FEATURE:
Kate Bush: Something Like a Song
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a publicity photo for 50 Words for Snow, creating Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe (50 Words for Snow)
__________
I want to feature…
this Kate Bush song, as the seven songs on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow do not get the respect they deserve. The latest album from Bush, it often features quite low when critics rank her work. Maybe in the bottom three. It is disappointing as, when it was released, 50 Words for Snow got a lot of praise. Some five-star reviews. I do feel many people need to revisit this album. It is a wonderfully rich album where the songs are longer than her previous work. They provide this more immersive experience in my view. You can inhabit the tracks and hear the production brilliance. Bush, still, not talked about enough as a genius producer – which is what she is. Because of all of this, for this Kate Bush: Something Like a Song, I am honing in on one of the best tracks off of 50 Words for Snow. If it were shorter, I feel Lake Tahoe would have been great as the second single from the album. As it was, only one song was officially released as a single. That is Wild Man. I will go into a bit more depth about this song. To get the true sense of why 50 Words for Snow is brilliant, you have to listen and let the album infuse into the senses. It meant a lot to Kate Bush. Earlier in 2011, she released Director’s Cut. That sort of cleared the way for a new album. One that had clearly been on her mind for a long time. A wintery album that is almost the opposite of A Sky of Honey – the second disc of 2005’s Aerial, it is the course of a summer’s day, where we go full circle -, I do love how transformative the music is. I at least was really stunned the first time I heard the album. It changed something in me. Director’s Cut was reworking songs that appeared on 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. Seven jewels on her 2011 album, Lake Tahoe is a song that is really interesting. One of her very best tracks, I feel.
What is interesting about 50 Words for Snow – among other things – is the featured vocalists. No stranger to using other voices, the array of guests that provide their voices is impressive. Bush’s son Berte is on Snowflake. Elton John is on Snowed in at Wheeler Street. For Lake Tahoe, Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood provide their vocals. Steve Gadd is on drums. Kate Bush is on the piano. It is a tight and wonderful group that recorded a song that has a really interesting story. In terms of influence, Bush has taken from so many unusual sources. A lot from horror or fiction or television. I mean they are unusual in terms of the fact it was unconventional for artists to approach songwriting inspiration away from their personal lives. Bush was a much more ambitious and interesting songwriter. Even though it was not a single, Bush wrote and directed a short animated video to accompany Lake Tahoe. Called Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe, it features five minutes from the eleven-minute track and contains elegant shadow-puppetry. The Kate Bush Encyclopedia provides a part of a 2011 interview where Kate Bush talked about the inspiration behind Lake Tahoe:
“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”.
Before finishing up, I am bringing in some reviews of 50 Words for Snow where Lake Tahoe was mentioned. One of the standouts from the album, I do hope more people listen to the album. It is a spectacular work from Kate Bush. As part of their review, Pitchfork said this about Lake Tahoe: “Similarly, while the lake-bound ghost of "Lake Tahoe" is overjoyed to find her long-lost dog-- coincidentally named Snowflake-- at the end of the song, the reunion comes with its own specter of bittersweet afterlife”. This is what DIY observed about a beautiful song that you really fall inside and visualise: “Lake Tahoe’ sees Bush showing off her experimental side and features an operatic duet between Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood”. Even though they awarded 50 Words for Snow a three-and-a-half-star review, NME’s observation about Lake Tahoe is interesting: “‘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”. In 2014, The Quietus selected some of their favourite Kate Bush deep cuts. Lake Tahoe was among them:
“Just as Benjamin Britten blended the voices of a tenor and a countertenor in his second canticle – singing together in perfect and still unison, they represented the voice of God advising Abraham to sacrifice his own son – fifty-nine years later Kate Bush scored Lake Tahoe for a tenor and a countertenor. Singing together they become the voice of a ghostly narrator. “Cold mountain water, don’t ever swim there”, they warn. Lake Tahoe is 1,645 feet deep. Lake Tahoe is filled with mosquito fish, bluegill, cutthroat trout, the bodies of Chinese railroad workers from the 1870s and a drowned Victorian woman still dressed in white satin.
The dead don’t float in Lake Tahoe, the cold preserves them. A thousand feet down their blue eyes are open but once a year they walk the shore. Kate Bush sees her Victorian woman searching for a dog. “Snowflake! Snowflake!” she calls out. Kate Bush becomes a Victorian woman. “Snowflake! Snowflake!” she sings out. Her dog is warm at home sleeping in the kitchen. Kate Bush’s skin and hair are wet, her eyes blue, underneath her fingernails is Tahoe silt. We cannot save her. And the snow is falling – softly at first but soon in deep plodding flurries like the heavy walking chords of her piano as she climbs the keyboard out of Lake Tahoe. Quavers of snow crown the surrounding peaks, melting into the chilled water. Lake Tahoe doesn’t freeze. You cannot walk across it, unless you are Snowflake running towards his ghostly mistress – ears flailing, curly white hair windswept behind him”.
There is no doubting the fact that Lake Tahoe is a terrific and accomplished piece of music. Bush’s piano playing so gorgeous and moving. The lyrics are ones that could only come from Kate Bush. My favourite example is this: “No-one's home/Her old dog is sleeping/His legs are frail now/But when he dreams/He runs...Along long beaches and sticky fields/Through the Spooky Wood looking for her/The beds are made. The table is laid”. Even if it is a deep cut, that is not to say people should overlook it. Every time you pass through Lake Tahoe, it offers up some new and compelling. A truly grand and magnificent track, this is one that everyone needs to hear. Once you do, it will definitely leave an impression…
IN your memory.