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Kate Bush: Aerial
[Columbia] (2005)
Kate Bush's new CD is in two parts, A Sea of Honey, and, A Sky of Honey. I have been listening to it on the drive up and down the Pacific Coast, and in the truck back here again in the Bay Area.
The first of the two CDs, A Sea of Honey, is a loosely related suite of introspective takes on life, its daily challenges and joys. On my first couple of listens, I thought it a tad self-indulgent, but forgivably so, and it has some classically kate Bush surreal moments. Kate has a way of looking at things, almost sideways, as though no one had ever seen them before, as though the most everyday situations were completely unknown beforehand. This is one of the cores of her approach to writing, and so, even when I found her subject matter less than fully engaging, there remains a frshness to her viewpoint. For example, the second song on the first CD, Pi, really is a song about mathematics, chaos, order, and the obsessive analysis of the Universe. (Hard not to think of Darren Aronofsky's much darker, mystical, suspense-thriller take on the subject, in his movie of the same name.) She focuses on her young son's impact on her life on at least two tracks, most overtly on Bertie; these are tracks in which almost every parent will find some feeling they have shared. The song Mrs. Bartolozzi, which could as well be titled Washing Machine, contains many moments that remind me of Sylvia Plath; of a woman trapped in a domestic life, possibly an abusive life, who needs to break out, wherever she can, from her bleak existence. How to Be Invisible is a dark, almost noir groove that builds towards both climax and evaporation. As usual, the sound design is amazing, unique, the guitar tones not like anything you've heard before. The first CD ends with A Coral Room, another quiet, contemplative mood; both indoors and out, sad and ecstatic; it is here the sea of honey really comes into focus.
The second CD, A Sky of Honey, is the real masterpiece of the album, and is built around several samples of bird songs. This is a continuous suite of pieces, such as Kate’s suite The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love; as such, it is a characteristic form for her work, in which we find some of her best, most operatic, most conceptual writing.
Some singer-songwriters are genuine poets, whose work stands alone, as written poetry on the page, as well as sung. Many of Joni Mitchell’s pieces fit this criterion, as do Bruce Cockburn’s. They work, not only as song lyrics, but as poems. Kate Bush’s lyrics are not, on the page, as engaging or powerfully poetic, to read, as Mitchell’s. But here’s the truth: It just does not matter! As a performer, composer, vocalist, and writer, Kate Bush is without parallel. The things she can do with her voice go beyond anything one normally expects, or receives, in pop music. Some of the sections of A Sky of Honey are explicitly, directly inspired by birdsong, and we find the recorded bird cross-fading into Kate’s voice imitating it, morphing into it, or doing a conversational counterpoint: an actual coversation, a convincing dialogue.
The bird analog is made explicit on the CD’s cover art, as well, with its field of golden honey-colored sky, and what looks like the rough rocks of Monument Valley in the desert Southwest; the art is split in the middle, as though reflecting the sky and rocks in a vast, still lake. But then you look more closely, and realize suddenly that the rocks are not really rocks, but waveforms, soundfiles, peaks and valleys of birdsong. This is one of the more poetic, mythic tie-ins for cover art one has seen in a very long while.
This is why I don't care when her words are even borderline cliches. She is still doing something fresh with her approach, even when seh uses a phrase you've heard in countless other songs. What she does with her material is what makes her work so very powerful. Very few other recording artists are capable of bringing the listener along to reach such an exalted state of being. At her best, this is what Kate Bush does so very,very well.
And Kate Bush is a dancer. In many of her songs, the way she ornaments a vocal phrase, or articulates a line, you can feel the physicality of it, the movement, the shape. At times, when the music turns on a dime, as in Nocturne, you can see and feel a flock of birds suddenly change direction in midair, with perfect coordination, in perfect unison, as the music swoops and dives—and you are among them. She does this in part by layering her own voice on numerous tracks to create an entire choir of voices; it’s one of the more potent effects on this CD.
My favorite tracks are the concluding movements of the suite, Sunset, Somewhere in Between, Nocturn, and the title track, Aerial, which move from sunset, though night’s darkness, and to dawn. Are we in a dream? Is it real? Have we been sleeping, and are now awakened? Or is it somehow, as with Chuang Tse’s butterfly, that we were awake in dreams, and are now asleep? The question blends into the pulsating, danceable music, brilliantly arranged and performed. I ofund myself listening to this section of the album over and over again, as i spent hours and hours driving through mist and rain on the Pacific Coast, in Oregon and Northern California, on a recent drive down from Portland to San Francisco. The music kept me going, kept my driving, gave me a deep reason for my life: to become as exalted as this music itself.
It’s been years since the last album that Kate Bush provided for us, and the wait was well worth it. Very highly recommended.
—November 2005
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