Part I.

Kate Bush, musician extraordinaire, rushes in where the dull and unimaginative fear to tread. In her terrific landmark album, The Dreaming, which saw a quiet release to the unsuspecting world some twenty years ago, she crashes through the boundaries of modern alternative pop music making, whilst maintaining a strong link to her listeners--I might be so bold as to declare that with this album she forges an even more powerful bond with them. And the more you listen to the tracks, the more deeply you're drawn into her mesmerizing, wild, weird and wonderful Salvador Daliesque world.

Kate has also called this her "mad album." Ah, give me intelligent madness over mediocrity anytime!

What to Do While Waiting for KBVIII.

Well, while awaiting her follow-up to the 1993 Red Shoes (rumored at one time to be released in ‘98, ‘99, ‘00, ‘01, ‘02, ‘03...well, best not to hold your breath at this rate!), one can easily kill all that downtime in marvelous fashion by rediscovering the loads of great music from her previous works.

Take The Dreaming, for instance: a musically daring opus densely filled with treasures large and small, lightheartedly fun and thoughtfully melancholic, bizarre and comprehensible, but never, ever banal or ordinary.

This dazzling, shocking, exhilarating, intense, intelligent, beautifully weird and strangely melodious album simply bursts with rare musical vision, brilliance and innovation, and Kate appears to have hit her creative peak on this one. Released in 1982, The Dreaming boasts songs not a one of which betrays a particular expiration date, nor date of production, for that matter. Kate dived into the dark, weird, outlandish depths of her musical soul to emerge with creations that hold up exceedingly well many years, even decades, later. They may also have been too far ahead of their time, since the album never racked up sales to equal her previous and subsequent successes (e.g., Hounds of Love) at the time of its release. In fact, it is perhaps fated by its very radical nature to never see material success.

The new listener would do well to cast off all set ideas about music, including those absorbed from Kate's other works. Each of her projects must be taken on its own terms, as no two are alike. And yet they all bear the unmistakable stamp of Kate Bush.

The experimentation on The Dreaming might recall the Beatles' work on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), except that to my mind, Kate does that one better. After The Dreaming, there was no turning back. She set the bar so high for herself with this album, that to some, the rest of her work are all letdowns. While many consider this to be her masterpiece, others give that honor to Hounds of Love. Her later works might seem like disappointments in comparison, but they also serve to highlight the magnificence of her ‘80s output, reflecting a constantly evolving, musically restless Kate.

A word of warning: The Dreaming is not for the timid soul, nor will it suit the impatient listener demanding an instant musical fix. Nope, it asks a bit more of its audience--but the rewards gained are well worth the extra time and effort.

Chaos or Complexity?

At first blush, the songs here will strike you as completely chaotic and sometimes, frightening in their weirdness. Kate mixes instruments, sounds and rhythms from a slew of often unrelated musical genres, including Celtic, tribal, electronica, rock, classical, jazz, etc.. The complexity and richness of the arrangements are bound to befuddle the novice listener. As with many of the greatest musical creations, only through close and repeated listening will the musical and lyrical intricacies of the work be gleaned. Then comes that epiphanic moment when the music begins to makes sense, as it insinuates itself into your subliminal consciousness, and voila! you're now hooked on the kooky music of KB!

The Odd Meters.

Here Kate plays more freely than the average musician with the meters, and rhythms, with some abrupt shifts smack dab in mid-song. Hence the elusive, unpredictable character of her music.

Her Insanely Varied Vocal Stylings and Phrasings.

Kate displays multi-hued and exciting vocal stylings on The Dreaming. Her vocal acrobatics always surprise when they don't amaze, and can range from flat recitation, crooning and plaintive singing to snarling, laughing, growling, yelping, barking and screeching, even glottal-stop-filled hiccuping, all done in four octaves and coming at you from left, right, center--or everywhere at once. She also mutates her vocal into an alienating, electronic sound which finds fullest expression on Leave It Open.

She also records her vocal in repeated and overlapping layers, serving as her own female vocal backup (similar to what Enya does, except that Kate employs far fewer than Enya’s average of a hundred vocal strata). Her singing here, which hovers mostly in the more natural, low to upper middle range with leaps into the higher octaves, is also a most welcome change from the high-pitched, falsetto wailing she overindulged in early in her career, something that grated on some people’s nerves (including mine).

Her unique vocal phrasing gives precedence to the musical rhythm over the words, resulting in a plasticity of vowel sounds and some oddly stressed syllables--all of which render transcription of her lyrics into a maddeningly challenging task.

