Kate Bush

The Dreaming

20 Years Later: The Kanga Still Bangs

Review Score:

(10/10)
Every October of my life, my attention somehow comes back to this record. Like many other reviewers here, I am an enormous Kate Bush fan; I first discovered her in high school, when my friends insisted that Kate was amazing and carried about her LPs under their arms to swap and listen to after school. I had been familiar with Kate's earlier, darkly weirdling folk-piano masterpieces that came prior to 'The Dreaming,' but when this LP dropped -- WOW.

First off, it is truly an amazing thing to listen to an album that stands the test of time. 'The Dreaming' dared to break ground that almost no one has ever dared to break again. It doesn't exactly sound like the early '80s; in fact, I always thought of this as a studio masterpiece a la another album from 1982, Peter Gabriel's 'Security': and that Kate and Peter have worked together doesn't make this necessarily an accident.
As a tour de force of songwriting and bravura execution, 'The Dreaming' is uniquely Kate. Bold confessions; unusual subject matter. Who else in the pop pantheon is going to write a song about Houdini's wife trying to contact the magician beyond the grave? Who else is going to write a song about war with the chorus darkly chanting 'Pull out the pin...', to be answered by the anguished cries of 'I LOVE LIFE'? 20 years (WHOA!!) after its release, I'm still listening, and still enraptured by the sounds that unfold from the speakers.

The teaming of the utterly bizarre title track with 'Night of the Swallow' still moves me to tears, and features some of my favorite moments on the record. After moving through the otherworldly aboriginal Dreamtime, there is a flurry of wings, birds being released...And shortly thereafter, Irish pipes kick in, to reveal Kate at her piano in one of the quieter moments on the record. 'Night of the Swallow' is a tremendous, Irish-folk inflected track, and again you have to wonder: who would have dared to have the background singers respond by cooing, as if they were swallows? Well, it works, and this is mesmerizing stuff.

Describing this record is indeed difficult. It is an original masterpiece in every way, and a record you're going to want to hear while dusk is settling in, or you're driving along a dark road, lost. Kate, from the bottom of me heart, thank you. And to the record company: for crying out loud, remaster this incredible disc already!

More Reviews: