FEATURE:
Exploring One of Kate Bush’s Most Divisive and Important Singles
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Director’s Cut’s Deeper Understanding at Fifteen
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WHILST the only big…
album anniversary regarding Kate Bush this year is the fortieth of the greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, there are some smaller anniversaries. Director’s Cut turns fifteen in May. Its only single, Deeper Understanding, turns fifteen on 5th April, it is worth highlighting it. There are a few reasons why people; are divided about this song. One relates to the music video. The original song was included on 1989’s The Sensual World and I am surprised it did not get a single release. It only reached seventy-eight upon its release in 2011. The video for the 2011 version was directed by Kate Bush. Even though she is a remarkable director, Director’s Cut is not one of her best efforts. It seems messy and strange and doesn’t really hang together. Also, the number of musicians on Director’s Cut version is higher than on The Sensual World’s. The 1989 version had drum, bass, tupan and vocals. Maybe a little too busy the 2011 version. The other divisive aspect is the relevance of the song. If Kate Bush was mystic and prescient when she put out Deeper Understanding in 1989, maybe there was less impact in 2011. I do feel like there is something oldskool and a little dial-up modem about the 2011 version, even though technology had moved on. So it is hard to write about Deeper Understanding without addressing these points. In 2011, for The Guardian, this is what Michael Cragg wrote about Deeper Understanding: “The 2011 retwizzle is two minutes longer, seems to have a new vocal and, naturally for the music climate of today, a lot of vocal processing and vocoder. The chorus is much more explicitly meant to be a conversation between human and computer: “I bring you love and deeper understanding” croons the machine like a malfunctioning ZX Spectrum. It’s not a disaster, in fact once you get used to the vocals it’s still a great Kate Bush track, but if revisiting songs is going to mean adding an extra minute and a half of harmonica solos to each one then we may have problems.” The New Yorker added: “Where the original chattered and cracked, this version susurrates and warps, a bit more like life online”.
I will move on in a minute. However, before I get there, there are some interview archives from 1989 where Kate Bush discussed Deeper Understanding. One of the standout cuts from The Sensual World. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for their archive:
“This is about people… well, about the modern situation, where more and more people are having less contact with human beings. We spend all day with machines; all night with machines. You know, all day, you’re on the phone, all night you’re watching telly. Press a button, this happens. You can get your shopping from the Ceefax! It’s like this long chain of machines that actually stop you going out into the world. It’s like more and more humans are becoming isolated and contained in their homes. And this is the idea of someone who spends all their time with their computer and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount of time with their computer. People really build up heavy relationships with their computers! And this person sees an ad in a magazine for a new program: a special program that’s for lonely people, lost people. So this buff sends off for it, gets it, puts it in their computer and then like , it turns into this big voice that’s saying to them, “Look, I know that you’re not very happy, and I can offer you love: I’m her to love you. I love you!” And it’s the idea of a divine energy coming through the least expected thing. For me, when I think of computers, it’s such a cold contact and yet, at the same time, I really believe that computers could be a tremendous way for us to look at ourselves in a very spiritual way because I think computers could teach us more about ourselves than we’ve been able to look at, so far. I think there’s a large part of us that is like a computer. I think in some ways, there’s a lot of natural processes that are like programs… do you know what I mean? And I think that, more and more, the more we get into computers and science like that, the more we’re going to open up our spirituality. And it was the idea of this that this… the last place you would expect to find love, you know, real love, is from a computer and, you know, this is almost like the voice of angels speaking to this person, saying they’ve come to save them: “Look, we’re here, we love you, we’re here to love you!” And it’s just too much, really, because this is just a mere human being and they’re being sucked into the machine and they have to be rescued from it. And all they want is that, because this is “real” contact.
Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 October 1989
It’s like today, a lot of people relate to machines, not to human beings, like they hear telephone [Makes ringing noise] and think “Is that for me?” I guess it playing with the idea of how people get more and more isolated from humans and spend a lot more time with machines. I suppose America’s a really good example where there are some people who never go out, they watch television all day, they’re surrounded by machines, they shop through television, they speak to people on the phone; it’s just distant contact. The idea of the computer buffs who end up going through divorce cases because their wives can’t cope with the attention the computer gets. They have an obsessive effect on people, and this track’s about one of those types.
I was playing with the juxtaposition of high tech and spirituality. I suppose one inspiration was a program I saw last year about a scientist called Stephen Hawking who for years had been studying the universe, and his concepts are like the closest we’ve ever come to understanding the answer. But unfortunately he has a wasting-away disease, and the only way he can talk is through voice process. It was one of the most moving things I’ve ever heard. He was so close to the answers to everything, and yet his body was going on him – in some ways it was the closest I’d ever come to hearing God speak! The things he was saying were so spiritual, it was like he’d gone straight through science and come out the other end. It was like he’d gone beyond words, and I do think that there is this possibility with computers that we really could learn about ourselves on levels that could take us into much deeper areas. With my music, I like to combine both the old and the new, the high tech and the compassion from the human element, the combination of synths and acoustic instruments.
