FEATURE:
The Spirit of Lake Tahoe
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Beautiful and Spellbinding 50 Words for Snow
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I last wrote about…
Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow late last year, and I will try not to repeat myself too much. There are a couple of reasons for me returning to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. I have been listening to it a lot recently, as I had been neglecting it a bit and I think the tones, stories and beautiful notes of 50 Words for Snow is providing something pure and wonderful. Also, as I mentioned in my previous feature, 50 Words for Snow is the latest album from Bush. Although it has almost been nine years since the album came out (50 Words for Snow was released on 21st November, 2011), I am discovering new things. I want to explore the beauty and spellbinding qualities of the record, but I was interested in the idea that Bush set up her own label, Fish People, and released on it – 2011’s Director’s Cut was also released on the label.. 50 Words for Snow being released on Fish People was Bush’s first album away from EMI, and I wonder whether she will be doing anything further with the label. When Ken Bruce (BBC Radio 2) interviewed Bush in 2011 – to promote Director’s Cut -, she was asked about it but was not too sure. Any future albums, of course, will be released via Fish People, and when she remastered and re-released her back catalogue in 2018, she put them out on her label – as she helped remaster the albums, that is fair enough.
I love the fact that, gradually, Bush is sort of taking back ownership of her music from EMI. Not that she was unhappy with EMI; I do think the establishment of Fish People was a deliberate move away from a major label and a chance for her to write, record and promote an album as she saw fit. In 2011, maybe connected to that, Bush provided a lot of interviews and was very open regarding her time. Those accusing her of being reclusive needs to listen to the scores of radio interviews and magazine features that she appeared in; someone who was able to command a lot of attention and get her album out there without leaving her home – Bush wound down T.V. interviews in the 1990s, and appearing on chat shows is not really her style! Although she released Aerial in 2005, and she ‘returned’ after twelve years away – The Red Shoes was released in 1993 -, I think 50 Words for Snow marked a new passage and phase of Bush’s career. With her son, Bertie, entering his teen years (he was born in 1998, and he contributed to the album) and Bush taking her music in new directions, 50 Words for Snow is one of Bush’s most engrossing and compelling albums. Aerial is an album synonymous with daylight, the natural world and dawn – at least on the double album’s second side, A Sky of Honey -, and the first half has this very nourishing feel to it. Whilst 50 Words for Snow is not a chilly and dark album, there is a sense of the night-time and the almost Christmas-like association with snow.
The album’s title came from the myth that Eskimos have fifty words for snow; the entire album has this gorgeously minimal feel. I adore the title track and the fact it is, effectively, Bush adding a couple of lines alongside Stephen Fry giving us fifty words for snow – they range from gibberish to funny. Since The Red Shoes, Bush moved more and more away from tight songs and Pop structures. Aerial has these beautiful orchestral passages, and I associate the album with piano, birdsong and strings. With 50 Words for Snow, I think vocals and drums stand out more. Perhaps less musically expansive and adventurous than its predecessor, 50 Words for Snow’s palette is still extraordinary. The legendary Steve Gadd played drums on all tracks but one – the final song, Among Angels, features no percussion -, and he brings so many textures, grooves and sounds to the plate. I think 50 Words for Snow’s percussion is incredible, but Bush’s voice is equally stirring. She was in her early-fifties when she began recording the album, and her voice is so full of emotion and wisdom. The percussion is largely minimal, and Bush’s vocals are at their most subtle and soft. Whilst one would assume 50 Words for Snow is as light and simple as snow itself, there are so many layers and surprises through the record.
