FEATURE:
Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty
Four: The Big Sky
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BECAUSE Kate Bush’s…
Hounds of Love turns forty on 16th September, I am embarking on a twenty-feature run that looks inside the songs and around the album. I am moving onto the third song on the album. The Big Sky is my favourite track from Hounds of Love. It is one that does not get as much love as some of the bigger singles from the album. The Big Sky was the fourth and final single from Hounds of Love. Its intoxicating and busy music video was directed by Kate Bush. A gem from her masterpiece fifth studio album, The Big Sky was released as a single on 21st April, 1986. It reached thirty-seven in the U.K. Not as big a hit as Cloudbusting, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) or Hounds of Love, I do think that The Big Sky is underrated. I am going to come to Leah Kardos’s interpretation of the song. For the tracks on the album, I am looking into her book, Hounds of Love from the 33 1/3 series. For more general features, I will bring in Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. Before getting to some analysis of The Big Sky, there is some useful interview archive that is worth bringing in. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia. I want to start out with their words about the video for The Big Sky and the fact that a select group of fans were involved:
“The music video was directed by Bush herself. It was filmed on 19 March 1986 at Elstree Film Studios in the presence of a studio audience of about hundred fans. The Homeground fanzine was asked to get this audience together, and they did within two weeks. Two coaches took everyone from Manchester Square to Elstree studios early in the morning, after which the Homeground staff, who were cast as some of the aviators, were filmed, and finally the whole audience was admitted for the ‘crowd scenes’. The scenes were repeated until Kate had them as she wanted”.
‘The Big Sky’ was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I’m writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)
‘The Big Sky’ gave me terrible trouble, really, just as a song. I mean, you definitely do have relationships with some songs, and we had a lot of trouble getting on together and it was just one of those songs that kept changing – at one point every week – and, um…It was just a matter of trying to pin it down. Because it’s not often that I’ve written a song like that: when you come up with something that can literally take you to so many different tangents, so many different forms of the same song, that you just end up not knowing where you are with it. And, um…I just had to pin it down eventually, and that was a very strange beast. (Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)”.
Critical reaction for the song was very positive. A natural single that warranted a better chart position, there was almost universal love from U.K. critics for Hounds of Love and its singles. Despite the fact The Big Sky is not ranked and rated as highly as other Hounds of Love songs, it is one of the most important tracks on the album. Leah Kardos has some interesting perspectives on the song. Maybe it is appropriate that The Big Sky, like the clouds Bush sings about in the song, kept changing shape and size. It is a huge and joyous track. I think that these types of songs can be a lot harder to realise. That does not mean that The Big Sky deserves any less credit and respect than other cuts on Hounds of Love. Leah Kardos writes how vital it was to get The Big Sky right. It is a lynchpin. The rainmaking and weather of the song nods to Cloudbusting (the fifth track on the album). Bush singing about a cloud that “looks like Ireland” is a reference to her ancestral heritage. It also links to a track from The Ninth Wave, Jig of Life. The ominous nature of some of the clouds that can bring a flood – “This cloud says, “Noah, c’mon and build me an ark” - looking ahead to The Ninth Wave. All these connections and foreshadowing. Kardos writes: “’Hello Earth’ might be referring back to the moments in ‘The Big Sky’ when Bush songs of being ‘there at the birth’, ‘out of the cloudburst, the head of the tempest’. The song draws its power from the forces that drive Hounds Of Love; big weather and big rhythms”. There is so much musical richness throughout the song. “Morris Pert’s rumbling percussion” is one example. “Wide, jangly acoustic guitar enters at 0’36”. The fact that Bush adds in “tambourines and Paddy Bush’s droning didgeridoo, and it’s a party”. There is also the layer of Kate Bush voices (the song refers to them as ‘sisters). Leah Kardos writes how Bush delivers her vocal with “charming childlike innocence”.
I love discovering about the compositional and production details. “Significantly, the main hook is built around a perfect 5th (upwards from F to C, and back down to F again, ‘the big sky’)”. Kardos observes how in the ad-libbed sections over the coda, “Bush pulls a range of surprisingly uninhibited noises from her body, and that’s saying something for a vocal made in the wake of The Dreaming”. There are shrieks, screams, giggles, choirs and a sense of ecstasy. These aspects and sounds connect with childhood glee, the expanse of nature and the weather, religion and spirituality. Leah Kardos notes how Noah, his ark and deal with God, has this brightness and positivity. It is a vast contrast to the darkness and terror of Waking the Witch from Hounds of Love’s second side. The video, which Bush directed, is a full sky in itself. In terms of the characters and scenes she includes. Bush stands on a rooftop holding binoculars whilst the weather changes behind her. Family are involved in the video. Bush’s brothers Paddy and John appear in the video. One hundred fans. Two giraffes, Superman and jet fighter pilots among the huge cast! It is a joyous video that perfectly brought to life all the imagination and fever of the track. One of two songs from Hounds of Love not performed during Kate Bush’s 2014 Before the Dawn residency – the other was Mother Stands for Comfort -, The Big Sky was considered for inclusion but nixed. Maybe the fact the residency had plenty of sun, sky and weather throughout (as Aerial’s A Sky of Honey was brought to life) meant that The Big Sky could sit it out.
I did not know that SLUG covered The Big Sky in 2015. There is not a whole lot written about the song. Even though it did not get performed live a lot and it is played less than other tracks from Hounds of Love, it is a clear gem that is hugely important in terms of the rest of Hounds of Love. How it talks about weather and nature. Common themes that run throughout Hounds of Love. Lyrics and aspects of the song that looks to what is to come. You can connect The Big Sky with other tracks. The relationship between it, Cloudbusting, Jig of Life and even Hello Earth. I will end with some reviews for The Big Sky. This is what this website had to say about a moment of pure gold from Hounds of Love:
“And while “Running Up That Hill” is indeed probably the best Starter Kate Bush song out there — there’s just so much drama in it — allow me to suggest “The Big Sky” as a follow-up for the folks who don’t know if they want to commit to a whole album just yet. “The Big Sky” is, as they kids say, a whole bop: relentless but not unrelenting drums, bouncy rather than thundering, hammer on while Bush sings a paean to the glories of the huge bowl of the universe opening up above you. It’s not about much, but does it have to be? No! It can be about clouds looking like Ireland, and maybe people being confused about why Bush is so darn pleased about that. Be happy with Kate! Dance with her! Pause for the jet! Then dance again! Maybe it’s possible not to be happy when this song is playing, but I think you really have to work at it”.
Going back to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia article from earlier, they collated some critical feedback for the fourth single from Hounds of Love. My favourite song from this remarkable album that gains new fans every year. One that turns forty on 16th September:
“The Big Sky is a moment of real, mad bravado. The best and most threatening thing that this bizarre talent has ever done.
Richard Cook, Sounds, 3 May 1986
She has with her every release managed to maintain a uniqueness. She always sounds like herself and she never sounds the same, and that’s a difficult trick.
The Stud Brothers, Melody Maker, 3 May 1986
Another gem from the utterly brilliant LP, this has more hypnotic pounding rhythms and chants, the orchestra sawing away as if their lives depended on it…
Ian Cranna, Smash Hits, 7 May 1986”.
Continuing in my run of features, I will move to track four from Hounds of Love: Mother Stands for Comfort. Cloudbusting ends the first side and, before looking at all the tracks from The Ninth Wave, there will be a slight detour as a break. It has been great showing love for The Big Sky and getting to know more about it. If you do not know much about The Big Sky then go and listen to it. In my view, it is one of Kate Bush’s…
BEST tracks.