FEATURE:
I Stand at the Gates Alone
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot whilst promoting The Dreaming on the Italian T.V. show, Riva Del' Garda '82, on 28th September, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Why Kate Bush’s The Dreaming Should Garner As Much Love and Respect As Hounds of Love
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ALWAYS considered her masterpiece…
I can see why people would laud and admire Hounds of Love. Released in 1985, this was Kate Bush’s fifth studio album. I will never not love and adore this album. I think that a lot of time and focus is spent on Hounds of Love, whereas its predecessor is not given as much love. I am writing this because there is a new edition of UNCUT that has a twelve-page feature about the making of The Dreaming, including interviews with people who were involved. I am going to get inspiration for that more when working up to fortieth anniversary in September. For now, I wanted to use this feature to look at The Dreaming and why, in its weird way, it is up there with Hounds of Love in terms of its brilliance. I say ‘weird way’, because that is sort of the way the album is seen. Kate Bush herself, looking back, felt that the period she was recording The Dreaming was a tough one. Eccentric and very different to anything she had committed to tape before, this was an artist free and pushing her music to new limits. Hounds of Love gets more acclaim and celebration because it is less tense than The Dreaming. Even though the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, is quite epic and anxious at times, the singles on the first half have more space, air and light – even if a lot of the lyrics are not overly-positive. With hues and shades of purples, silvers and greens, Bush wrote songs for the album in the countryside and was in a happier space than she was a few years before.
Look at The Dreaming, and this is an album that Bush produced across different spaces, often performing and recording through the night; not giving herself much time or relief. Because of these conditions, a lot of the material on The Dreaming is seen as either strange or not as good as Hounds of Love. I think there is this conception that Hounds of Love is vastly superior or that an album like The Dreaming is a lot harder to digest. One cannot call The Dreaming underrated, although it is an album that, upon release, was a commercial disappointment and did not really engage in the way one would have hoped. Hounds of Love found some love in America, but it has been a rockier path to recognition for The Dreaming. In September, the album turns forty. I am keen to explore each song and really get into the making of the album, the year or so leading up to its release, and how Bush took massive leaps from 1980’s Never for Ever and made this bold and brilliant statement in 1982. In terms of how good The Dreaming is, I do honestly believe it has songs that match the best of Hounds of Love. Even though Bush was happier and, debatably, even stronger as a producer on Hounds of Love (she solo produced each album), I do think that the sheer intricacy and detail that one experiences throughout The Dreaming should be respected.
In terms of women producing their own albums in the 1980s, one could not point to too many examples. Not only did Kate Bush helm this stunning and quite complex album; one can revisit these songs and find new insights and qualities. The Dreaming is a nuanced album that is absolutely stunning to listen to! From the lead single and opening track, Sat in Your Lap, with its taut and propulsive percussion, to the frantic and fear-laden closer, Get Out of My House, it is a thrill-ride! That is not to say those two tracks are indicative of The Dreaming’s colour scheme, mandate and overall sound. Indeed, There Goes a Tenner and Suspended in Gaffa are much lighter tracks. They put me in mind of what might hear on The Kick Inside or Lionheart (her first two albums). The Dreaming is still an album where Bush was looking back to her earlier work, yet she was pushing bravely forward. That is one of the great strengths of The Dreaming. Even though it is ten tracks in total, the album last over forty-three minutes. Bush manages to pack so much into every song! Like Hounds of Love, Bush worked with a great range of musicians in order to ensure that her album was given as much life, range and depth as possible. A penny whistle, mandolin and bouzouki can be heard in the mix. There is not a weak track in the pack.
I feel The Dreaming is an album that could benefit both from a visual piece and a new release. By the visual piece, I mean its songs can thread together in a short film. You listen to the tracks and project yourself in the action. So scenic, head-spinning and memorable, only a few of the tracks from the album were brought to life through videos. What people would give to see tracks like Get Out of My House, Houdini, Leave It Open and All the Love committed to film. Also, there has not been any re-release of a Kate Bush album with demos and extra material. As the architect of an album where she was working all hours, you know that there are archives and bits in the vaults when she recorded out of Advision Studios, Odyssey Studios, Abbey Road Studios and Townhouse Studios (all in London). Bush definitely had more studio focus on Hounds of Love. Not wanting to go between studios or feel so stressed and tired, that album benefits from an artist more refreshed and happier. Not that the tension and fatigue is part of The Dreaming’s charm. I think Bush’s sheer dedication to taking her music to new levels and pushing the studio is admirable.
