FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Fourteen
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow
Could She Go in the Same Direction for Her Next Album?
__________
IT is a redundant question at the moment…
as Kate Bush has not officially announced that she will release another album. I will drop in an interview that she gave for the Today show late last year, where Emma Barnett asked Kate Bush whether she would release more material. Bush said she has been very busy but is excited to do something new and get into that headspace. We could get an album next year or the year after, though it will not come with tease, build-up or fanfare: Kate Bush will announce it through her website not long before its release and that will be that. As her latest album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, turns fourteen on 21st November, I wanted to look at this album but also cast ahead. One of the most notable shifts when it came to new music from Kate Bush is how different 50 Words for Snow was from 2005’s Aerial. The former is a double album that is impossible to categorise is about motherhood family and a summer’s day. The second disc, A Sky of Honey, is about that twenty-four-hour period. 50 Words for Snow is obviously chillier and different. Aerial has a lot of shorter tracks whilst 50 Words for Snow is seven long tracks. This album has the most words in any Kate Bush album title, whereas Aerial ties for the least (alongside Lionheart). In terms of where she goes next, I wonder if is realistic that Bush can head in the same direction as she did for 50 Words for Snow. It is, stylistically, more Chamber Jazz than anything else. If Aerial was quite lush in places and had many upbeat and energetic moments, 50 Words for Snow is one of her least energised, propulsive and upbeat albums. Not in a bad way!
I think the tonally shift is brilliant. This is an album that unfolds and these songs unfurl, expand and create their own worlds. If many reviews were hugely positive, 50 Words for Snow, since 2011, has been ranked low when it comes to the best Kate Bush albums. In terms of the less enamoured reviews, below is one from SLANT. It is quite positive, though not as effusive as many:
“Just in time for the arrival of winter cold, Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow settles in like a dense, icy fog, delivered in a slow, deliberate style that’s far different from the singer’s usual doe-eyed dynamism. Following up on the more leisurely take on old material that characterized Director’s Cut, the album applies Bush’s usual lyrical palette, purple tales of romance characterized by expressive fantasy elements, to long, glacially progressing tracks.
This means that, despite Bush’s long-term reputation as a purveyor of singularly odd pop songs, the material here isn’t as catchy as it is catatonic. Yet her measured new style works well, reaching an apogee on tracks like “Misty,” which runs to an unbelievable 13-and-a-half minutes on little more than words and piano. It’s mesmerizing enough that it’s easy not to notice the bizarre lyrical focus, which boils down to an erotic interpretation of “Frosty the Snowman.”
At other times the wide-open spaces make it all to evident how silly the material is. Bush’s songs have always had an element of the ridiculous, something that was lost in, or easily forgiven by, how dynamically propulsive and weird they were, full of vocal acrobatics and bizarre effects. With those things stripped away, songs like “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” a blustery duet with Elton John chronicling a doomed love affair spanning hundreds of years, only point out how much Bush and Anne Rice have in common.
Nothing else here is nearly as bad, despite a litany of odd choices: on “Lake Tahoe” another 10-minute-plus mammoth, Bush pairs up with choral singer Stefan Roberts; on “Snowflake,” her son sings from the snowflake’s point of view; and Stephen Fry shows up on “50 Words for Snow” to recite the titular words as Bush croons over him. As absurd as it sounds, all of this is somehow perfect and eerily charming. 50 Words for Snow is a success not only because it’s so challengingly bold and peculiar, but because it repackages Bush’s usual idiosyncrasies in an entirely new form. It succeeds as a transitional work, but first and foremost as its own singular world—a hushed, magnificent snow globe full of strange stories and characters”.
Similarly, whilst they highlights strengths and merits, NME didn’t seem fully captivated by 50 Words for Snow. Maybe expecting a new album to be socially and thematically warmer or more Pop-driven, it is interesting seeing some of the difference of opinions. Their write-up is quite interesting and insightful, mind. Everyone had their own take on this beguiling and original album that was like nothing Kate Bush released previously:
“Musically, we’re in the same expansive, unhurried territory as 2005’s ‘Aerial’, but this time, it’s winter. In the cool atmosphere of opener ‘Snowflake’, the soft impact of piano and muffled drums conjures the feel of thick fluffy snowfall. Kate’s voice is soft, subtle, seeming barely impelled by breath, while her son Bertie’s is choirboy-pure, cutting silvery and innocent through sparse flurries of Fantasia violins, and ripples of high piano notes. It takes a confident mistress of mood to start an album with a nine-minute song so sparely drawn.
‘Lake Tahoe’, featuring classical singers Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood, is a chilly choral ghost story based around the urban myth of the cold Californian mountain lake, whose bottom is rumoured to be lined with perfectly preserved bodies. The smoky and sparse feel of the piano puts us somewhere between minimal modern classical and Carole King or Laura Nyro.
On ‘Misty’ her voice becomes deeper, minxier, as she husks “give him eyes/Make him smile for me, give him life”. Her growl is bewitching, and despite the utter ludicrousness of her love, you become as snowblind in it as she is. “Melting in my hand”, indeed…
The only yellow spot is the title track, which is, as anyone who remembers ‘Pi’ from ‘Aerial’ will be not at all surprised to learn, a list of wackadoodle alternative descriptions for snow (“deamondi-pavlova… eiderfalls”) recited in Stephen Fry’s matter-of-factly QI-est of tones as Kate counts down the numbers in the background then willdy yells “come on Joe, you got 22 to go” as a chorus.
