Kate Bush : Releases >>
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The Whole Story >>
Hounds of Love >>
Aerial >>
It's often said that a musician's debut represents the culmination of a lifetime's worth of experiences, but their sophomore effort is usually derived from just the intervening year. By waiting 12 years between The Red Shoes and her new double CD, Aerial, Kate Bush has tried to regain that lifetime. It's a remarkably coherent recording, reflecting the unique world of sound and spirit Bush has inhabited since her debut.
The first disc, subtitled A Sea of Honey, is a suite of personal reveries. It ranges from "King of the Mountain", a contemplation of unbridled celebrity and its isolation that references Elvis and Citizen Kane, to the piano-and-voice study "Mrs. Bartolozzi", an ode to household chores whose chorus is "Sloshy sloshy sloshy sloshy, get that dirty shirty clean". With its Depeche Mode-influenced synth-pads, electro pulses, and lyric cadences, "King of the Mountain" is vintage Bush pop. But many of the songs attain more epic proportions, like the dynamic "Joanni", a hymn to Joan of Arc. It's the second disc--a suite called A Sky of Honey--on which Bush really comes into her own. Using metaphors of the turning of the day and the flight of birds, she orchestrates a meditation on the cycles of life. Musically expansive, she weaves her compositions out of birdsong, subtle orchestrations, and jazz trios, showing herself at her experimental best. Embracing her relatively new motherhood, as well as the death of her mother, Aerial is a deeply personal album, and a welcome return from one of pop music's true icons and vocal wonders. --John Diliberto
More Kate Bush
 The Kick Inside |  Lionheart |  Never for Ever |
 The Dreaming |  Hounds of Love |  The Whole Story |
The Sensual World >>
1989's Sensual World remains Kate Bush's most mature, entrancing album. Expectations ran high for the long-awaited follow-up to her 1986 breakthrough The Hounds of Love, and she met them with this sometimes breathtaking, often introspective work. On songs like the erotic title track and the dramatic "Love and Anger", Bush charts the many rhythms of relationships with a keen eye for detail and less frilly bluster than usual. Elsewhere, with the tense "Between a Man and a Woman" and the lush "This Woman's Work" she virtually lays the foundation for Tori Amos's future success. Musically, Bush broadens her palette with the smart additions of Irish piper Davey Spillane, Balkan singers The Trio Bulgarka, and jazz bassist Eberhard Weber. --Michael Ruby
The Kick Inside >>
Kicking things off with a whimper, not a bang, Kate Bush quietly released her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside and that disc still to this day affects an incredible number people, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan among them. There are so many elements that make this disc unique--Kate's soaring soprano, her warm piano playing--but the one thing that perhaps sticks out most is how different her sounds were from anything else circulating at that time. Ten years before "alternative" hit the forefront, this music was neither easy nor palatable, truly an alternative from the other styles out there. Among the more legendary tracks, search out "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" and her timeless classic "Wuthering Heights". --Denise Sheppard
Never for Ever >>
The Dreaming >>
Lionheart >>
The Red Shoes >>
The Golden Compass >>