At the time of its release, The Dreaming was seen by some as too experimental, impenetrable, pretentious and odd. Some bemoaned the lack of instantly commercial tracks and dense sound. Hounds of Love, on the other hand, was seen as genius and an instant classic by many reviewers in the U.K. (things were more mixed in the U.S.). The Dreaming is an album that both proved Bush was one of the most fascinating and original artists in the world. She also showed that she was very different to the artist many mocked in the press back in 1978. I think The Dreaming was too ahead of its time, perhaps. There was definitely a perception of what Kate Bush should have been making and what the world got. If she was another artist, I think The Dreaming would have been taking to heart a lot sooner. Artists like Big Boi and Björk have recognised the importance of the album. Sure, there is nothing as radio-friendly and sing-able as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) or Cloudbusting. Hounds of Love is nothing short of a masterpiece. I feel it is unfair to either see The Dreaming as a much weaker album or something that Bush had to ‘get out of her system’ before revealing her true genius on Hounds of Love. I do feel that, as it heads towards forty years, The Dreaming warrants reinspection and a wave of new reviews and features.
I will wrap it up soon. I thought it would be worthwhile sourcing parts of a positive review for The Dreaming. Pitchfork reviewed The Dreaming in 2019. Their words and assessments of individual songs show what detail, depth and diversity can be found throughout The Dreaming:
“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.
“Leave It Open” is a declaration of artistic independence hinging on the semantic ambiguity of its pronouns (what is “it” and who are “we”?). Here’s the one solid rock groove of the album, and it crescendos throughout while a breathy, heavily phased alto Bush calls and high-pitched Bush responds in increasingly frantic phrases. “All the Love” is the stunning aria of The Dreaming—a long snake moan on regret. Here she duets with a choirboy, a technique she’d echo with her son on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. The lament trails off with a skipping cascade of goodbyes lifted from Bush’s broken answering machine, a pure playback memento mori.
The other half of the album showcases Bush’s talent for writing narratives about historical and imagined characters placed in unbearable moral predicaments. This is often called her “literary” or “cinematic” side, but it is also her connection to character within the Victorian-era British music hall tradition, a bawdy and comic form of working-class theatre that borrowed from American vaudeville traditions and became the dominant 19th- and early 20th-century commercial British pop art. As much as she’s in prog rock’s pantheon, she’s also part of this very-pre rock‘n’roll archive of cheeky musical entertainment.
When it works, her narrative portraits render precise individuals in richly drawn scenes—the empathy radiates out. In “Houdini” she fully inhabits the gothic romance of lost love, conjuring the panic, grief, and hope of Harry Houdini’s wife Bess. Bush was taken by Houdini’s belief in the afterlife and Bess’s loyal attempts reach him through séances. Bush conjured the horrified sounds of witnessing a lover die by devouring chocolate and milk to temporarily ruin her voice. Bess was said to pass a key to unlock his bonds through a kiss, the inspiration for the cover art and a larger metaphor for the depth of trust Bush wants in love. We must need what’s in her mouth to survive, and we must get it through a passionate exchange among willing bodies”.
Rather than The Dreaming being difficult, too dense, strange or mad, it is a wonderful album from an artist who was pushing boundaries and entering wonderful new worlds. I don’t think the point of The Dreaming was to have hits or be commercial. Bush wanted to make something that challenging but could be appreciated and understood. She loved the music of David Bowie and Peter Gabriel, and I don’t think either of them would have got anything but love if they released The Dreaming in 1982. In fact, the theatre, layers and way Bush pushed away from what she had done before is to be saluted. I love The Dreaming. Such a brilliant writer, innovator, singer, musician and producer, this was such a dominant display of Bush’s endless creativity and talent! When The Dreaming turns forty on 13th September, I hope that it is (finally) given the credit it deserves and it is seen…
IN a whole new way.