Reviewed by Cliff Winnig
(3/22/00)
Kate Bush's popularity has continued through many years and many style changes since her first album, The Kick Inside, came out in the UK on EMI. EMI went on to publish five more of her albums. These albums, along with two CDs of B-sides and 12" remixes, were collected in the mammoth 8 CD boxed set, This Woman's Work. In this collection, both new fans and old can find a plethora of moods, textures, and styles.
While none of these CDs are really the sort of thing one would, say, put on as background material for a romantic liaison, they contain quite a number of songs about love and sex. Not a big deal, you say, so would any pop star's retrospective collection. What separates Kate Bush from the crowd of love-lorn crooners is her sense of the sensual, and her evocation of passion. One can put on a disk or five (depending on how many your CD player can handle), relax on the couch with a favorite person or two, or maybe just your cat, and feel that passion coming through in every song.
This Woman's Work contains two versions of her first single, "Wuthering Heights." Back in 1978, it went to #1 on the British pop charts. Clearly, there was more to it than a sudden appreciation for Victorian novels on the part of the listening public. Bush sang in such a way that she captured the novel's heroine Catherine's dominating personality as well as her helpless longing for Heathcliff, lost to her since she'd died and become a ghost. Catherine's passion for, literally, the love of her life -- "Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream,/My only master" -- comes through in every line of music. Bush evokes Catherine's passion so that the listener not only understands it but also, with small leap of empathy, can feel it as well. The second version, which is on one of the extra CDs in the collection, features a new vocal track. In that track, Bush sings with less stridency and more lushness, showing a gentler side of Catherine's personality. Both versions have more than a bit of Catherine in them, so they're complementary.
"Wuthering Heights" is typical of the depth of empathy Bush brings forth in the characters from whose point-of-view she sings. This Woman's Work is full to the bursting point of songs that evoke passion. Like many pop artists, Bush sings about romance from many different perspectives and in many different forms. But her work, using unusual instrumental textures, vocal slides, complex arrangements, and other artistic devices, slides into the subject matter to such a degree that one can feel it. And she approaches the subject of love from more varied perspectives than most.
For instance, in "Kashka from Baghdad," Bush's narrator is watching a gay male romance in the apartment across the street, aching to be with them because they're so in love that they don't even need to go out at night: "The moon's not bright enough./There's light in love, you see." In "In the Warm Room," Bush evokes an erotic scene, heavy and scented. The instrumental textures are warm and smooth. The vocals slide over them, calmly telling the listener that, as "She prepares to go to bed./She'll let you watch her undress,/Go places where/Your fingers long to linger."
In "Love and Anger," she not only uses music to speak about love, but she compares love to music: "To let go of these feelings/Like a bell to a Southerly wind/We could be like two strings beating,/Speaking in sympathy." In Bush's lyrics, music and emotion are inextricably intertwined.
Bush uses that intertwining for other topics as well. "Experiment IV" plays off the idea that music can evoke strong emotional reactions. In the song, a group of musicians is asked by a shadowy government agency to make a sound that could kill at a distance. To do so, they blend strong emotions, including both the pain and joy of love. Passion is once again essential to the song, but not just romantic passion. In "Deeper Understanding," the narrator finds, that "As the people here grow colder/I turn to my computer/And spend my evenings with it/Like a friend." And this was before the Web. The computer tells her "Hello, I know that you're unhappy./I bring you love and deeper understanding."
Through her music, Kate Bush brings a deeper understanding of passion, love, and the depth of life. And that music is very well represented in This Woman's Work.
