Kate Bush

The Sensual World

Two or Three of her Best Songs Ever Here

Review Score:

(10/10)
Only the second Kate Bush album I ever loved the first time I heard it, this may in fact be her most accessible, with neither the wildness of experimentation on "The Dreaming", nor the exceptionally soprano vocals of her first three. If you are curious about whether to try Kate Bush or not, this is a fine place to start.

Opening with "The Sensual World", we are at once plunged into an appropriately sensual sonic world. Bush's musical experimentation has moved (for this song at least) away from compositional complexity to orchestral richness. As usual, of course, the musicianship is simply exquisite. The lyrics are confessionally lurid.

"Love and Anger", the single from the album, is Bush reaching back to the kind of rock composition she originally attempted with "James and the Cold Gun", now magnified with the ferocity of her intelligence and experience. The chorus is typically powerful, and it is both endearing and amazing how her emotional range has changed over the course of her albums. A must hear piece.

"The Fog" is a truly rich symphony that is lush, but not at all misty or vague. One of the things so amazing about Bush's music is how you really have to concentrate to pick out the instruments in her best songs. She puts together such artful combinations that it is received as a whole, as if the melody and accompaniment are more sensed than heard. In any case, the string arrangement here is simply sumptuous and the vocals, crystalline and beautiful.

"Reaching Out" is one of the best Kate Bush songs ever. It's what you get with eleven years of experience applied to the basic song formula of piano, drums and bass that Bush began with. The simultaneous power and clarity of her backing vocals here makes the disc worth having alone, but the chorus is simply one of her most beautiful and haunting ever.

"Heads Were Dancing", a quirky song about meeting Hitler in a dancehall, is not the most compelling combination of music and vocals Bush has ever done. Subpar only by her high standards, the song has its strengths, particularly the funky bass line. I'd never try to make converts with this song though. It doesn't help much that the song runs on for over five minutes.

"Deeper Understanding", technically an even quirkier song about a computer program that provides emotional nurturing and deeper understanding for lonely people, is much more successful because of the truly lovely vocal arrangements Bush builds up, especially in the chorus with the child-like and sweet timbre of her voice, as opposed to the desperate and hollow intonation she uses for the narrator, who is describing her (or his) lonely and desperate condition. Simple drums, keyboards, piano and subtle bass provide the skeleton for the song. The "Eastern"-influenced vocal flourish toward the end is also especially nice.

For the songwriter who began with some many dreamy ballads about love, "Between a Man and a Woman" shows, lyrically, emotionally and musically, how very, very far Bush has come as an artist. There is more emotional nuance, characterization and range in this one song than on many other people's albums. And once again, the surprising simplicity of orchestration, with its continuous splashes of guitar or bass or drum or keyboard, disappears in the overall complexity of its sound.

"Never Be Mine" is another of those exquisite Kate Bush songs that seems to disappear into her catalog, overshadowed unjustly by other justly marvelous songs. It seems genuinely impossible to do descriptive justice to this song--the many layers of vocals are simply breathtaking, and the way the bass and the guitar tones combine here to form an unprecedented instrument of their own is gorgeous. Definitely a song to make buying the disk worth it.

"Rocket's Tail" is a stand out piece, since it opens with an a cappella section with Bush providing all of the voices. The bassist (that must be Del Palmer, Bush's long time David Gilmour of the bass) provides especially scrumptious lines in the rock section that follows. It's hard not to think of this song as a kind of musically super-developed version of "Kite".

"This Woman's Work", an example of Kate Bush at the very bedrock of her compositional strength (just her and the piano), is an unbelievably beautiful, achingly affecting song. The way she sings about needing to be strong in a nearly cracking voice, how the backing vocals swell in intensity and then just fall away as she sings, "just make it go away"...a perfect combination of form and content. But the main thing is how haunting and beautiful the song is. Originally the last song on the album, it left an almost unbearable and amazing impression.

Technically, I should rant that the effect of the original album is compromised by tacking another song on the end, but "Walk Straight Down the Middle" (one of Bush's insanely good B-sides, like "Under the Ivy") is another of her finest vocal achievements. Sung in an almost-drugged voice for the verse, the chorus suddenly opens up into pure power and clarity backed by marvelously arpeggiated chords that put exactly the right amount of swing behind the strength of Bush's vocals. The bass work at the end is yet one more reason to vote for Del Palmer as a ranking member of the most undercelebrated bassists ever club.

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