FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari
Five: Mother Stands for Comfort
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REACHING the quarter-point…
of my twenty-feature run about Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, it takes me to the penultimate track on the album’s first side. As Hounds of Love turns forty on 16th September, I am doing it justice and focusing on its amazing tracks. Like I am doing with all the tracks, I will bring in some interview archive from Kate Bush and also some analysis from Leah Kardos and her book, Hounds of Love. From the 33 1/3 series, this book is essential and so fascinating. I am focusing on Mother Stands for Comfort now. This is both the most under-discussed and perhaps most important track on the album. I said how important its predecessor, The Big Sky, is. I shall expand on that. I will also bring in a feature about the song. Not much is written about it. The only of the five songs from Hounds of Love’s first side not released as a single, it has never been performed live – the only track from the album with that unfortunate honour – and was not selected as one of the songs for Before the Dawn in 2014. No music video or much in the way of podcast coverage (I am bringing in the only one I could find), this song is a bit of an anomaly. If you see song ranking features, it occasionally features relatively high up, but I don’t think I have ever heard this song played on the radio. I do hope that someone talks about the song ahead of the fortieth anniversary of Hounds of Love. Tonally different to the other tracks on the album’s first side, it is chillier and more unsettling. Think about its siblings – Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Hounds of Love, The Big Sky and Cloudbusting – and Mother Stands for Comfort stands out. One feels it could almost fit on The Ninth Wave. However, I really love the song and feel that it has a fascinating inspiration. One that adds new dimensions to Hounds of Love and what the album means.
Let’s move to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and part of an interview where Bush spoke about a song that a lot of people do not know about. I hope that this remarkable piece of music gets more love and affection. It remains pretty much ignored. I shall come to some reviews that mention Mother Stands for Comfort:
“Well, the personality that sings this track is very unfeeling in a way. And the cold qualities of synths and machines were appropriate here. There are many different kinds of love and the track’s really talking about the love of a mother, and in this case she’s the mother of a murderer, in that she’s basically prepared to protect her son against anything. ‘Cause in a way it’s also suggesting that the son is using the mother, as much as the mother is protecting him. It’s a bit of a strange matter, isn’t it really? [laughs] (Richard Skinner, ‘Classic Albums Interview: Hounds Of Love’. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.
There have been various takes on Mother Stands for Comfort. Medium say this: “Bush takes a more solemn tone with “Mother Stands For Comfort.” She takes an otherworldly ominous tone through the use of spacey synth samples, thick bass lines, and the shattering of glass samples taken from the Fairlight against her melancholy piano melody. This rather warped sound reflects the complexity of a mother’s love and protection. The implication here is that her child has committed some terrible crime, and now the mother feels the need to protect her child from the law, “Mother stands for comfort/ Mother will hide the murderer/ Mother hides the madman/ Mother will stay mum.” It’s a very interesting dichotomy that Kate has written about. You get a sense that the child knows that the mother will shield them, so they do not need to fear”. Also, Smash Hits mentioned Mother Stands for Comfort in their Hounds of Love review: “No, they don't! "Mother Stands For Comfort" is about nothing of the sort! It's a love song to mom. Perhaps the other four songs could be described that way, but I would say that they are more about being scared of love and overcoming this problem. I'm not sure how "Mother Stands For Comfort" fits into this theme”.
I am going to move to some interruption and dissection from Leah Kardos regarding Hounds of Love’s scariest moment. Kardos notes how Mother Stands for Comfort is more austere than tracks before it. “Around a simple, rocking chair LinnDrum beat, Bush’s expressive piano figures creep and wrap around dark, yearning chords”. This is a skeletal track that does not have the same richness and warmth as other songs on Hounds of Love. It seems more sparse because it needs to contrast this distinct mood. One of tension and murder. Icy and almost filmic, Bush would have approached the composition different to other Hounds of Love songs. Composing at the piano, it sort of nods back to her earlier albums and her sitting at the piano and writing. I am not sure whether there was a particular film or book that provided her inspiration. I love when Leah Kardos talks about chords and shifts on the song: “The verse descends from Am7 to Fmaj9, then temporarily pauses on a hamstrung resolution of Am7 over an E bass. In the reciprocal phase, it makes a hopeful move to D9 (suggesting dorian mode), then a melancholy pivot to B♭aug4/D, affecting a twisted phrygian model cadence back to the tonic (Am7) to go around again”. Eberhard Weber’s bass is particularly important and pivotal. Leah Kardos notes how his “upright five-string electric bass provides a lower melodic counterpoint in warm, supple movements”. The counterpoint to Kate Bush’s vocal. The lyric is about a son who has killed but his mother protects him without question. This protection of someone who has done something terrible. Bush’s Hounds of Love, if it has an overarching theme or concept, it about exploring different sides of love. Every song connects with that. Mother Stands for Comfort is an unconditional love of a child and how a mother will shield their child, even if they have done something very bad – or murdered in this case.
Smashed glass from the Fairlight CMI and the sharp tom hits from Stuart Elliott add this sense of menace and violence. Bush also uses the Fairlight CMI in the chorus. This strange and cold whistle sound. Kardos observes how “The harmonies of the chorus cycle around a progression of minor chords – Am, Dm/F, Dm, Em7 – a bleak swirl that underpins the primary lyrical sentiment: ‘Mother stands for comfort, mother will hide the murderer’”. The clash between the calm and almost nurturing lead vocal and backing vocals (from Bush) that are pained, anguished and almost hysterical. Maybe representing her inner thoughts and what is in her head. Some might see Mother Stands for Comfort as the loner from side A of Hounds of Love. Not a single or a song that has been played a lot of written about in any real depth (apart from when I write about it!), there is connection with the other songs on that side. Leah Kardos talks about the comfort of family and the “primal nature of love”. Hounds of Love’s title track addresses the more frightening and intense sides of love and desire. Compared to many of her contemporaries, Kate Bush was addressing and examining love and approaching it from different sides and exploring its layers and multiple sides – as opposed the traditional and one-dimensional nature many of her peers stuck to. I did cover this song recently and have repeated parts of that feature here. It warrants repetition. The darkest and most psychologically deep song arguably, we do need to talk about Mother Stands for Comfort more. When you listen to it, you realise that it is…
A really moving and compelling song.