Kate Shuns Lyrical Mediocrity.

Witness the variety of subject matter: a bank heist, Houdini, soldiers in battle, the aborigine Dreamtime, a swallow's flight (a metaphor, perhaps), knowledge and wisdom, the Garden of Eden (just a guess). . .and much more.

Is this madness? Sheer brilliance? Or sheer mad brilliance?

I vote for the last. Each track on The Dreaming contains more inventive and compelling elements than entire albums, even bodies of works, put out by most musicians.

(And perhaps, apropos of modern pop music in general, why does it seem to me--and I may be betraying my ignorance here--that a greater proportion of UK musicians seem more trailblazing and "alternative" than those in the US . . . witness Peter Gabriel, Cocteau Twins, Sinéad O'Connor, Enya, P.J. Harvey, just for starters. . . . )

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Note to time-constrained readers: those bored and annoyed by individual song dissections may opt to skip the next part of this review and go straight to the final two paragraphs below. I have summed up the salient points about this album in the previous section.

As for the other, masochistic, er--patient--group of readers, well, don't say I didn't warn you! And if you're one of those few who love (or hate) this album, it might be of small interest to check out my impressions against yours?)

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Part II.

The Ten Tracks.

On to the ten tracks then, none of which will sound similar to anything you've heard before. Or after.

1. Sat in your Lap

From the start, the drums are already pounding away relentlessly as Kate jumps in with spoken, midrange vocals. Sharp brasses shoot out in short bursts, as this rampaging track takes off, leaving you breathless in the wake of its adrenaline-charged tempo. Kate spews forth her staccato phrases, and in the chorus gets to shriek,

Some say that knowledge is something that you never have
Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap
Some say that heaven is hell, some say that hell is heaven.

This song feels like both heaven and hell, and the more I listen to this, the better it gets.

2. There Goes a Tenner

is a droll tune about a heist that goes awry. Kate has clever fun with rhyming: "The sense of adven-chore / Is changing to dan-jore." As an example of her meter tinkering, the regular tick-tock-like 2/2 time gives way to a syncopated beat in the second verse, punctuated by glottal-stop-filled "uh-ohs."

It's a lighthearted piece brought to life by horns, drums and soft synthesizers, together with Kate's bright piano notes and mock Cockney accent, with humorous references to the old gangster stars of the Thirties (Bogart, Raft, Cagney, even Edward G.Robinson).

3. Pull Out the Pin

has sharp electric guitar riffs upon Kate's keyboard rhythm line that evokes the tension on the battlefield during the Vietnam War. Kate takes the view of a Viet Cong, who sees the lone enemy soldier and thinks:

I'll pop him one he won't see
He's big and pink and not like me
He sees no light
He sees no reason for the fighting
With my silver Buddha
And my silver bullet
(Pulling on the pin).

*He* seems to know why he’s fighting the war. Or does he? The conflict in his soul prompts his thoughts about the business of war:

Just one thing in it
Me or him
And I love life, I love life, I love life!
(So I pull out the pin).

It's a desperate cry of "I love life!" towards the end, as the whirring sound of a chopper's rotor blades rolls by (but exactly who lives and who dies when the pin is pulled is left unsaid).

4. Suspended in Gaffa

is a rather fun cut, with its waltz-like meter, and a bouncy, playful, old-fashioned feel to it that brings to mind a carnival carousel. Kate rarely pauses to catch her breath here, her multiple voices alternating between whispers and high-pitched attacks from two octaves above. Sustained chords on the synclavier/keyboards finally give way to the divine chorus, in which bass-rich downbeats dominate, as Kate's voice comes at you from every corner, with even higher pitched backups of "Not ‘til I'm ready for you!"

Suddenly my feet are feet of mud
It all goes slow-mo
I don't know why I'm crying
Am I suspended in gaffa?
(Not until I'm ready for you!)

Might the song suggest the dilemma of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who "want to have it all" (a wild guess here on my part)? A bright and lively track. (FYI, "gaffa" in the title refers to gaffer's tape, something similar to duct tape.)

5. Leave It Open

a.k.a. Kate's foray into psychedelia. Her electronically mutated vocal dominates this track, and many phrases sound odd in their inflection and “warpiness” only because Kate has first sung and recorded them backwards, then played them forward.

Perhaps the most bizarre cut of all, it also ends with a reverse-sung/recorded fadeout of "We let the weirdness in." It grows strangely attractive after a number of listenings, with its interweaving of electrified instrumental and vocal lines.

6. The Dreaming

A metaphor about the marginalization of the Australian aborigines by the white settlers expressed by Kate in their "dreaming" fable.