Bertie appears on Snowflake, and his is the first voice we hear – a choir-boy register that gives 50 Words for Snow this angelic and ethereal start. I mentioned how 50 Words for Snow is sort of Christmassy; the songs are sort of hymnal and carol-like in their quality and resonance. I want to explore the album a bit more but, before I do, I want to source from a couple of reviews that show how people reacted to the album and how, thirty-three years after her debut album was released, Bush continued to subvert expectations and produce this unique and completely uncommercial music – she was never one for traditional structures and following her mainstream peers! Andy Gill reviewed 50 Words for Snow for The Independent:
“At 14 minutes, "Misty" is the longest track, with Steve Gadd's jazzy drumming swirling around the fairy-tale love-tryst between a woman and a snowman, whose inevitable dissolution is evoked in watery slide-guitar akin to a valiha. The empathy between human and non-human extends further in "Wild Man", where the search for a yeti is sketched with the geographical accuracy of an actual Himalayan expedition, Bush's softly voiced verses punctuated by more urgent refrains urging the beast's escape – its capture would mean death for the abominable snowman of myth and legend, now reduced to mere flesh and bone.
Elton John duets on "Snowed in at Wheeler Street", in which a pair of immortal, time-travelling lovers snatch a momentary erotic interlude under the cover of a blizzard, already regretting their inevitable separation as they each track their way through history: "Come with me, I've got some rope, I'll tie us together," sings Bush, as if they were emotional mountaineers. "I don't want to lose you, I don't want to walk into the crowd again."
But it's "50 Words for Snow" itself which offers the most engaging, genial development of the album's wintry theme, its scudding groove assailed by chilly wind as Stephen Fry enunciates the terms – mostly made-up by Bush herself – with quiet relish: "Eiderfalls... Wenceslasair... Vanillaswarm... Icyskidski...", while she stands on the sideline, occasionally jumping in to cajole him, like a coach boosting her player's morale. It's a fitting climax to a seasonal offering that manages to evoke the essential spirit of winter while avoiding all the dog-eared clichés of Christmas albums – or indeed, any overt mention of that particular fairy story. Which is some achievement”.
50 Words for Snow gained Bush some of her best reviews since 1985’s Hounds of Love, and I think a lot of people picked up on the child-like quality of the album and sense of wonder that ran through every track. To me, 50 Words for Snow is a series of short tales in a classic Victorian novel; almost like a lost classic, where we have these gorgeous wintery tales narrated beautifully. Beside the innate tenderness and dreaminess of the album, Bush’s compositions are brilliantly evocative and expansive. I mentioned how she moved away from shorter, radio-friendly tones; 50 Words for Snow’s seven tracks run in at sixty-five minutes, but no song ever sounds too over-long and pretentious. Pitchfork, in their review highlighted the child-like nature of the album:
“While much of 50 Words for Snow conjures a whited-out, dream-like state of disbelief, it's important to note that Bush does everything in her power to make all the shadowy phantoms here feel real. Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space-- not so much innocent as open to imagination-- that never gets old. "I have a theory that there are parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up," she recently told The Independent.
"Our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we're children, and if you're lucky enough to... hang onto who you are, you do have that at your core for the rest of your life." Snow isn't a blissful retreat to simpler times, though. It's fraught with endings, loss, quiet-- adult things. This is more than pure fantasy. When faced with her unlikely guest on "Misty", Bush pinches herself: "Should be a dream, but I'm not sleepy".
This feature is not me looking back at Kate Bush’s latest album and wondering when another might arrive. I do wonder whether we will get some music in the coming years, and whether her Fish People label will take on other artists and become a bigger prospect. Perhaps it is the tumultuous, turbulent and troubled times we are living through that has caused me to spend a lot of time with an album that is so inviting and protective. Bush could have repeated previous albums or played it safe but, her being her, what we got with 50 Words for Snow is this hugely important and memorable album. I love all of her work, but I was taken aback in 2011 when 50 Words for Snow arrived. One has this in-built patience when it comes to Bush and album output, because she can take a while to release stuff, but the worth is always worth it – that is why this pretty long pause is not too bad; you just know, right now, there is some music brewing! Listening back to such a beautiful and calming album is helping me (and many others) find light and relief…
THROUGH these darker times.