Wow, I’ve stumbled on a cracking album by a hot new artist called Kate Bush. I heard one of her songs on some crummy Netflix show and thought I’d give the album a crack. I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that I think this girl has a future in pop music.
Right, back in the real world, this is the fantastic 1985 album that was remastered in 2018 and then rereleased on Bush’s Fish People record label recently. It isn’t cheap at £38 but for that, you get 180-gram, ‘Raspberry Beret’ vinyl, a spot varnish sleeve, an obi strip with the pressing date and a resealable poly-sleeve with sticker.
As this is a classic album you will know all the singles including the title track and ‘Running Up That Hill’ which went stratospheric after appearing in the not-crummy-at-all Stranger Things and was discovered by a new generation.
It also includes the phenomenal ‘Cloudbusting’ which had Donald Sutherland in the video playing some sort of mad scientist who built a machine to create clouds to make it rain. He is dragged away by some Government sorts and Bush, in a dodgy wig, is tasked with firing the machine up and bringing the rain.
You lot probably know this already but side two of this record, subtitled The Ninth Wave, is a suite of songs telling the story of a shipwrecked sailor, drifting alone at night. I’m not entirely sure where I’ve been for the last 38 years but this fact completely passed me by.
The tale starts with the beautifully delicate ‘And Dream Of Sheep’ which is about the sailor falling into a hypothermia-induced stupor, ‘Under Ice’ then describes her feeling of slipping away with voices in her head trying to keep her awake/alive.
As her life flashes before her she hallucinates that she was persecuted in a previous life in the jittery ‘Waking The Witch’.
‘Watching You Without Me’ is a strange, muted, hypnotic song about her family at home worrying about her, frantically making phone calls, watching the clock slowly tick while she watches from the other side desperately trying to communicate by singing “you can’t hear me” (backwards!)
The tale leaps into life as her future self orders her to stay alive in the brilliant folk song ‘Jig Of Life’. Just as hope is fading and she is about to pass over she is rescued in the eerie ‘Hello Earth’, the final track is ‘The Morning Fog’ where the sailor vows to tell her family how much they mean to her when she makes it back home.
Well, that is what I think the story is, I may have it wrong as there are different interpretations on the internet but this is the one I’m going with.
This storyline completely changed the way I listened to the second half of the record. Where before I thought it was a weird jumble of ideas, knowing that most of the second side is hallucinations as the sailor tries to survive had me invested in them in a new way. Seriously, why have I only just found this out? Doh!
Fancy a copy of this latest rerelease? As mentioned earlier, it isn’t cheap but I suppose you get what you pay for as it looks and sounds terrific. It is available all over the place now if it isn't already in your collection or you just fancy it in pretty purple.
Tracks To Try: ‘Running Up That Hill’, ‘Hounds Of Love’, ‘Big Sky’, ‘Cloudbusting’, ‘And Dream Of Sleep’, ‘Jig Of Life’, ‘The Morning Fog’.
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