Will Johnson, ‘A Slowly Blooming English Rose’. Pulse, December 1989”.
Even though it seemed like a quick process selecting the songs that would be included on Director’s Cut – the album features songs that appeared on The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes -, you feel like Deeper Understanding was a harder choice. I think the original is really good and effecting. Bush said in interviews how she had a bank of voices for the version on The Sensual World but wanted it to be this single voice. A conversation between a human and computer. She got the chance to realise this with the re-recorded version. I do like the fact that she brought her son. Bertie appeared on Aerial in 2005 and 50 Words for Snow, which was released in November 2011. Playing this computerised part, it sort of buried his lovely voice. We got a chance to hear it in its pure form for Snowflake. The longer version meant that Deeper Understanding was perhaps not an obvious choice for single. Maybe Kate Bush felt that the reliance on technology and social media coming in meant Deeper Understanding was the most relevant song. In terms of how people could relate to it. Many argue that Deeper Understanding was more effecting and potent in 1989. The longest song on Director’s Cut, why not shine a light on The Song of Solomon or Top of the City? As The Red Shoes gets mor focus than The Sensual World regarding the songs included on Director’s Cut, maybe strange Bush wanted the only single to be a reworked version of a classic from The Sensual World. Or she could have even released Flower of the Mountain. The song that pretty much inspired Director’s Cut or was a big motivator, Bush got permission to use words from James Joyce’s Ulysses that she was denied when writing The Sensual World. It would have been fascinating seeing a video for Flower of the Mountain. As Deeper Understanding was not a single the first time around, Bush might have felt it was long overdue.
I will end with a few takes on Deeper Understanding. How people reacted to the new version. Bush, as an older woman, discussing technology and how addicted we are. There is an irony on Deeper Understanding, Bush not someone who is on social media or especially bothered about smartphones and that side of things. More, this is her observing society as a whole. Uncut wrote this in their review of Director’s Cut: “Elsewhere, Director’s Cut simply marks the changes in musical fashion – most notably on the reworked “Deeper Understanding”, a song about the questionable solace of technology, which now features a multitracked, pitchshifted Kate as the voice of the computer, as though she had just heard Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak”. The Guardian wrote this: “Bush has seriously messed with "Deeper Understanding" as well, a track whose prescience about the siren's call of the internet is shivery. The computer gets a bigger voice – Bush's 12-year-old son, Bertie – and a dose of Auto-Tune, the vocal effect of choice of 21st-century R&B. It will make you smile”. This blog provided their take on Deeper Understanding: “The opening lines of “Deeper Understanding” works more powerfully in today’s age of social networking on the Internet than it did over 20 years ago: “As the people here grow colder/I turn to my computer/And spend my evenings with it like a friend.” To top it off, Bush has robotocized the chorus with a warped, more modern auto-tune effect. It’s a witty up-date to a song whose coda she also extends an extra couple of minutes with odd computer effects and a slow jam with drums, bass, harmonica and her own quirky voice”.
Pitchfork’s single review is particularly interesting: “So it’s certainly an appropriate thematic choice to herald Director’s Cut, but there’s plenty of creativity at work here. The contributions by the Bulgarian vocal ensemble Trio Bulgarka are dampened, with Bush Auto-Tuning their voices to make the lush expanses of cushion-y sound ever more opulent. At times the feeling is reminiscent of another familiar touchstone, 10cc’s plushed-out “I’m Not in Love,” at others it flits close to the luxuriant pop of Fleetwood Mac's coke-fueled soft rock work on “Storms.” It’s in the final third of “Deeper Understanding” that this version takes on a life of its own. The pliable bass thrum from former Japan member Mick Karn remains locked-down, Bush loosens her control on language altogether, and the closing harmonica drones, deployed with a similar rusty tone to those in Talk Talk’s “The Rainbow,” add a jagged edge to the natural softness. It’s a feeling heightened by Bush’s ragged vocal take, which hints at another subtle shift in her stylistic mien”. Turning fifteen on 5th April, I do think it is quite a big anniversary. This was the first new music released since 2005’s Aerial. It was a big moment in a year when Bush released two studio albums. Even if Deeper Understanding is not an obvious single selection, I do appreciate why Kate Bush wanted this song to lead. Championed by BBC Radio 2 and Ken Bruce, I instantly sprung to comparing the two versions. See Deeper Understanding as a single work. A new song. Relevant, timely and important as we get to hear Bush’s son on it, there are reasons to love…
THE 2011 recording of a wonderful Kate Bush song.