FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming
COVER PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
The Enigmatic, the Underrated, the Influential
___________
THE reason to returning…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Dreaming in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
to the fertile and intriguing feet of The Dreaming is that, as I consider Kate Bush’s albums, I wonder whether critics who reviewed her music decades ago would welcome the chance to have another shot! I have discussed how I think The Kick Inside (her debut of 1978) is underrated. The same can be said for Never for Ever (1980). I tend to feel there is this wave of affection for Hounds of Love and albums after that, whereas the four studio albums prior to 1985 have mixed reviews. In terms of its tone and sound, there was this conscious and very physical sense of shifting and experimenting. Having completed The Tour of Life in 1979 and co-produced Never for Ever, Bush was definitely growing in her vision and ambition. Apologies if I repeat anything I have mentioned in other features, but I think The Dreaming remains this album that people either love or can’t get their head around. To be fair, Kate Bush herself was working tirelessly and throwing her everything into the album! She suffered because exhaustion of that toll. The period leading up to Hounds of Love meant transformation and personal change: her diet was improved (due to the slightly unhealthy nature of a lot of her intake then), dance was very much back at the fore (not a lot of time to commit to that with such an intense recording process) and, crucially, her happiness and wellbeing was imperative – she spent time with her family and moved from London to the more salubrious countryside (she built her own studio at her family home and almost returned to her roots).
There are a few reasons why I am reengaging a love of The Dreaming. For one, it is an album I have been listening to a lot is because that I can hear shades of it in albums (by other artists) released since then. I think Bush could have created an album similar to Never for Ever in terms of its themes and sonic palette. Having used the Fairlight CMI a bit on that album, she pushed it to the limits on The Dreaming. As such, the album is broader and more layered then any before. I think the Fairlight CMI played a big part in Hounds of Love though, in my view, the production, vocals and songwriting makes a bigger impact. I think this incredible piece of kits rules The Dreaming and really defines the songs. As sole producer, Bush did not have to reign herself in or answer to anyone regarding experimentation and how she used her studio time – although I can imagine EMI did keep a close eye on how their young star was coming along during the recording! I am going to draw from a review soon. Before then, it is worth reflecting on how some have assessed a hugely important and underrated album:
“In a later review AllMusic called it "a theatrical and abstract piece of work", as well as "a brilliant predecessor to the charming beauty of 1985's Hounds of Love." The Quietus called it "a brave volte face from a mainstream artist" and "a startlingly modern record too", noting its "organic hybridization, the use of digital and analogue techniques, its use of modern wizadry to access atavistic states." In 2014, critic Simon Reynolds called The Dreaming a "wholly unfettered mistress-piece" and "a delirious, head-spinning experience". Bush herself has called The Dreaming her "I've gone mad album" and said it was not particularly commercial. On later revisiting the album she said she was surprised by the sound, saying that it was quite an angry record. Uncut has said that it was a "multi-layered, polyrhythmic and wildly experimental album [and] remains a landmark work".
I was watching a recent edition of My Classic Album where songwriter Steven Wilson was discussing The Dreaming and what it means to him. All of Kate Bush’s work has a fanbase and is important, yet I feel The Dreaming is an album that has impacted so many people and is still seen as a bit weird and inaccessible. Artists such as Björk and Big Boi rank The Dreaming among their favourite albums. As its lead single, Sat in Your Lap, was released on 21st June, 1981, its fortieth anniversary is not too far way. That song signalled a breakthrough and step forward for Bush in terms of her sound. More intense and propulsive than pretty much anything she had put out, one could hear similarly compelling songs throughout The Dreaming. I love the sound of the Fairlight CMI, Bush’s incredible vocals and the fact there are some bamboo sticks thrown into the mix! Not only is The Dreaming influential in terms of how it has influenced other artists; I think it, positively and negatively, changed Bush. She definitely showed she could produce on her own. For those who wrote her off by 1979, she showed that, by 1982, she was an incredible artist who could not be predicted and defined! I like the fact The Dreaming was a real departure from her earlier material, and we get all these weird and wonderful songs. There are some personal and direct tracks through The Dreaming (including All the Love), but I think quite a few tracks have this enigmatic and peculiar layer. I love the darkness of Pull Out the Pin and the rawness of Get Out of Your House.
