633 Kate Bush - The Dreaming (1982)

Studio Album - Art Pop

About the Act:

In 1978 when Kate Bush was 19, she released Wuthering Heights, one of the squeakiest songs to top the UK charts. That was the first time a female lady had topped the charts with a song she wrote herself. She was famously helped into the limelight by Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and has had a glittering career of singing, song writing, producing and playing instruments. She is iconic. She is from Bexleyheath in the UK. She is a bit of an oddball, it's kind of like her USP.

About the Album:

This was her fourth album, the first to be entirely produced by herself. It used the Fairlight CMI, an expensive and early sampler. It took about 2 years to record, and her label thought it was uncommercial, because it was so odd. It entered the UK album charts at number 3. To be fair, it is the least good-selling of her albums.

My History with this Album:

None

Review:

I've listened to this album twice now, and I'm sitting here wondering how on earth I am going to describe it to you. 

It's weird.

So, Kate Bush is a bit of a weirdo at times, and this seems to be her at her oddest. She got into a studio (actually several) with some amazing equipment and went bananas with it. 

Musically it's complex, and there are odd structures, odd harmonies, odd chord sequences, odd time signatures and odd rhythms. It's kind of bright and shiny and dense, giving a feeling of a bog full of jumbled Lego pieces, not just bricks but gears and all sorts of odd things. The sound is generally shiny and bright (like Lego) and kind of knobbly (like Lego). And dense. There is a lot going on. No wonder it took two years. It definitely still mostly feels like pop, but it's pop that's strayed off the path, and is dancing to its own tune. If you are familiar with Kate's hits, like Babooshka, and Running up that Hill, it's kind of like that without the commerciality. Oh, and it includes some odd sound effects, including the most musical use of the sound of a train passing ever.

Vocally, well Kate's voice it quite distinctive, and she kind of plays up to that, but at the same time experiments with all sorts of odd processing and sounds and vocal inflections, including affecting accents as she sings (in at least two songs) and kind of predating the Death Metal growl. 

Subject matter. I bet you can't guess - it's an odd mixture of ideas and themes. I'm actually going to decline to give detail here, because it's like a bran tub of oddness, you never know what you are going to get.

Bing! Got it! Some way of describing this. It's the musical equivalent of Tim Burton films, colourful but quirky and odd. Dark but not really, almost like a carnival.

And I liked it. It appealed to my inner surrealist. It's my kind of odd, predating Bjork, but definitely in the same vein. It's a great big jumble, but it is not a mess, it actually works, but you do need a reasonable tolerance for oddness.

8.8/10

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1gRJsaJ7ExC9Q9YdB9ZMC5

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI6kLIhBBwmRaayNaW7EjnodoLBuRN4Gl

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreaming_(album)