Sure, it’s an interesting idea. I could make a song by listing all the names of all the UK’s motorway service junctions (“Watford Gap… Fleet… Newport Pagnaaaaallllll”), but it’s doubtful I’d be saying anything to anyone about their lives. But maybe Kate’s just having a laugh, throwing you a sonic snowball. She’s allowed. The long, hungry hiatus before ‘Aerial’ has had the effect of making [a]Kate Bush[/a] criticism an unnecessarily serious-faced pursuit, but her songs have always reveled in the daft and whimsical.
‘Wild Man’ is also, frankly, quite silly on first listen. That faintly Eastern motif, the oddly accented, lurching delivery. At first it seems forced, but repeated listens bring out a real sense of the abominable snowman’s raw loneliness.
The most surprising moment is a duet with one of Kate’s childhood heroes, [a]Elton John[/a]. Not just a drug counselor to international pop stars, our Reg is, it seems, still capable of an arrestingly rich and complex vocal on this high-drama tale of time-travelling lovers repeatedly torn apart and reunited, holed up in front of the fire, keeping the snowstorms, faintly menacing synths and the future at bay. Closer ‘Among Angels’, while less striking, has a spacious, sacred feel. Like the rest of ‘50 Words For Snow’, it makes you crane your head close to listen. [a]Kate Bush[/a] no longer needs to cartwheel through dry ice to get your attention. By following her own strange snowy course without thought to what might be expected, she sets her own agenda. To hope for a ‘Running Up That Hill’ or a ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be to miss the point, and the subtle pleasures – there’s enough people walking the ways Kate cleared 30 years ago. Follow her footprints off the beaten path, and you’ll find some weird winter wonders”.
The Times’ review of 50 Words for Snow was more empathetic and passionate. I guess 50 Words for Snow is a hard album to fully embrace. It is one that demands attention and focus. No shorter or punchier songs. Given the seven tracks are all long and Wild Man, its sole single, had a radio edit that even then was quite long, meant that it did not get all the attention and airplay it might have. Harder to promote an album that way when the songs are longer. However, I feel Bush is more and more becoming someone who wants her music to be experienced in physical formats and does not want to do a load of promotion and have it geared for radio. That is commendable:
“Her first album of entirely original material since 2005’s sprawling and utterly uncategorisable Aerial, the 65-minute, conceptual 50 Words for Snow follows this year’s Director’s Cut, on which Kate Bush reworked songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. If Aerial raised eyebrows for addressing the unexpected possibilities and mental triggers contained in domestic routine, her new album proves no less befuddling and beguiling — and idiosyncratic. The title track features Stephen Fry intoning a litany of white-stuff descriptions (“Hooded wept”, he purrs; “Faloop’njoompoola”); Elton John duets on the airy, forlorn Snowed in at Wheeler Street; the stunning Lake Tahoe tells the story of a dog reunited with its owner in the afterlife; and Misty sees Bush enjoying a tryst with a snowman, and includes the characteristically lubricious line “I can feel him melting in my hand”. Musically, the album finds Bush at her most spare: several tracks feature no more than voice (thicker now, and even more emotionally resonant), piano, bass and drums. It isn’t entirely successful — there are times when you long for more sonic grandeur and open spaces, and fewer jazz colourings — but then along comes the hushed, compelling, overwhelming Among Angels, and yet again you think, there is nobody who comes close to this extraordinary woman”.
I don’t think Kate Bush, if a new album does arrive, will repeat the structure and format of 50 Words for Snow. She makes every album sound new, so sonically, there will be no repeat. However, you cannot rule out a seven-track album that has a different feel. I would not rule that out. However, given that 50 Words for Snow is perhaps one of her least-discussed, explored and played albums, I do think that it is more probably Kate Bush will rejig and release an album that is a sort of middle ground between 50 Words for Snow and Aerial. I don’t think we will have a lot of shorter tracks or a suite. Instead, it is probably going to be a ten/eleven-track album that is more conventional in terms of structure and format. I do feel like 50 Words for Snow is massively underrated. Bush will be conscious of perhaps being more engaging to a social media or TikTok audience. Not that she will compromise entirely but, as she has a new generation of fans on board, she will reflect that with an album that is perhaps a move back to what she was producing in the 1980s. I think a new album will be more Pop. However, this is all speculation. I have written about this recently and theorising what a future album could be like. However, this feature is to mark fourteen years of 50 Words for Snow, but also ask if a new Kate Bush album will be similar in any way. I feel that the biggest similarities we will see relates less to the genre and album length and more to do with tone. By that, I think there will be ethereal and darker elements. 50 Words for Snow seems to be set at night. All the tracks have that feel to them. I think Bush will vary this on for a new album. Where Aerial seems more about the day, a future album will possibly not mirror that.
To me, it feels like that stripped and more bare sound is going to stay. If Bush will gear herself to a new audience, that does not mean more layers. Instead, I feel we will get something perhaps daker in terms of a Pop feel but something that does not comprise of loads of instruments. I feel we will get a couple of contributors too. Maybe not Kate Bush singing everything herself. We definitely need to share 50 Words for Snow more in some way. Perhaps not through radio, perhaps a listening party or doing something with the songs. In another feature, I argued how a short film of the seven tracks could be interesting. I love cuts such as Misty, Lake Tahoe and Among Angels. It is a wonderful album that sort of takes us back to the beginning. Kate Bush and the piano for the most part. Or her taking things back to basics in a sense. A new album might have to change in that respect, though Bush talked warmly about recording 50 Words for Snow and the affection she has for it. Turning fourteen very soon, it would be great of Kate Bush fans talked about this album, as it seems to get forgotten about. Or not held in such high regard. This masterful and truly engrossing album turns fourteen…
ON 21st November.