Kate Bush - The Dreaming
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Artist: Kate BushBrand: BUSH,KATE
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1990-10-25
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- Sat In Your Lap
- There Goes A Tenner
- Pull Out The Pin
- Suspended In Gaffa
- Leave It Open
- The Dreaming
- Night Of The Swallow
- All The Love
- Houdini
- Get Out Of My House
Music reviews of The Dreaming
Music Review: A Tragically Underrated Work Of Genius
Rating: 5 Stars
When I bought four Kate Bush albums a month ago, the one I was most intrigued by was "The Dreaming." I had read how this was a work of uncalculated genius that sadly went unnoticed when released in 1982. How very true. It took a few listens for this album to really grow on me, but it has done in a way I never would have thought possible. This album has 10 songs of solid art. It even threatened to overtake "Hounds Of Love" as my favourite Kate Bush album, and that is something I thought would never happen! This is Kate's most experimental and complex album, yet it still has catchy melodies and memorable lyrics all the way through. Not once does the album lag. It is a solid album that most artists could only dream of producing.
And that's just the thing: producing. Kate Bush near-as-damn-it created this whole album on her own with no help. There are so many hidden meanings and different ways that this album can be interpreted, it's really quite breathtaking. There's nothing here that you can really dance to, and no real ballad-heavy patches. The album sits somewhere inbetween with disjointed piano sections, disjointed vocals and gloomy lyrics. The album manages to achieve a perfect balance on all aspects of what makes a superb concept album. Kate Bush is a true innovator and experimentalist, which in my eyes, is the most talented kind of musician around.
The album opens with "Sat In Your Lap." No, this isn't a seedy song about a strip club that many manufactured singers would release to sell their album. Kate wasn't interested in having big hits from this album. This song opens in a flurry of drum beats and jilted piano riffs. It's a song about the search for knowledge and how to expand your mind, but from the perspective from someone who thinks it is just sat in their lap and that they don't have to do any searching for it. It's a frankly brilliant opener in which our protagonist finally goes on a big search at the end of the song - across the desert, across the weather, across the elements, across the water. "There Goes A Tenner" is about a botched robbery. The song has a bouncy quality to it and has cinematic breaks in it in which synths slow things down during the chorus as Kate whispers, "We're waiting." She puts on a superb British accent and the song contains many superb lines such as, "I hope you remember to treat the gelignite tenderly!" Kate's having dreams about things not going right, so tells her partners in crime to leave in plenty of time tonight.
"Pull Out The Pin" suddenly sees Kate thrown into the Vietnamese outback during the war of the Seventies. This song has a fantastic beat that sounds like a solid block of wood being tapped for melodic qualities. The song is sonically superb and lyrically profound for its time. She manages to capture the sheer desperation of someone fighting for their life in the war, "You learn to ride the Earth, when you're living on your belly." "Suspended In Gaffa" is one of the more instantly accessible songs upon first listening to this album. This song has a very waltz-like, marching band quality to it. The lyrics are incredibly complex and incoherent in places, and I don't anyone will truly be able to decipher them. That is, unless Kate releases a dictionary that includes every meaning of the subject matter in her songs! "Leave It Open" is one of my favourite songs on the album. It's not very long, but it makes a damn big impact. It has a drum beat that is very catchy and vocals that are all over the place, very distorted. I'm not really sure what this song is about, but the lyrics are amazing, "I kept it in a cage, watched it weeping, but I made it stay." The song just explodes after the second minute as more drums come pounding in and rip the whole place up! The loud screeches are phenomenal, as are the ghost-like voices being rewinded right at the end.
The title-track, "The Dreaming," follows. I wasn't too keen on this song to begin with but now it's gone on to become one of my favourites. Kate is suddenly out in the Australian desert singing about how white man has exploited native Aboriginal tribes over the years. It's a very powerful song, and the lyrics are brilliant. Nobody can forget the opening line of, "Bang! Goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van!" Rolf Harris also plays digeridu on this song, and the drum beat that gently constructs the entire song is just superb. You could just imagine Kate emerging from the Australian bush in a grass skirt with a tribe dancing like nutters to this song. Very visual. "Night Of The Swallow" has been interpreted many ways by reviewers, with everything from helping a convict escape the country in the dead of the night to a mysterious espionage adventure. The chorus is incredible as Celtic Uillean pipes come in to add an Irish feel. The lyrics are amazing and the noises of swallows in the verses are incredibly atmospheric of some foreign country on the coast. This is one of the longest songs on the album, though, and I feel that it does drag on a bit towards the end.
"All The Love" is an incredible work of art and one of my favourites on the album. This song is about death and how people need love to feel important. It opens with Kate crying, "The first time I died, was in the arms of good friends of mine. They kissed me with tears, they hadn't been near me for years." This song is very dry and dusty, almost like the imagery from "Egypt" from Kate's album previous to this. The best part of the song is the refrain where the choirboy sings, "We needed you to love us too, we wait for you more." This is an incredibly beautiful section that requires closed eyes and an open mind to fully interpret it. The chorus follows this in stunning fashion as Kate sings as though she were her friends, "All the love, all the love, all the love we could have given." She sings of leaving a message on her answer machine because she can't speak to them. Her message is the choirboy's call, and her friends reply with a barrage of haunting and eerie goodbyes.
"Houdini" is an amazing song but took quite a while to really grow on me. In this song Kate takes on the role of Rosabel, the escape artist Houdini's wife. She is trying to contact him through a seance. Can he escape even this seance? We doubt it, as Kate sings, "Not even eternity can hold Houdini," suggesting contact was more. The song is almost like a candle-lit ballad which is very soft on the ears. The verses are subdued and the section after the chorus is a lush, orchestral arrangement with some very smooth strings. The chorus is absolutely stunning as Kate screams, "With your spit, still on my lips, you hit the water!" The nearest visual aid we can get from this song is by looking at the cover of the album. Houdini's face is covered, but we can see a large padlock around him. Kate, obviously playing Rosabel, is moving in for a kiss, but has the key for the lock on her tongue. Her eyes are looking far in the distance, when she should be focused on his eyes.
The album closes with the stunning "Get Out Of My House." This song opens with a strange noises that sounds like slipping back into a dream, before frantic drums kick in. This is a very scary song about violence and rape in a relationship, in which Kate screams "Get out of my house!" She's obviously using her house as a metaphor for something else, saying that her house is full of mistakes, madness, and mess. I'm always humoured by Kate's French accent in the section where she whispers, "I am the concierge, chez-moi honey. Won't letcha in for love nor money!" She sings of now being well protected, barred and bolted, and that no one is getting in her house, and that if they try, something ugly will happen. We can assume that something, indeed, did happen as Kate turns into a mule and starts braying! The strange donkey noises are incredibly haunting, viscous and savage. A superb ending to one of the best albums ever made.
OVERALL GRADE: 10/10
There are 10 solid songs on this album, as I have previous stated. I honestly have trouble finding the best one. Every single song ranges from great to absolutely amazing. Kate Bush is an underrated genius and America should have cottoned on. Since that never happened, she will go down as one of the biggest talents Britain has ever produced. Her career has spanned almost three decades, and with the release of her new album "Aerial" in November, a whole new generation will be introduced to Bush, and her unique style. Hounds Of Love is still her best album in my own humble opinion, but The Dreaming comes a very close second, snapping and biting at Hounds' heels with all it frenetic, insane and unashamed glory.
Description of The Dreaming
No Description AvailableNo Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: BUSH,KATE
Title: DREAMING
Street Release Date: 08/09/1988
Genre: ROCK/POP
Alternative Rock CDs
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