Kate Bush

The Dreaming

In the Dreaming, Kate lets the weirdness in full blast

Review Score:

(10/10)
Never For Ever was proving ground for Kate Bush's experimental weirdness. Her 1982 followup, The Dreaming, taken after the aboriginal concept of a link to God or heaven, takes that direction to the core and is Kate's most innovative and weirdest (in a great sense) album ever. Weird vocal stylings, clever instrumentation and lyrics characterize this album. The engaging single "Sat In Your Lap" is about someone who's too lazy to work, favoring the ivory tower of the intellectual, but has the misconception that "knowledge something that is sat in your lap." In the end, she sings "I hold a cup of wisdom, But there is nothing within. My cup, she never overfloweth, And 'tis I that moan- and groaneth."

"There Goes A Tenner" is about a heist that goes awry, with Kate affecting a slight cockney accent in parts and featuring a music hall-like piano. Throughout there are some male vocal interjections, such as the police and that classic line "What's all this, then?" Funniest lyric: "I hope you remember/To treat the gelignite tenderly for me."

"Pull Out The Pin" seems to be about a Vietnamese lying in ambush for an American soldier, ready to pull out the pin and toss the grenade at him. In the chorus, Kate's voice rises to a frenzied pitch when she sings "I love life." The sobriety of the song is underlined: "Just one thing in it/me or him."

I don't know what the heck gaffa is, as in "Suspended In Gaffa" and its skipping music-hall piano and a quick one-two-three string waltz, but the girl in there is clearly a timid soul, scared of change, unwilling to be a Pandora.

Kate "lets the weirdness in" in "Leave It Open." Her vocals are in many styles, distorted lower register, echoing high-pitched girlish, stretched tape vocals, and wailing. As for the weirdness, the male refrain keeps repeating, "Harm in us, but the power to arm."

The droning weird title track is about life in the bush, no, not Kate, but in the Australian desert, where the habits of white man play havoc with nature, be it hitting kangaroos in the land rover or exploiting aborigine land for mineral wealth. "The civilised keep alive/The territorial war./See the light ram through the gaps in the land./Erase the race that claim the place/And say we dig for ore, Or dangle devils in a bottle/And push them from the pull of the bush" demonstrates that "civilizing mission"

"Night of the Swallow" is about helping an escaped criminal by a hired plane, the swallow representing freedom. There's some Uileann pipes that give this a Celtic tinge during the refrain.

The lonely, one-sided, and reincarnated soul in "All The Love" wants people to love her, but is oblivious to the other people, represented by a young boy singing "We needed you to love us too. We wait for your move." Also present is the observation that dying brings out the grief and love and how she's turned on by the attention. The sighs and multiple phone message machines at the end is an interesting touch.

The soft piano ballad "Houdini" and some of the lyrics incorporate the album cover, where Houdini gets the key that'll unbind him from the water tank trick by kissing his assistant, who has the key in her mouth. Her bellowing voice comes in here: "With your spit still on my lip, you hit the water" and there are moments when she wishes he'd drown. When I heard the line "Rosabel believe" I thought it was "Roosevelt bleed" and I thought "What the...?" There is a nice lyrical string section that plays after the bellowing bits.

"Get Out Of My House" is a really bizarre one, told from the point of view of a woman with a house analogy incorporated, telling a man to, well... There are some erotic overtones "no stranger's feet will enter me/I wash the panes/I clean the stains" And in line with cleaning of the house, it seems to imply that men make a mess of her life, but there are multiple meanings, as the house also represents her neurotic mental psyche, as it's full of her madness, mistakes, and fight. She screams out the title, and even bellows like a mule (!!!) to demonstrate her stubbornness in not letting anyone in.

One of the weirdest but most wonderful from Kate Bush. Even though she seemed to go mainstream in her followup, she continued the innovation of the Dreaming in the concept album portion.

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