FEATURE:
At Her Experimental Best
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot in 1982 by Anton Corbijn
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming
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THOUGH I have touched on this before…
I wanted to look at the experimental and broad canvas that is Kate Bush’s 1982 album, The Dreaming. I am going to source a review or two for the album – to show you how critics have reacted to such a stunning and original work. Whilst Kate Bush herself might not characterise her fourth studio album as experimental, one cannot deny that all the different sounds, sights and sources makes it far from commercial and conventional. I feel one reason why critics were a little mixed in 1982 is because The Dreaming was a radical departure from 1980’s Never for Ever. One cannot call that album ordinary or grounded - though heavier tracks like Breathing hinted at what was to come a couple of years later. In terms of vocal elements, Bush herself adds so many effects, characters and layers. More than any other album Bush released prior to The Dreaming, there are quite a few other vocalists in the mix…everyone from her brother, Paddy, to David Gilmour to Percy Edwards providing support. Edwards adds animal noises to The Dreaming’s title track, whereas Richard Thornton delivers a choirboy purity to All the Love. I have dissected the vocal elements on Bush’s albums before. There is the clash of light and dark on The Dreaming. Gordon Farrell and Del Palmer appear on Houdini, whilst Paul Hardiman and Esmail Sheikh are essential voices on Get Out of My House.
The Dreaming marries Folk instruments such as mandolins, uilleann pipes and didgeridoos. There are samples and unusual signatures. Song structures that are not traditional and are unexpected. Bush utilises vocal loops and odd effects to give her tracks unique resonance. As you’d expect, she takes from film, T.V. and literature on tracks that are among her very best. I have seen reviews and comments surrounding the experimental sound of The Dreaming as a negative. They want an album more like Hounds of Love in terms of its accessibility and commercial appeal. It was clear that, after Never for Ever, Kate Bush wanted to evolve and make a change. Producing on her own for the first time, there was a sense of her proving herself. One could feel a sense of disappointment from her surrounding the lack of production control she had on her first three albums (she assisted production on her second, Lionheart, and co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly). I have discussed The Dreaming many times in terms of its songs and aspects such as the vocals - and how Bush’s production is exceptional and undervalued. I am trying to dispel the notion that the experimentation and, perhaps, lack of instant accessibility is a bad thing. The Dreaming is an album that unfolds over many listens.
Grabbing from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, we get interview snippets where Bush explained her motives and designs through The Dreaming:
“After the last album, 'Never For Ever', I started writing some new songs. They were very different from anything I'd ever written before - they were much more rhythmic, and in a way, a completely new side to my music. I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure - make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff. The main link was engineer Jon Kelly. Everytime I was in the studio Jon was there helping me, so I felt that in order to make the stuff different enough I would have to stop working with Jon. He really wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and realised that it was for the best. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)
Yes, it's very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I'd hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album - my views change quite drastically. What's nice about this album is that it's what I've always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I've had whizzing around in my head that just haven't been put down. I've always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I've wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I've never really had the time until now. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)”.
There is a definite stubbornness and lack of understanding from many critics. I don’t think that the darker tones and madder moments mean The Dreaming is off-putting or lacks warmth. There is so much beauty and emotional heft that goes alongside the wonderfully eclectic sonic and vocal palette. The Dreaming is its own world! You are drawn in and mesmerised by its scope and impact. The fact Kate Bush, as producer, is responsible for such a magnificent feat of creativity and execution is to be applauded. In their review from 2019, this is what Pitchfork observed about The Dreaming:
“The Dreaming really is more a product of the 1970s—which actually sort of began in the late ’60s and extended through most of the ’80s—when prog rock musicians sold millions, had huge radio hits, and established fan bases still rabid today. But the album also came out in 1982, and it only cemented the sense of Bush as a spirited, contrarian of Baroque excess in a musical moment defined largely in reaction to prog’s excess. It’s exactly that audacity to be weird against the prevailing trends that made Kate Bush a great feminist icon who expanded the sonic (and business) possibilities for subsequent visionary singer-songwriters. While name-checking Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Yes is relatively unheard of in today’s hip hop, indie, or pop landscapes, Kate Bush’s name was and is still said with respect. Perhaps it’s because unlike all those prog dudes of yore, she’s legibly, audibly very queer, and very obviously loves pop music, kind of like her patron saint, David Bowie.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Suspended in Gaffa in 1982
On The Dreaming, Bush’s self-proclaimed “mad” album, her mind works itself out through her mouth. Her cacophony of vocal sounds—at least four on each track—pushed boundaries of how white pop women could sing. Everything about it went against proper, pleasing femininity. Her voice was too high: a purposeful shrilling of the unthreatening girlish head voice; too many: voices doubled, layered, calling and responding to themselves, with the choruses full of creepy doubles, all of them her; too unruly: pitch-shifted, leaping in unexpected intervals, slipping registers until the idea of femme and masculine are clearly performances of the same sounding person; too ugly: more in the way cabaret singers inhabit darkness without bouncing back to beauty by the chorus in the way that female pop singers often must.
All this excess is her sound: a strongly held belief that unites all of the The Dreaming. Nearly half of the album is devoted to spiritual quests for knowledge and the strength to quell self-doubt. Frenetic opener “Sat in Your Lap” was the first song written for the album. Inspired by hearing Stevie Wonder live, it serves as meta-commentary of her step back from the banality of pop ascendancy that mocks shortcuts to knowledge. A similar track, “Suspended in Gaffa,” laments falling short of enlightenment through the metaphor of light bondage in black cloth stagehand tape. It is a pretty queer-femme way of thinking through the very prog-rock problem of being a real artist in a commercial theater form, which is probably why it’s a fan favorite”.
Dense and hugely nuanced, I argued in 2019 how The Dreaming is like a misunderstood child. Many albums that are given a shrug upon their release are picked up years later and reassessed. I don’t think this has happened with The Dreaming quite as we would have hoped and imagined. Given how different it is to her follow-up album, 1985’s Hounds of Love, might mean that people see it as a stepping stone or strange experiment Bush needed to get out of her system, to clear the way for the masterpiece that followed. It is clear Bush was expressing a degree of personal strain and struggle on the page. At times anxious and frightening, I feel she put her heart, soul, nerves, fears and desires through an album that is as accomplished, astonishing and memorable as anything that she ever recorded. I do hope there is proper reappraisal of The Dreaming ahead of its fortieth anniversary next year. To me, The Dreaming is right near Bush’s creative summit. Indeed, it is an experimental album – though I don’t consider that to me a negative. Such a rich array of instruments, vocal shades and fascinating stories, this was an artist establishing autonomy and control over her work for the first time. A truly remarkable listen, 1982’s The Dreaming is…
A distinct masterpiece.