FEATURE:
In a Sea and Sky of Honey
PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
Kate Bush’s Aerial at Fifteen
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I am a little premature in celebrating…
fifteen years of one of Kate Bush’s finest albums, Aerial. Its anniversary happens on 7th November, and it was a huge event! Aerial arrived twelve years after The Red Shoes, and there was no real indication to suggest that there would definitely be another album. There was always speculation and potential, but after twelve years, even the most ardent Kate Bush fans might have lost a bit of hope! Not only did she come back with an album: Aerial is Kate Bush’s only double album to date. As I have explored in previous features – and I will come onto -, there are similarities between Hounds of Love of 1985 and Aerial, in the sense that both have first sides that are more conventional and are not defined by a theme/narrative, whereas there is a conceptual second side. If anything, Aerial’s second side (or second album, technically) is more ambitious and astonishing. Although Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave has tension and drama throughout, there is something more relaxed and contemplative on Aerial’s A Sky of Honey. By 2005, Bush had pushed further away from the media. Her son, Bertie, was born in 1998, and she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. A lot of Aerial has Bertie running through its blood, and Bush was prioritising motherhood above recording. I guess being a new mum did inspire creative urge and inspiration she might not have otherwise had, but even though she was still signed to EMI in 2005 – she formed her label Fish People, later, and is now working with EMI in a much lesser capacity -, there was not a huge amount of promotion.
Aerial does not feature Bush on the cover (The Red Shoes only featured her feet), and there are a couple of good interviews around the time, though she was more forthcoming regarding promotion by time she released Director’s Cut, and 50 Words for Snow in 2011. I am going to focus on a few songs from Aerial in future features, but I wanted to do a more general overview and broader sweep this time around. I have always been fascinated by Bush’s development and building sonic palette through the years. On most of her studio albums, Bush employed a variety of musicians and incorporated a number of styles and genres in order to give her albums depth and so much colour. Aerial marries elements of Folk and Flamenco alongside Classic elements; styles and tones that are not overly-present in previous Bush albums. Never one to stand still and repeat herself, she would move more into Jazz territory by the time of 50 Words for Snow. Although one or two sources did not give Aerial a terrific review – NME, and Pitchfork scored it lower than most -, the majority of those who assessed Aerial were blown away. I don’t think it was a case of reacting to the fact that this was Bush’s first album in twelve years, either: the sheer scope and beauty of Aerial was hugely moving in 2005 and it still knocks you back almost fifteen years later. Here is what The Independent wrote in 2005:
“As might be expected of an album which breaks a 12-year silence during which she began to raise a family, there's a core of contented domesticity to Kate Bush's Aerial. It's not just a case of parental bliss - although her affection for "lovely, lovely Bertie" spills over from the courtly song specifically about him, to wash all over the second of this double-album's discs, a song-cycle about creation, art, the natural world and the cycling passage of time.
It's there too in the childhood reminiscence of "A Coral Room", the almost autistic satisfaction of the obsessive-compulsive mathematician fascinated by "Pi" (which affords the opportunity to hear Bush slowly sing vast chunks of the number in question, several dozen digits long - which rather puts singing the telephone directory into the shade), and particularly "Mrs Bartolozzi", a wife, or maybe widow, seeking solace for her absent mate in the dance of their clothes in the washing machine. "I watched them going round and round/ My blouse wrapping itself round your trousers," she observes, slipping into the infantile - "Slooshy sloshy, slooshy sloshy, get that dirty shirty clean" - and alighting periodically upon the zen stillness of the murmured chorus, "washing machine".
The second disc takes us through a relaxing day's stroll in the sunshine, from the sequenced birdsong of the "Prelude", through a pavement artist's attempt to "find the song of the oil and the brush" through serendipity and skill ("That bit there, it was an accident/ But he's so pleased/ It's the best mistake he could make/ And it's my favourite piece"), through the gentle flamenco chamber-jazz "Sunset" and the Laura Veirs-style epiphanic night-time swim in "Nocturn", to her dawn duet with the waking birds that concludes the album with mesmeric waves of synthesiser perked up by brisk banjo runs.
There's a hypnotic undertow running throughout the album, from the gentle reggae lilt of the single "King of the Mountain" and the organ pulses of "Pi" to the minimalist waves of piano and synth in "Prologue". Though oddly, for all its consistency of mood and tone, Aerial is possibly Bush's most musically diverse album, with individual tracks involving, alongside the usual rock-band line-up, such curiosities as bowed viol and spinet, jazz bass, castanets, rhythmic cooing pigeons, and her bizarre attempt to achieve communion with the natural world by aping the dawn chorus. Despite the muttered commentary of Rolf Harris as The Painter, it's a marvellous, complex work which restores Kate Bush to the artistic stature she last possessed around the time of Hounds of Love”.
I recently wrote about Aerial’s single and opening track, King of the Mountain, as it was her first single since 1994, and perhaps the most propulsive and radio-friendly track on the album. Being Kate Bush, even that song did not dip into conventional territory – a song about the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley. I think Aerial is a more arresting and consistent album than The Red Shoes, and it would have been easy for Bush to come back with an album that nods to her past or has a few weak moments. To me, every song on Aerial resonates, and I really like the first disc, A Sea of Honey, that starts with King of the Mountain and then we end with A Coral Room. From the strange and wonderful King of the Mountain, Bush literally recites π on π. She has always been fascinated by the mathematical sequence, and there are no other artists alive that would dedicate a song on such a big album to reciting a series of numbers! Then follows a gorgeous paen to her son, Bertie, and some of her finest songs ever can be found later in that first side. Many have outed π, and Joanni as two of the weaker numbers from Aerial, but I really love both songs. Mrs. Bartolozzi is a song about domestic strife and strange romance; the heroine watches the laundry spin as she scrubs the dirty floor!
Maybe influenced by Bush’s new domestic routine and work-life balance, she manages to make a song about chores and cleaning sound positively erotic! Featuring a heavy and impressive piano, Bush manages to summon so much emotion and visions from her voice. I think it can rank alongside her very best songs, as can How to Be Invisible, and A Coral Room. I especially love A Coral Room, and it brings that first disc to a wonderful close. The lyrics through Aerial are wonderful and truly immersive, but I particularly like to dive into the words of A Coral Room. It’s first verse is striking and stunning: “There's a city, draped in net/Fisherman net/And in the half light, in the half-light/It looks like every tower/Is covered in webs/Moving and glistening and rocking/It's babies in rhythm/As the spider of time is climbing/Over the ruins”. In terms of what inspired the song, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia gives us an interview snippet where Kate Bush explains more:
“There was a little brown jug actually, yeah. The song is really about the passing of time. I like the idea of coming from this big expansive, outside world of sea and cities into, again, this very small space where, er, it's talking about a memory of my mother and this little brown jug. I always remember hearing years ago this thing about a sort of Zen approach to life, where, you would hold something in your hand, knowing that, at some point, it would break, it would no longer be there. (Front Row, BBC4, 4 November 2005)”.
I am going to explore A Sky of Honey in a separate feature later, but I do love this idea of moving through the course of the day and letting nature and the world come to the fore. It is brilliant to hear nature and birdsong on that side, and those nine short songs – they were re-released as a single piece on the 2010 release -, really bring the listeners in and transport you. Apart from the unfortunate inclusion of Rolf Harris – he appears as ‘The Painter’ (on An Architect's Dream, and The Painter’s Link) and plays didgeridoo on The Painter’s Link; he was removed from every release of Aerial after its initial release -, the whole feel and concept of A Sky of Honey is sublime. I think that side/disc is more defined by sound and texture, whereas lyrics and vocals are more prominent, in my view, on the first disc. You get this contrasting album that has so many fascinating stories and some of the most memorable compositions Bush ever put to record! Songs for Aerial were written between 1996 and 2005, and I can imagine Bush, as a new mum, dividing her time between household demands and rehearsing tracks on the piano – her son always in her sights and always on her mind. It sounds very idyllic, and Bush rightly considers Aerial as one of her best albums (I think it is her personal favourite), as it marks such an important period in her life.
