Half the panel either have a good laugh (“hilarious”) at Kate’s new album on Radio 4’s Saturday Review programme, or they think it’s dull (“nothing is going on”). This is something which one of those oft-mentioned “men of a certain age” I remember from British media reaction to The Dreaming. The other half including host Tom Sutcliffe, show some understanding of the album (“a fearless creator”). Find the review at 36 minutes into the stream.
Category: Reviews Page 5 of 10
Five Stars and nomination for ‘album of the year’ from Andy Snipper at Music News:
“I was told to listen to this album a few times before making up my mind about it and I have to say that although I fell in love with it almost from the first moments of ‘Snowflake’, repeated listening has suggested that this is going to be my vote for album of the year … The music here is entirely something that only Kate could produce. Apparently simple but with huge depths and subjects that in the hands of anyone else would simply be weird or mawkish. She seems to be singing about the beauty and the harshness of the winter but in many ways this is just like sitting around the campfire as a yoiungster and telling ghost stories … Kate Bush has never been an easy listen: even back to ‘Wuthering Heights’ or ‘Running Up That Hill’ there has been depth and complexity in her music. There has also been an element of sensuality, of enjoyment of the close and warm and of the intensely observed. This album is completely in touch with all of those things and when, in the finale ‘Among Angels’ that gorgeous voice sings that “I can see angels around you. They shimmer like mirrors in Summer” it goes right to the heart. Album of the year? By a country mile. Absolutely essential.“
Very enthusiastic report by Stuart Maconie (introduced as an ‘super fan’) on BBC 2’s The Review Show. The programme blurb says:
“Kate Bush fans waited six years for a new album to follow 2005’s Ariel and this year two came along in a matter of months. The first – Director’s Cut – was a collection of reworked and rerecorded material but 50 Words for Snow which is released on 21 November contains seven brand new songs. We asked super fan Stuart Maconie to take a listen and explain the enduring attraction of the mighty Bush.”
Stuart says this is the album he always wanted Kate to make. The segment is at the end of the programme about 29 minutes into the stream.
A wordy appreciation from Mark Kidel at The Arts Desk:
“Kate Bush has always steered a dangerous course between pure genius and mannerist excess. Her latest album, a hymn to snow and the icy element’s soft and crystalline associations, is no different. There are moments when she teeters on the edge of self-parody and cliché and others when she makes music that dazzles as much as it moves. She is a unique British artist, existing in a creative bubble well outside the mainstream yet never marginal or beyond the reach of popular taste. She is uniquely British too, or more exactly English, resonating with a strain of our island’s culture that cultivates eccentricity as well as a romantic streak that draws on rich poetic imagery and a sometimes over-refined take on sensuality. The album builds slowly – and its subtleties grow on you, unfolding after repeated listening … The only thing that is not surprising about Kate Bush is the constant burst of unexpected cloudbursts of inspiration … The album is at times let down by Bush’s almost flawless high-flying performance and a libido distinguished by icy spiritual grace rather than funk-tinged passion.“
7/10 from Jessica Hopper in Spin Magazine:
“a languorous, self-produced vamp that might even qualify as a “song cycle.” It’s about snow … piano-driven, spare, and spooky, with Bush drawing us into the deepest recesses of her voice; she’s breathy and quiet … but when she does revisit the sharp, reedy crest of her youth, it’s all the more powerful, snapping you back from the waves of softly sighing strings … Half of 50 Words for Snow consists of duets with various male singers (including Bush’s son); Elton John provides the album’s strangest and most alert moment, letting out a Chris Cornell–style grunge roar as Bush sings of hiding him under her bed during WWII. The overall dark, diaphanous sound here almost oversells the title, but it’s impossible not to get lost in the drift.“
Four stars from Ludovic Hunter-Tilsley in the Financial Times:
“slow eddies of piano chords and gentle percussion … wintry piano, atmospheric orchestral arrangements and an intimate, torch-lit vocal from Bush, who, at 53, has acquired a warm huskiness to her voice … the album wobbles with the hammy Elton John duet “Snowed in at Wheeler St”, and topples over on the title track in which Bush invites Stephen Fry to dream up 50 terms for snow … 50 Words for Snow elucidates its wintry theme with flashes of brilliance but the odd treacherous icy patch too“
The Any Decent Music ‘Recent Releases‘ chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 publications.
Today on its day of release Kate’s new album 50Words for Snow was straight in at no.1 in chart with a weighted average critical reaction of 8.5/10.
