FEATURE:
Sound Waves
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in June 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: George Wilkes/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Kate Bush and Her Connection and Fascination with Water
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THIS is going to be quite brief…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for The Ninth Wave (Hounds of Love, 1985)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
but I have been casting my mind back to interviews where Kate Bush discussed her fascination with water. In several of her albums, one can hear songs that relate to water or mention them. It is not uncommon for songwriters to write about water - either literally or as a metaphor. For Bush, I think it relates to her wider interest in the natural world. 2005’S Aerial has a second disc, A Sky of Honey, where we get the cycle of a day. On the album’s first disc, A Sea of Honey, water is represented and employed in different ways. I especially love the domestic setting of Mrs. Bartolozzi (“I took my mop and bucket/And I cleaned and I cleaned”)., Rather than it being grand and sweeping, it is more mundane yet no less extraordinary and arresting. If some artists use water images rather simply or obviously, Bush can take us from the wide expanse of the ocean to a washing machine. Mrs. Bartolozzi is the heroine who is washing the muddy floor and watching clothing tango in the washing machine. Perhaps less obvious is water and birth. Some of Bush’s songs discuss birth and motherhood – or the creation of new life. Never for Ever’s Breathing is about a foetus that is living in the womb as nuclear apocalypse beckons. The video for Army Dreamers sees Bush and her cast in the water, in danger – Breathing’s video also is partly set in the water. Think about her debut album, The Kick Inside (1978), and we open with the sound of whale song (on the track, Moving).
Whilst one of Bush’s more stressful experiences with water came when she was filming a video for her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn, that takes me to an album (Hounds of Love) where her curiosity with water is at its most striking. Bush, in 2014, filmed a video for And Dream of Sheep. This is a song on Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave. One feels that this is Bush’s most rewarding and favourite creative project. She has remarked how she and her friends debated what the scariest thing is you could imagine. Being stuck on the water and not knowing what is below is at the top. It is that uncertainty and constant anxiety which makes The Ninth Wave so compelling. With sound effects and various stories of a heroine marooned on the ocean, this is Kate Bush using water and the sea in a really interesting way. There is danger and a sense of calm. On Under Ice, one gets the feeling of being trapped under the water, whilst Hello Earth sort of takes us above the world and we get this incredible view of the ocean and world. There is a blend of horror, very human fear and utter beauty through The Ninth Wave. It is staggering how Bush brings us with the heroine. We are alongside her on the dark and cold water! It is not only The Ninth Wave where Hounds of Love discusses the water.
Maybe inspired by her move from the city to the country, Hounds of Love looks at the sky and sea. It feels very rooted in nature – whereas other albums have painted on a different canvas. The Big Sky is about clouds and the child-like joy of the different shapes they make. Cloudbsuting seems to be the opposite: a device that would cause it to rain. That songs draws inspiration from the 1973 Peter Reich memoir, A Book of Dreams, which Bush was struck by. The song details the relationship between psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and his young son, Peter. It is narrated from told from the point of view of Peter. It is about the boy's memories of his life with Reich on their family farm. There, the two spent time ‘cloudbusting’: a rain-making process involving a machine designed and built by Reich (called a cloudbuster) that they point at the sky. This article discusses folk horror in Bush’s music. Hounds of Love’s title track is one that combines water and the more macabre:
“The track contains what is perhaps my favourite lyric out of all of Kate Bush’s songs; Take my shoes off / And throw them in the lake / And I’ll be / Two steps on the water. This is a piece of perfect fairytale logic; to walk on the water you simply need to throw your shoes onto its surface. It references all of the otherworldly, not-quite-safe aspects of fairy stories and folklore and applies them to the equally not-quite-safe experience of being in love. To be in love, and to be loved, you need to do things which make you vulnerable. You need to throw your shoes onto the water, hoping they will dance on the surface. Kate blends the fear of Night of the Demon with the cautious hope and optimism of this fairytale imagery, creating through their conflict something that is far more than the sum of its parts.
There are B-sides and covers where, again, Bush has this attachment and curiosity regarding water. Returning to the article I just quoted from, and her take on Donavon’s Lord of the Reedy River (a B-side of her 1981 single, Sat In Your Lap) seemed like a very natural choice:
‘Lord of the Reedy River’ initially appears to be a very simple song. The minimal instrumentation of fluting organ provides backing to an equally minimal vocal performance which tells an archetypically ambiguous folktale; is it simply the thoughts of someone captivated by the beauty of a swan or, as the line “sadly we mourned and sighed” implies, a study of grief or even suicide. We are left to make that decision ourselves.
Yet the song itself is also a tale of re-telling.
While the piece may appear to be a work of traditional folk song it was in fact written by Donovan, only twelve years before Kate recorded it. Yet Donovan didn’t write the song for himself and didn’t release it under his own name until it appeared on HMS Donovan in 1971. ‘Lord of The Reedy River’ was in fact first performed by Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin on her 1969 album Postcard”.
There are other references regarding water through Bush’s catalogue. From Delius (Song of Summer) – “…to be sung by the summer/(Delius) night on the water/(Delius) on the water/(Delius)” – and, once again, Moving - “Moving liquid, yes, you are just as water/You flow around all that comes in your way” -, there is something clearly powerful, symbolic and multi-layered!
Water can hold and sustain new life; it can destroy worlds. I am not surprised that aspects and elements of water have played a fairly big role in Bush’s songwriting. Her most popular album, Hounds of Love, puts it front and centre. Perhaps my favourite lyric of Bush’s involving water comes on Hounds of Love’s Jig of Life: “Over here!/Can't you see where memories are kept bright?/Tripping on the water like a laughing girl”. This is something that I might examine more in a future feature. Different songwriters have their own reasons for bringing images of water into their work. I guess water represents passion - and, by its use, that can be a very powerful songwriting tool. I am especially interested how, from her debut album through to her most recent album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, water is vital and in her veins. In fact, there are a few songs from 50 Words for Snow where water plays a role. Lake Tahoe, obviously, very much takes from the water – as this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia lays out:
“It was because a friend told me about the story that goes with Lake Tahoe so it had to be set there. Apparently people occasionally see a woman who fell into the lake in the Victorian era who rises up and then disappears again. It is an incredibly cold lake so the idea, as I understand it, is that she fell in and is still kind of preserved. Do you know what I mean? (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
One of the song’s best lines, “Cold mountain water/Don't ever swim there”, stays in the head. A unique and incredible song from 50 Words for Snow, Misty, is about a snowman that melts in the bed after a night of passion with a heroine (“Melting, melting, in my hand/Sunday morning/I can't find him/The sheets are soaking”). I have probably missed some obvious examples where Bush has dissected and examined water and used it in different forms. Whether we are cast adrift in an unforgiving ocean or watching a snowman melt (sadly) away, water and songs where it is mentioned can take on different forms. As she is one of the greatest songwriters ever, there are other areas and angles to her lyrics that are worth discussion and highlighting. I have been thinking about Hounds of Love and hearing songs like Cloudbusting on the radio. It got me thinking about water and how Bush has kept it fairly close to her pen. In my view, some of her most arresting images and finest songs connect with water. I shall leave things there. Whether she is creating a concept around water or sprinkling the subject in quite subtlety, every time Bush takes us to the water, it leads to something enriching and…
ALWAYS compelling.