I still think The Dreaming has not been fully understood and embraced. There have been more positive reviews in the years since its release (it was quite well-received in 1982); there have been mixed reviews and many have pushed it aside as being this rather odd record. This is what Pitchfork wrote in their review of 2019:
“In her borrowing further afield, her characters are less accurately rendered. This has been an unabashedly true part of Bush’s artistic imagination since The Kick Inside’s cover art, vaguely to downright problematic in its attempts to inhabit the worlds of Others. On “Pull Out the Pin” she uses the silver bullet as a totem of one’s protection against an enemy of supernatural evil. In this case, the hero is a Viet Cong fighter pausing before blowing up American soldiers who have no moral logic for their service. She’d watched a documentary that mentioned fighters put a silver Buddha into their mouths as they detonated a grenade, and in that she saw a dark mirror to key on the album cover. While the humanizing of such warriors in pop narrative is a brave act, it’s also possible to hear her thin arpeggiated synth percussion and outro cricket sounds as a part of an aural Orientalism that undermines that very attempt.
Then there’s “The Dreaming,” a parable of a real, historical, and contemporary group of Aboriginal people as timeless, noble savages in a tragically ruined Eden that lectures the center of empire about their (our) political and environmental violence. Bush narrates in a grotesquely exaggerated Australian accent over a thicket of exotic animal sounds, both holdovers from music hall and vaudeville’s racist “ethnic humor” tradition, a kind of distancing that suggests that settler Australians are somehow less civilized and thus more responsible for their white supremacist beliefs than the Empire that shipped them there in the first place. In telling this story in this way—without accurate depictions of people, and without credit, understanding, monetary remuneration, proper cultural context, or employment of indigenous musicians—she unfairly extracts cultural (and economic) value from Aboriginal suffering just as the characters in the song mine their land. As a rich text to meditate on colonial, racial, and sexual violence, it is actually quite useful—but not in the way Bush intended.
The closer “Get Out of My House” was inspired by two different maternal and isolation-madness horror texts: The Shining and Alien. In all three stories, a malevolent spirit wants to control a vessel. Bush does not let the spirit in, shouts “Get out!” and when it violates her demand, she becomes animal. Such shapeshifting is a master trope in Kate Bush’s songbook, an enduring way for her music and performance to blend elements of non-Western spirituality and European myth, turning mundane moments into Gothic horror. It’s also, unfortunately, the way that women without power can imagine escape. The mule who brays through the track’s end is a kind of female Houdini—a sorceress who can will her way out of violence not with language, but with real magic. At least it works in the world of her songs, a kingdom where queerly feminine excess is not policed, but nurtured into excellence”.
There are one or two tracks that not everyone is sold on. The single, There Goes a Tenner, is a song that some people dislike because of Bush’s cockney accent…or maybe it just does not grab them or linger in the mind. I really like everything on the album and, as it turns forty next year, I wondered whether there will be any new release of the album. I keep saying it, but I feel there has to be demos and various unheard takes in the archives that would provide a better understanding and impression of various albums.
I think the recording and production of The Dreaming is fascinating. It is such a varied and incredibly memorable album. Bush covers so much sonic and topical ground on her fourth album. In the past year, there have been several books published about Bush and her music. Magazine features have dug deep into various albums and aspects of her work. To my knowledge, there has not been a book or deep dive into The Dreaming. It is a terrific album that would benefit from a wonderful write-up or a deep study. Not just as a transformative and exciting album in Bush’s cannon; it is also a rich and huge work packed with wonderful sounds and thoughts. In hindsight, Bush saw the album as her going a bit mad! I wanted to revisit it, not just to compel people to buy it on vinyl, but also to discover an album that still does not quite get the full credit it deserves. This fascinating bridge between Bush’s early releases and a commercial peak with Hounds of Love, although many artists have D.N.A. of The Dreaming in their work,. Bush’s album sounds like nothing else. I would love to see more words written about the album. I guess, as we get closer to the anniversary of Sat in Your Lap, that will happen. A recent MOJO magazine featured Bush and discussed Sat in Your Lap. It is amazing that there is so much fascination with her work and an album like The Dreaming. Although some feel that The Dreaming has occasional flashes of genius and some misses, I would disagree and say that it is a phenomenal work from…
A masterful songwriter and producer.