Tjames Madison at Soundspike is a lover of Kate’s voice:
“Bush remains a singular talent draped in the furs of surreality … It feels like she’s talking about herself by not talking about herself, and why not? The spiky peaks and higher peaks of her youthful chops have been replaced with a sort of smoky mid-range purr, all the better — devoid of much of that voice’s avant garde divisiveness — to examine her role in our modern world as mentor to a bumper crop of spiritual progeny … The instrumentation — Bush accompanying herself with stark, lovely, slightly jazzy piano; the occasional muffled guitar or brushed cymbal or sublimated string section drops in — is gorgeous, and the first half of the wintry song-cycle arrives exactly like its subject, a light, enchanted icefall in near-silence, everyday magic unfolding before your eyes. The tunes wander long and walk softly in this world … But all is not perfect. Elton John’s sudden appearance on “Snowed in on Wheeler Street” feels like an unwelcome intrusion … Fortunately the demure “Among Angels” ends the set back where we started, lost in that haunted, white-dusted graveyard, Bush alone once again with her voice and her piano…”
davidly
This review resonates with me more than any of the others.
I’ve got every album Sir Reg did from the beginning, up to 1980 (that’s two LPs a year). I love them all. Beyond that – either he or the Zeitgeist as it inspired him – no longer had anything to offer to me personally.
Pumping out masterpieces the way she has, Kate certainly has every right to work with whomever she likes. All I can say is, the choice to put Snowed in alone on Side 3 was a brilliant, if not prescient one.