We like all those 4-snowflake reviews! Thanks to Jamie for the photos.
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.
Tom Gatti film critic of The Times (behind the pay wall) has some fun this morning ….
“What binds the former first ladies of politics and pop? This week Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Margaret Thatcher had its first screening and Kate Bush’s first album of new songs for six years had its first airing — the return of one Eighties female powerhouse may be regarded as natural; the return of two seems like conspiracy. But what binds the former first ladies of politics and pop?
1. Their career dates tally. Thatcher came to power in 1979, when Bush was in the midst of her first and only tour. Thatcher retired from the House in 1992. A year later, Bush released her last album for more than a decade …”
… and Kate was pictured with Jim Calaghan during the 1979 General Election … and Maggie was depicted as Kate in a press cartoon during the same election with said Jim Callaghan going “Wow!”.
Lovely interview. Listen to Jamie Cullum talk to Kate here. The full interview is on BBC Radio 2 December 6th 7pm GMT
Kate has tonight published the following on her official site:
Everyone will know that events in Tibet have taken a terrible turn. I want to express my sadness at such a gentle and spiritual culture suffering so greatly. I am so shocked by the desperate measures being taken by people whose only way to call out for help is by taking these horrific actions. I would feel ashamed if I didn’t express my feelings. I just hope the world is listening.
Kate
To follow on from Kate’s words, we are providing this link for you at the Amnesty International website here and also this link from the UK Independent newspaper here and Mikel Dunham’s blog here.
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“
In the Irish Independent Kate speaks exclusively to Eamon Sweeney “about her 10th studio album, Stephen Fry, Elton John, Mná Na hÉireann and giving Ireland a big kiss”
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.
Boyd Hilton raves about Kates album on Daybreak UK breakfast television. Skip to 1 hour 5 minutes, that’s “7:12 am” on the screen. Boyd describes 50 Words as the album of the year (credit to the indefatigable Louise West).
Freelance writer Alison Stewart telephone interview with Kate appears in today’s Washington Post:
“In the ’70s and ’80s Bush released a series of dreamy, sexy art-folk albums credited with influencing PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple, Bjork and just about any significant female artist of the past 30 years. She was tough, uncompromising and fiercely private, though never what anyone would call prolific. Bush has released only 10 studio albums in three decades, two of them in 2011: “Director’s Cut,” which features re-recorded and re-invented versions of her classic songs, and the new “50 Words for Snow,” a strange and beautiful disc of thematically linked songs about winter. Bush lives in the English countryside with her husband and her 13-year-old son, Bertie, an occasional contributor to her albums. On the phone from home, she’s funny and solicitous and sweet, more like the British equivalent of a soccer mom than a Bronte character come to life …“
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