Kate Bush // 50 Words For Snow

Just listened to the whole album for the first time. Just... wow... Amazing.

I actually adore the sparse and singular use of the spaciousness of the piano and just her vocals. I have to admit the single dragged me out of my trance at first, but it does make more sense in the album's context (though it won't ever be a favourite of mien I think). The Elton John song is actually really good (would've preferred Scott Walker but hey, can't have it all) and the Stephen Fry song isn't nearly as bad as it sounds on paper. The closer is magical.

<3

yeah i really like the stephen fry song.

Stop hating on "Director's Cut", y'all!

Gave it two spins yesterday and am really positive about it. I'm especially taken with the first half, which is mainly Kate with her piano (something I've hoped for for a long time). The three pop songs (so to speak) of the latter half seem to create a whole different side. I've always liked the single (though the song is nothing special), don't have any opinions yet about the Elton John song (didn't move me in either way) and thought the Stephan Fry song was very MOR. The last track takes us back to the sparse sounds of the first half. Which makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to leave the pop material of the album. Then again, I've disliked the Morning Fog for years because I felt nothing should come after Hello Earth, while I now feel it is the perfect closer of one dark ride of an album. Time will tell! But thanks again Kate, for giving us another helping of your goose bump inducing work!

And Director's Cut is a very pleasant album indeed!

I listened last night, though it was so late that I must've fallen asleep in the middle because I never heard 'Wild Man' at all. I kept thinking 'she's nailed it' or 'he's nailed it' about everything, though that might've been my dreams talking. I'm sure the Fry track was terrific anyway; neither he nor John sound terribly like themselves.

One thing I am sure about is Kate's voice never sounding deeper or older. I'd like to hear her talk about her relationship to it.

I'm part of the small minority who never got Aerial - which always sounded like preciously pedantic MOR to me - but I have to say I'm tempted by the new one

Oh, second disc of Aerial is as MOR as it comes. But the first disc is amazing!

baaderonixx, if you feel that way about Aerial, I doubt you will like the new one. Listen to it online before buying, if possible.

Now I remember, I was also having reveries about influences last night. I can see Talk Talk, yeah, also Dog Man Star and there's also an old tape I used to have of US alt-rock - I want to say The Replacements but I'm sure that'll be wrong. Anyone who strayed off-piste with pianos in the very early nineties, I think.

@baaderonixx: I do feel that 50 Words has more stamina than Aerial. My problem with Aerials' second disc is that it sounds so lifeless. Even the outbursts within the music - the second half of the title track and the second half of Sunset - are somehow muted. I feared the same for 50 Words, the album being sparse and all, but Kate plays with passion and fire.

Am I the only one who thought, 'Lol, So Solid Crew' on hearing the title track?

Well I didn't think that :)

This album so hits my bull's eye... And I love Bertie's singing on the first track. I do still feel the single gets me out of my trance from the first three tracks though, album takes a whole new direction after that, with John and Fry, even though I love those too. But the first three and the closer are sheer magic.

listened to this after midnight last night, fell asleep in the middle as well, but it was all beautiful.

SO EXCITED

i haven't got my head around this enough yet to say anything more, but: SO GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL

second disc of Aerial is as MOR as it comes

me and the chills i get when i hear her sing 'climbing up the aerIALL' disagree

Sk8 - I feel exactly the same at that point in the song too!

two songs in and i'm loving this.

it's hard to really talk about kate without seeming sort of crazy. but here goes:

i love this, and i really loved aerial too, because the world now is so loud and everything is blaring at you all the time and this album feels like kate has sort of floated away from the world, back into nature and maybe she's just floating above it and will just disappear and become the stars and moon and snow

woah i wrote that before i heard the "she is dissolving before me"

me and the chills i get when i hear her sing 'climbing up the aerIALL' disagree

Nocturne is 8 minutes and 34 seconds of bliss, yes.
But it doesn't redeem the anemic nature of the A Sky of Honey suite for me.

I just wish it had sustained the atmosphere of the first three tracks. Eerie how Bertie sounds like a choirboy emulating Kate. The countertenor singing was a nice touch, too.

elton john did kinda break the spell

He totally did.

Listening to the album for the third time now. The piano-stuff is a (winter) wonderland. I always felt that there was something mysterious about Kate's music. Something that went missing with the release of A Sensual World; no matter how much I enjoy those later albums. But that unworldly atmosphere has returned with the piano-stuff on 50 Words.

I love The Sensual World!

So do I! Part of the classics.

misty is SOO GOOOD!!

even elton sounds great here. bravo.

steve gadd is so great on this record

I would buy a Bertie solo album

Haha <3

I wonder if Bertie has been singing in a choir, or something. His voice sounds very like a trained choirboy - the same kind of over-pronunciation of a very proper sort of English. He's no Aled Jones or Jean Baptiste Maunier, but his vocal performance is lovely.

i love the little trackbacks to aerial on this - "what kind of spirit is this?" on "misty" immediately makes me think of "what kind of language is this?" on "aerial".

perfect way of listening to this album: early on a freezing winter's morning before anyone else is awake

i don't envy anyone who has to turn around a review of this quickly. i loved the sound of it immediately but it's one of those albums that i can see still hearing new things in for a long while yet. not even close to being able to gauge it as a whole.

i do agree that the elton song is prob the worst in terms of rupturing a very amniotic mood - the opening two songs are just. so. beautiful. settling in you like, well, snow.

she's reached a stage where the music has the density and detail and warmth of the best ambient music, yes it's completely enveloping, but that sound is deployed in the service of songs, with pop sensibility and movement and direction. trying to take it easy on the superlatives but this is another stunning record and she's probably making music as good as anything she's ever done.

the piano line at the beginning of "Misty" is reminiscent of the Charlie Brown music and i wonder if it's a deliberate nod

Yes. I've been listening to Bowie's late albums, which have something similar about them, not that I'd put them on a level with Kate or with Low but there's the same feeling of having mastered a repertoire and being content to put it to work for whatever the song happens to be at the time. Makes me wonder whether I should've stuck with more older people over the years.

going back to this from the uncut review

Given how much of Kate Bush’s appeal is built on an image of her being blissfully disconnected from the real world

i completely disagree! KB is as much about the utterly normal and domestic as the eccentric and otherworldly. i mean, those are not mutually exclusive.

like i said i have real problems with a lot of Kate Bush reviews, i wonder if that's partly why she's cagey in interviews when talking about her work process, because she's consistently painted into quite o_O colours that seem to be at least partly because she's a - gasp - woman making art pop

people don't really push the "Scott Walker, you so crazy" line half as much, for example.

also because she's so established, so people seem to automatically start at a rather reductive summation of her, which is understandable in a way but also very lazy

Well, I have known a fair few people that are 'like' Kate, personalitywise, so this whole "disconnected' thing makes no sense to me.

"Wider world" would be more apt in that Uncut line. There's lots of normality in her life but it's kind of secluded. Although for an art-pop auteur she really does love her 80s TV comedians.

Do people really think of Bush as weirder than Walker, NV? Never struck me that way.

i think there's often gender-coloured language in the way people talk about Kate's "wackiness" or whatever that i don't come across so much when people talk about Scott Walker. i will be the first to admit that i've barely read music journalism for the last 20 years except on here or via here :-)

i think maybe i have a problem with imagination being portrayed as eccentricity in general tho

People are more ready to assume that any wackiness in the music of a female artist is a direct expression of their wackiness as a person.

Yeah, which is why I object to the line in the Uncut review.

I'm guarded about this so far -- clearly the song lengths and their sparseness will make me harder than any other album I must review this year.

Haha -- make me WORK harder, but perhaps that too.