A fascinating mix of sounds and vocalizations fill the track: tapping percussion, the vibrating hum of the didgeridu, Kate's high-pitched background vox and monotonous, trance-like foreground recitations, rapid exhaling and bleating sounds, flapping of wings, periodic booming accents by strings and horns, and Kate's elided lyrics that merge one into the next without pauses, etc. With that already rich tapestry of sounds, it would be foolish, however, to overlook the lyrics, which are at once both slyly pointed and oblique:

The civilised keep alive the territorial war
(See the light ram through the gaps in the land)
Erase the race that claims the place
And we say we dig for ore
Or dangle devils in a bottle
And push them from the pull of the bush
(See the light ram through the gaps in the land). . .

Kate then pays homage to her own Irish heritage through a sweetly sad Celtic passage she slips in at the end, played by the didgeridu, uillean pipes, violin, bouzoki (a guitar-like instrument) and light percussion.

7. Night of the Swallows

has Kate screeching the lyrics at the top. Her multilayered, warbly vocal here exudes a charming attractiveness. The mystical, thoughtful melody echoes the mood in Wow (from Lionheart [1978]). The chorus is a lovely, sinuous, melodic loop not unlike an Irish jig (courtesy of uillean pipes and violin) with accents from the jagged, descending line of

Let me, let me, let me gooo!

Might this refer to an ill-conceived escape of some sort? Another wonderfully offbeat track that grows on you with time.

8. All the Love

starts quietly with a piano chord, a brief sigh, then Kate's bright, jazzy, Steely Danesque piano breezes in, ending each phrase with an intriguing key change. Against this bluesy backdrop, Kate ponders,

The first time I died
Was in the arms of good friends of mine
They kiss me with tears
They hadn't been near me for years
Say why do it now
When I won't be around, I'm going out?

Could this also be a self-referential song about her complete devotion to her work to the exclusion of all and everyone else?

A pause, as ghost-like feathery vocals pick up the line,

We needed you to love us, too / we wait for your move.

Kate's fluid vocal here ranges from tender and gentle to strong and impassioned. A haunting and breathtakingly beautiful track.

9. Houdini

is a mystical, balladesque tune with Kate's smooth vocal finding fellow travelers in a soft piano and mournful horns. About halfway through, resonant strings play a moving, Samuel Barberish (Adagio for Strings) interlude--seeming alien at first, until it segues seamlessly into Kate's sparkling piano and strong, sweet and liquid vocal. The gentle background harmonies are simply icing on this already dreamy cake. Just as you succumb to the musical loveliness, Kate startles you with a quick tempo change and short, painfully raspy verses. Of course, predictability has never been a strong point with Kate.

10. Get Out of My House

comprises a nightmarish mélange of sounds that seem random and totally deranged--at first hearing. Springy metallic notes enter while vicious drums pound out a syncopated rhythm against the background 4/4 meter, as the dark, ominous throbbing bass leads into Kate's deep and resonant vocal fraught with mystery and danger. The layers of sound display overlapping of several melodic lines: clanging guitars that relentlessly repeat their few chords, Kate screaming "Get out of my house!" with frightening ferocity, a refrain snottily delivered in a pseudo-French accent that sounds like a transistor, much later hushed male voices alternating with Kate's gentle whisper, and finally, strange donkey braying in the fadeout.

Sounds scary and mad? Absolutely, but there's a real method to this madness. It will take more than one hearing to start to like this one, but the arresting abstract beauty comes through after a while. This was said to be inspired by Stephen King's novel, The Shining:

This house is as old as I am
This house knows all I have done
They come with their weather hanging around them
But can't knock my door down
With my key I--(lock it!) . . .

This house is full of m-m-my mess
This house is full of m-m-mistakes
This house is full of m-m-madness
This house is full of, full of, full of fight.
With my keeper I--(clean up) . . .

Surreal, disturbing, yet a major musical treat with a definite, diabolical, driving rhythm.

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Well, relief is nearly at hand, Kind Reader. This might just be all you never wanted to know about Kate's most radically gorgeous work (as my fickle inner musical advisor tells me).

The final word: The Dreaming is an absolutely obligatory buy for longtime Kate Bush fans and for the more adventurous new listeners out there, but may just scare off non-KB veterans. Initial fright and puzzlement are almost guaranteed. It's best to listen to this album with ears, hearts and minds receptive at all levels-- musical, emotional, intellectual--and lo, what rich harvests you'll reap for your efforts. It’s only one of the genuine and influential classics in the modern pop-rock repertory.

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