I'm a bit ashamed to mention this (we're far from rock 'n' roll here...), but I've never stopped digging sweet Kate, who is like my weakness...
Anyway, for those of us who might be interested, here's a review of "Aerial", her first recording since "The Red Shoes" (1993):
20th October 2005: So far so very, very good - Aerial is raking up a crop of very enthusiastic reviews. The Independent in the UK have reviewed Aerial in the 21st October edition, under the headline "Finally, something for the grown-ups"..."Early next month, Kate Bush releases Aerial, her first new album since The Red Shoes back in November 1993. Even by the relaxed schedules adopted by pop's more established artists, this is an extraordinary career hiatus - not quite the 20 years separating Steely Dan's Gaucho and Two Against Nature, perhaps, but well on the way there. Entire pop scenes and musical movements have budded, bloomed and withered in the interim...the more pertinent concern is whether her music remains relevant in a music landscape that has seen Britpop come and go, grunge atrophy into skate-metal, hip-hop conquer the known world, and talent-contest TV reduce chart pop to a production-line of vacuity.
Changes flash by ever more rapidly in the modern, computer-assisted music world, and in decoupling from its dizzy progress for a dozen years, Kate Bush runs a serious risk of getting flattened like a hedgehog crossing a motorway upon her return. Extraordinarily, she manages to traverse both carriageways with only superficial damage to a few spines: indeed, such is the idiosyncratic nature of her work that she could probably disappear for a half-century and still sustain her own unique position in the pop firmament. But then, who else would write about an obsessive-compulsive housewife or attempt a vocal duet with trilling birds, or, in the most courageous of the album's many unusual strategies, sing huge strings of numbers, a gambit that brings new meaning to the old critic's chestnut about being happy to listen to someone singing the telephone directory? The only track so far available from the album, the single "King Of The Mountain", employs references to Elvis and Citizen Kane to illustrate her musings upon fame and wealth and isolation.
"Why," she wonders, "does a multi-millionaire fill up his home with priceless junk?" The rest of the album - particularly the extended song-cycle that occupies the entire second disc - seems like her own suggestion as to how to use that lofty position more profitably, in a spiritual and aesthetic manner. A reggae lilt underscored with misty synthesiser textures, " King Of The Mountain" has the gently insistent quality that proved so effective on several of her previous singles. The picture adorning the single's sleeve is by Bush's young son, " lovely, lovely Bertie", whose presence toddles joyously through much of the new album, clearly illuminating her world. Many years ago, back near the start of her career, she regarded the domestic demands of motherhood as a dubious prospect, claiming her work was her love, and how could she do that and bring up a child at the same time? The answer, presumably, was not to work for a dozen years.
Ironically, childhood - and particularly the struggle not to relinquish it - has always been one of the driving concerns of Bush's work...it's certainly still a factor on Aerial , both in the track "Bertie" itself and in the memories and reminiscences that cobweb some other songs. But compared to the darker corners of the mind sometimes mined in earlier songs, the new album seems a much sunnier affair: an enduring image I took away from it - not necessarily a lyric, though it might have been - was of windows flung wide open, their curtains billowing out in the breeze, a room's long-dormant dust stirred into life again... at around an hour and a half, Aerial is unquestionably a substantial piece of work, and its manifold peculiarities and quirks offer much more interesting fare than that available from today's AOR mainstream.
It's also a more mature undertaking than any of her previous albums, an extended meditation on art and light, fame and family, creativity and the natural world. Indeed it seems, come to think of it, like an expansion of the theme of Laura Veirs' gorgeous "Rapture". And since that was the finest song of last year, I'd have to say that leaves Kate Bush still operating at the cutting-edge of intelligent adult pop, every bit as relevant now as at any point in her career. Just a little bit weirder, thank heavens."
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