchy, inventive, otherworldly, etc.

― contenderizer, Tuesday, August 21, 2012 5:51 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good analysis... Who do you think exemplifies that style you describe? It rings very true, but I'm having a hard time thinking of my own examples.

contederizer, what do you mean by "a sense of intellectual distance"? If an artist like Bush uses her intellect, by its very nature then she's not distancing herself from the material, no?

Your description made me realize that perhaps I perceive it as aesthetically unpleasantly discontiguous when very theatrical vocals are married to somewhat restrained/studied/refined backing music... Freddie/Bruce works for me because the music is also highly intense, over-the-top, etc.

or Bowie/Ferry?

Love them both, though both can veer very slightly into yeesh. But the music is so meaty.

I mean, Roxy Music positively smokes instrumentally speaking.

in response to alfred, what clarke just said. when theatricality loses its restraint and refinement, it can seem to more fully commit to its moment. there's little sense of intellectual distance in queen's music - you're right there in the midst of the carnival. due to its basic reserve, kate's material can rather studied, and that in turn encourages me, as a listener, to adopt a studying distance.

my go-to example of the style i was describing (and why i don't like it) has long been wim mertens, but i just listened to several of his vocal performances, and find that i now like him quite a bit. so maybe i'm now more open to these approaches than i used to be...

one too many nows

exactly when on Saturday is the deadline cos i'm pretty busy this week?

End of Saturday. I'm planning on starting the countdown on Monday, so I'll need Sunday free for adding up.

k i will try to bite the bullet then

Clarke, I tend to agree (I prefer the post-'80 material) but even on the early stuff Bush isn't Scott Walker.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 21, 2012 2:34 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And thank Christ for that!

― Clarke B., Tuesday, August 21, 2012 2:34 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kate would never give a full-throated vibrato to a line that didn't deserve it, or a melodramatic word just because it ends a line. These reference points (Freddy Mercury!) are so bizarre to me. Kate is "studied" in the sense that she's well versed in classical vocal technique and cleaves to it at the expense of obvious blues or gospel phrasing, but the way she uses intonation, melody and--most of all for me--the expressive capabilities of her entire vocal complex--larynx, soft palate, secondary respiratory muscles--is so immediate... so PUNK ROCK. Or maybe post-punk, whatever. Her tone is often so strangled yet controlled; she can choke on a word ("hounds" in that song's second chorus) then open up (the sound, the emotion) a little with each subsquent line. Not to mention all the donkey braying. Or gutteral groaning through lines like, "I love a life..." What I hear in her performances is someone who came of age during the punk/post-punk eras and turned a well-trained and versatile instrument into a mimic of the multiplicity of voices that exploded during this era and the unexpected emotions they foregrounded. "Theatrical" as in a competing/complementary chorus of voices rather than just some cockfarmer belting bad Jacques Brel.

"Hounds of Love" is illustrative of her strenths for me--the way the drums stumble forwards like some exhausted prey, the way her vocal starts full strength and then loses breath with each line before the first chorus, the physicality and tenderness of the trapped & terrified fox and his outsize heartbeat, her renewed strength in the chorus's lines of abandon and the subsequent ambiguity of whether she's his captor or rescuer... Good lord this woman rules.

I like Queen fine (I'm sure Kate does too) but they are some cheesy motherfuckers. Sure, they're a fucking carnival, woo hoo. Freddy's a fucking belter. All this about restraint in Bush's music is a bizarre mischaracterization--when was the last time you actually listened to the Dreaming? "Genteel?" Pay attention to the lyrics. Listen to the braying, the screaming, the groaning, the random ambient blackouts. If anything it's too bizarre, a pop outlier, not some fucking Charlotte Church record.

"I love a life..."

is that what she's saying? I always heard it as just "I love life!"

A perhaps odd seeming point of comparison for Kate's vocal approach circa The Dreaming that nonetheless makes intuitive sense to me is David Byrne.

Thinking in terms of restrained vs theatrical isn't too helpful I think, unless we mean "theatrical" in the sense of performed, fully embodied characters that Kate sinks into vocally as well as lyrically.

But those characters can be restrained (from "Delius" to "Watching You Without Me" to "The Sensual World") or overblown ("Babooshka", "Get Out Of My House", "Waking The Witch" etc.) or anything in between.

that's an interesting read, cuz i what i hear in the music, themes and phrasing of her early career seems so strongly rooted in the pre-punk 70s: musical theater, classicism, prog, glam, story songs, the literary gothic, spiritualism, aspiration to sophistication, femininity as delicacy, etc.

she does often use her voice to suddenly and even violently rupture the texture of her songs, as you say, "the way she uses intonation, melody and--most of all for me--the expressive capabilities of her entire vocal complex--larynx, soft palate, secondary respiratory muscles--is so immediate." otm, there's a lot of this on the dreaming (and elsewhere). i don't know that i ever would have associated it with punk, but now that it's been said, i can sort of see the connection... then again, it reads just as clearly as a prog and/or avant-garde gesture, imo.