4/5 from Alan at RTE 10, who incidently loves Messrs John and Fry:
“exquisite suite of glacial piano songs which uses the cold, white stuff as its central theme … a sonorous collection of mood music which pushes the gentle caress of Bush’s voice to the fore over gorgeous stately strings and twinkling night time vistas. Sonically it does indeed have the stillness a snow-bound vastness and musically the temperature rarely flickers above room level … It also captures the serenity and quietude of a landscape blanketed with snow with calm and wonder. Proof once again that Kate Bush is as unique and individual as a snowflake.”
BBC America’s ‘Anglophenia‘ blog (“British Culture with an American Accent”) is having a Kate Bush week:
Five of Kate’s best collaborators
3/4 Curiously from Greg Kot music critic of the Chicago Tribune, and another one who isn’t so sure about Sir Elton or Mr. Fry:
“Since the late ‘70s, Bush has been the sole occupant of her little corner of the art-rock world, her lush songs merging stately musicianship and fairy-dust vocals with forward-looking electronic textures. Her lyrics have moved from storybook flights populated with unicorns and demons to more mature expressions of femininity and feminism. Though her commercial successes have been few, Bush exudes a fierce independence as a songwriter-singer-musician-producer and influenced countless artists … She doesn’t focus on accolades or celebrity, but undiluted self-expression. True to form, “50 Words for Snow” floats in its own enchanted cloud, a song cycle for subzero shut-ins. Each song tosses another blanket atop a feather bed, another log on a fire, a series of stories to send the imagination drifting as winter closes in … Bush is the rare vocalist with huge range … who somehow manages to sound strikingly intimate rather than brassy or overpowering. She’s also a fine pianist who never overplays, sending out little ripples of notes that act like reassuring beacons, a necessity for songs that sometimes wander past 13 minutes. She also uses keyboards to create shimmering effects that suggest distant, flickering lights…”
Joe Kennedy in The Quietus fully engages with the ambience:
“50 Words for Snow sees Bush devote herself entirely to the impressionistic evocation of winter scenes. It’s perhaps surprising that she hasn’t been moved to embark on such a project earlier … Bush’s habitual provocations to abandon day-to-day concerns while cultivating romantic, internal landscapes have always felt slightly like the work of someone gazing from a window into a blizzard. This, one senses, is her natural territory … Where her past work has often been heavily-layered and breathless, 50 Words for Snow uses negative space to impressive effect; much of the album features little more than voice and flurrying passages of piano which gust across the stave, changing pace and melodic direction as if they’re suddenly hitting updrafts … played and arranged so exquisitely that even the most po-faced should be able to acknowledge the scale of its achievement. One struggles to think of a record which calls to mind a particular climate as powerfully as this does…“
Five Stars from Helen Brown in the Daily Telegraph:
“50 Words for Snow should be heard standing alone at icy window panes, gazing out. Its seven long, snow-themed songs swirl around a delicate core of Bush and her piano … dreamy, drifting mood and subtle melodic motifs …”
A wave of fantastic reviews have been coming in for the new album. You can read them over the last few pages of news postings. Today the album is released here in Ireland (I’ve taken the day off work!) and in most of Europe and Australia. Here’s another one to add to the glowing accolades: the biggest music magazine in Finland, Soundi, gave the new album 5 stars today. The full page review says the album surpasses the expectations of even the hardest fan, and the critic says he thinks this is her best album since Hounds of Love. He says, listening to this “you know you are close to greatness”. We don’t have a translation yet. (thanks to Pekka)
Music Spiel blog is very happy, and does like Sir Elton:
“Whatever preconceived perceptions you have of Kate Bush, be prepared to toss them out the window. … Bush has always kept her listeners on her toes and doing whatever the fuck she wanted whenever she wanted … It’s a very piano-driven record with minimal percussion, provided by noted session man Steve Gadd, classical-influenced themes setting the tone for every one of the 7 tracks, otherworldly vocals and endless does of ambience … The silent intensity of the album continues with each track, the focal point being a duet with Elton John of all people called “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” … I’m not a fan of Sir Elton, but he delivers on this track. I can’t find the right words on how this album makes me feel. I’m just fucking glad that Kate Bush has managed to wow me with an album, and she still has the spirit to make riveting music after all this time. I didn’t think she was capable of another masterwork. I was wrong. And never more glad to be wrong.”