I want to grab from a couple of interview (from 2005) before finishing up. There are some great print and radio interviews, but I can imagine that, with a young son and the fact she was not going to give T.V. interviews and travel, meant that she was better-equipped to accommodate more interviews by 2011 – when her son was a little more grown up. Bush spoke with Tom Doyle in The Guardian, and it was inevitable that the subject of her inactivity since Aerial would form part of the interview:
“Famously, Kate Bush hates interviews - the last was four years ago, the previous one seven years before that. So the prospect of this interrogation, the only one she has agreed to endure in support of Aerial, must fill her with dread. Around us there is evidence of a very regular, family-shaped existence - toys and kiddie books scattered everywhere, a Sony widescreen with a DVD of Shackleton sitting below it. Atop the fireplace hangs a painting called Fishermen by James Southall, a tableau of weather-beaten seadogs wrestling with a rowing boat; it is soon to be familiar as part of the inner artwork of Aerial. Balanced against a wall in the office next door is a replica of the Rosebud sledge burned at the dramatic conclusion of Citizen Kane, as commissioned for the video of Bush's comeback single, King of the Mountain, and brought home as a gift for her seven-year-old son Bertie.
So, do the rumours bug you? That you're some fragile being who's hidden herself away?
"No," she replies. "A lot of the time it doesn't bother me. I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world." Her voice notches up in volume. "Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'."
Bush always took a while to record any album but, since 1993, there would have been this increased pressure to put out another album and give the public something. Bush was asked about the gap between albums and the involvement of EMI prior to Aerial’s release:
“If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. "Oh yeah," she sighs. "I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time ... evaporates."
There was a story that some EMI execs had come down to see you and you'd said something like: "Here's what I've been working on," and then produced some cakes from your oven. True? "No! I don't know where that came from. I thought that was quite funny actually. It presents me as this homely creature, which is all right, isn't it?"
Bush, happily, was asked about A Coral Room, as it is a track that has huge personal significance and would have been quite emotional to put to paper and record:
“The shiver-inducing stand-out track on Aerial, however, comes at the end of the first disc. A Coral Room is a piano-and-vocal ballad that Bush admits she first considered to be too personal for release, dealing as it does with the death of her mother, a matter that she didn't address at the time in any of the songs on The Red Shoes.
"No, no I didn't," she says. "I mean, how would you address it? I think it's a long time before you can go anywhere near it because it hurts too much. I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time".
There are some great reviews and write-ups for Aerial that are worth reading, and I want to end by quoting from NME, who were reacting to an interview Bush gave to John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. The subject of her being a recluse was addressed and, whilst she is and never has been a recluse, she explained how important it was to spend valuable time with her son – rather than neglect him a bit in the pursuit of getting the album out quicker:
“Kate Bush will speak in her first broadcast interview for more than 12 years this Friday (November 4).
The singer, who has been absent from the music scene in recent years, will break her silence in a special interview on BBC Radio 4‘s Front Row at 7.15pm.
She talks openly about avoiding the media, her frustration at completing her first album – Aerial – in more than 10 years and motherhood.
Bush tells John Wilson: “I’m very opinionated. I’m horrible to work with; I’m so fussy and picky. What’s good is that I know what I want. It’s when you don’t know what you want that you’re in trouble.
“There were so many times I thought I wasn’t going to have the energy to see it (the album) through. I knew I couldn’t go on any longer or it would have killed me. I was so fed up making it.”
The reclusive artist reveals that she was only able to make a new album, her first since ‘The Red Shoes’ in 1993, because she has a studio at home and it was still a struggle to juggle the demands of music and motherhood.
She added: “I wanted to give as much time as I could to my son. I love being with him, he’s a lovely little boy and he won’t be little for very long. I felt my work could wait whereas his growing up couldn’t.”
On being a recluse she went on: “I am a private person, but I don’t think I’m obsessively so. It’s more that I choose to try and have a normal a life as possible. I don’t like to live in a glare of publicity.
“My creative process was very time consuming and comes from a very quiet place… people seem to find that weird and strange, but its common sense really”.
Ahead of its fifteenth anniversary next month, I wanted to re-explore Aerial, as it is not only one of the most-anticipated and important albums of Kate Bush’s career, but it is one of her very best! If you do not own Aerial on vinyl, then go and get a copy, as it is a wonderful listening experience, and I think the album is perfect for 2020, in the sense that we need something that allows us to escape whilst providing so much personal relevance and beautifully-different songs. It is one of my favourite Kate Bush albums and, fifteen years after its release, I think Aerial remains…
A real masterpiece.