Aerial

by

Kate Bush

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I've been listening to Kate for many years now, but around the time Red Shoes came out, I thought Kate ceased to be a mad genius and was now only a garden-variety genius.

And this album seemed a little ho-hum at first hearing. Sea of Honey has wonderfully campy prog rock feel, but also a heavy dose of sticky melancholy. There is pastoral tone (a la Lark Ascending) and mood of summer music complete with swooshing Hawaiian waves, cutesy touches (Italian theme, voices of Bertie and Harris and all these bloody birds) to the Sky of Honey. Me, I always loved the freaky side of Kate- Kite, Violin, Get out of my House, Waking the Witch, Walk Straight Down The Middle, Lily - rather than mushiness of This Woman's Work, and that's only hinted at on Aerial. And other than perfectly controlled King of the Hill and Pi, vocally Kate likes to let the quiver in her voice take over, and often loses pitch control in the lower registers.

And with all this, after listening to the entire album a few times, I am completely taken with Aerial.

It should be treated as a whole package. For starters, the album cover is great, the sound wave and sunset blended into surprisingly stark and beautiful picture. Inside the CD booklet, the pastel paintings, and photos of laundry and Kate's son flashing his milky whites are paired with a picture of someone wearing a supremely creepy "Indus Bird Mask", fashioned out of dead bird. A touch of shaman in Ms Domestic Goddess. No wonder Kate has been a muse to the likes of Outkast and Coil; there is more to her than meets the eye or the casual ear.

The lyrics have the beautiful simplicity of Yeats poetry. Mrs Bartolozzi can be Virginia Woolf internal monologue about mundane tasks, a mournful tribute to the departed or Dedalus epiphany, of seeing a girl standing in the water, with skirts around her waist, looking like an exotic bird with white plumage, and suddenly realizing what's important in your life. Or simply the best laundry song ever written. And how about the unexpected delight of Pi, where strings of numbers are turned into a passionate hymn dealing with obsession and infinity. I like the fact that Kate is not willing to explain all her lyrics, and allows people to bring their own interpretations to the table.

If you are musician, you should hear this album to witness an artist at the top of her game: it's not slapping few chords and verses together, this music is grown from a flash of underlying idea, and then woven like tapestry, dressed up, painted in delicate strokes. And Kate excels both in straightforward piano songs, like simple and devastating Coral Room, and dense and complex structures of Pi, Nocturne and Aerial. David Bowie may speak of Thomas Tallis, but it's Kate who writes an ecstatic ode to her son that seamlessly blends the old and the new, and sounds like an ancient court dance, complete with Renaissance guitar and violas orchestration, and contemporary song, all at once. And Aerial also has a piece of world music fusion so subtle that I actually missed it at first, until I realized that in Aerial Tal (Taal is a Hindi word for rhythm) Kate is singing a raga scale with the the birds... And after repeated listenings, the remarkable cycle and flow of Sky of Honey comes into full force. Discovering all the layers of Aerial is a great journey.

If you think this music is too simple for your taste, there's always Bach's Mass in B Minor with contrapuntal harmonies so complex, your brain may curdle. In my opinion, among currently not deceased composers, very few people are in Kate's league. I don't know why Tori Amos, a gifted artist whose music somehow leaves me cold, is being compared to Kate; both play the piano, but they are guided by very different aesthetics. Bjork has long surpassed her Fairy Godmother Kate in sheer musical inventiveness, but she is in a freaky place and not accessible for some people. Kate is still on top of the hill and I am glad she came out of hiding to give us this Aerial.

First, the good news: Aerial is not another pair of red shoes, and it does contain some very good material. The not-so-good news: it's without a doubt the most uneven recording that Kate's ever done, involving more than its fair share of filler. I'm going to go out on a limb here, risking the ire of probably all other Kate fans, to say that I've always thought she would benefit greatly from an outside producer, and I think this album bears me out on this point. I'm thinking of someone who has solid credentials for protecting the artist's experimental nature, but who is also capable of maintaining a solid level of pop sensibility - Brian Eno comes to mind as a good example of what I'm talking about (Brian Eno producing Kate Bush, how awesome would that be!). Someone not only to bounce ideas off of, but also to act as a lens, focusing Kate's keen talent and vision for more consistent and satisfying results. Jeez, let's just try it for a couple of tunes and see what happens. Anyway, that said, it is great to hear her voice again after all these years, and the magick is definitely still there. Now, here's my play-by-play analysis of the songs on this ambitious 2-disc set, and I calls `em like I sees `em:

Disc 1 (A Sea of Honey) opens strongly with the first single, "King of the Mountain". This song reminds me a lot of some of the better songs off her very first album, as it has a cadence similar to "Moving", or "Saxophone Song". A cautionary tale about fame (in the be-careful-what-you-ask-for sense), this one gives me chills and stands right up there with her very best work. Unfortunately, it would set the bar a bit high for the rest of the album. "Pi" is carried along by a bouncy little synthesizer and follows thematically in the vein of songs like "Them Heavy People", "Delius", and "Sat in Your Lap", where Kate expresses fascination, but also frustration, with those people that she views as her intellectual superiors. Reciting pi out to umpteen decimal places is certainly a clever device, and, being a scientist myself, I understand the point she's trying to make, but it can wear a bit thin after a few listens. I feel it might have been more effective and interesting to do a song about the CONSEQUENCES of focusing on one thing to the point of excluding all the other things that life has to offer. However, that said, if I'm going to listen to anyone recite numbers, then Kate would be the one, and I do appreciate the experiment. "Bertie" reminds me a lot of "Oh England, My Lionheart", except that it's a love song for her son instead of her country. Yeah, I guess it's awful cute right now, but boy it's sure gonna embarrass the heck outta the poor kid when he gets older! I can hear the taunts on the playground now: "Oooh Bertie, your sooo love-e-ly!", and "Oooh Bertie, give us sweet kisses!" Oh, man, the horror! I guess that, ultimately, mother does NOT stand for comfort! I sure hope there's a male influence in the kid's life, but, if there is, he's ominously absent from the CD booklet photos (unless it's the dude in the bird mask, but I doubt it). "Mrs. Bartolozzi" is just one of those slow, mellow songs that Kate does, and I've never really been into those. I've always primarily enjoyed the unique ways that she has employed rhythm, as well as her wild and whacky side, and there just isn't enough of that here. At least, I guess, in back-to-back songs we have the good and bad sides of motherhood and family life. "How to be Invisible" is the second great song on the album and has the hands-down best guitar sound that I've ever heard on any of her recordings. It's interesting that this is sort of a companion piece to "King of the Mountain", and deals with the problems of reclusiveness as a response to the pressures of fame. "Joanni", presumably about Joan of Arc, has a great feel to it, and reminds me texturally of some of Peter Gabriel's middle-period stuff. It also includes a great throat-clearing exercise that you can try at home! "A Coral Room" falls into the same category, for me, as "Mrs. Bartolozzi" - it's just too mellow and subdued for me to get into.

A lot of people are trying to push that disc 2 (A Sky of Honey) is just one long song in 9 suites, but I do think that each song is distinct. Unfortunately, this disk doesn't really get going until "Sunset", the 5th song; and I see the first 4 songs ("Prelude", "Prologue", "An Architect's Dream", and "The Painter's Link") as little individual overtures that lead up to (but overly delay) the main action. "The Painter's Link" could have been good, except that there's some guy trying to sing on it who can't (who is this man and why is he on my Kate Bush album?). Once again, this is where an outside producer, if present, could have gently whacked Kate across the knuckles with a ruler and assured her that she needs no vocal assistance. Getting back to "Sunset", it starts slow, but builds steadily into a snappy, flamenco-style ditty. For all its shortcomings, at least this disc saves the best for last, and finishes strongly with "Somewhere in Between", "Nocturn", and "Aerial". Of these 3, the first two are really great, moving along with a subtle, insistent beat, but also with a silky jazziness that is unlike any of her previous work. Never has her voice sounded so sexy and soulful! The whole affair closes with (finally!) the confident, demonstrative rocker that is the title song.

In conclusion, for longtime fans, I can recommend buying Aerial. Even with all that I perceive as filler, there's still plenty of good stuff to pick out and enjoy. Personally, I program in "King of the Mountain", "Pi", "How to be Invisible", "Joanni", "Sunset", "Somewhere in Between", "Nocturn", and "Aerial" for 49 minutes of thoroughly enjoyable music (note that this would have fit nicely onto ONE disc that I would have awarded 4 stars - ahem, ahem). For potential new fans - yeah, I guess you can start here, but be prepared for some pleasant, even shocking, surprises as you work back through her catalogue. Finally, my hope is that this represents a fresh re-start and that we won't have to wait until sometime next decade for another offering. Hey Kate, your son's going to be in school soon (if he isn't already) which means that you're just going to be sitting around the house with nothing to do. But, wait a minute, that's right, you've got a recording studio right there in your house! I've got an idea, since you evidently find doing laundry to be a traumatic experience, why not get someone else to do that while you RECORD MORE SONGS! I'm a genius! I demand a new album at least every two years (and don't forget to give Brian a call)!