Never for Ever

by

Kate Bush

Edit

Although it clearly belongs to the same style as the previous THE KICK INSIDE and LIONHEART, NEVER FOREVER marks a decided change in Kate Bush's direction; less whimsical and considerably more overtly macabre, on this particular recording Bush largely eschews both the purely playful and the warm love songs of previous recordings. Her tone of voice is also fuller and considerably less girlish than on previous recordings.

The material here is also considerably more violent in terms of lyrics. In her previous recordings Bush certainly showed a tendency toward images of impending or actual death ("James and the Cold Gun" and "Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake" leap to mind), but in NEVER FOREVER she is less inclined to present such pieces as "character pieces," less inclined to romanticize them with a gothic flavor. And irony, never far beneath the surface in earlier work, is much more apparent.

Such tracks as "Violin" (concerning a neurotic/erotic obsession with the instrument, in which Bush's voice mimics the tone of the instrument), "Wedding List," (in which a frustrated bride contemplates the slaughter of the whole wedding party), and "Breathing" (in which the singer is dying of radium posioning following an atomic blast) are perhaps the logical extensions of Bush's earlier work; at the same time, with such tracks as "All We Ever Look For" and "Army Dreamers," we begin to see a transition from material based on internal private fantasty into something much broader and considerably more subtle: deliberate commentary on the world around her. This is particularly true of "Army Dreamers," which is very clearly a percusor to her next album, THE DREAMING--which will be a radical departure from her earlier sound.

Even as she is toying with new dimensions in her lyrics and vocal interpretations, Bush is also toying with increasingly complex arrangements. There is a sense of greater delicacy and greater deliberation in terms of pure music on this particular recording, again with "Army Dreamers" a case in point. Fans of the earlier recordings will find enough similarity to them in NEVER FOREVER to enjoy them as a continuation; fans of her later work, however, will see in it the build toward her two finest recordings, THE DREAMING and HOUNDS OF LOVE, both of which are as completely unlike her early works as can be imagined.

An early indication of the genius that Kate Bush would become. The Lyrics speak with wit, ecocation, and provocation: repressed paedophilia and death from radioactive fallout are examples of the weird and varied sources Kate can seamlessly draw from. The music itself is sometimes a drawback: although it is obviously more layered and textured the experimental whims are sometimes caught in the stylistic trappings that defined her earliest work. This means that some tracks don't work as well as they should and others are just lightweight and boring. Still, there are mammoth songs here that provide far more than just cold comfort consolation.

Best Tracks: Beathing, Babooshka, The Infant Kiss.