FEATURE: This Is No Trick of Hers, This Is Your Magic… Kate Bush's The Dreaming at Forty: Human Behaviour, Change, and Proving Critics Wrong

FEATURE:

 

This Is No Trick of Hers, This Is Your Magic…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982

Kate Bush's The Dreaming at Forty: Human Behaviour, Change, and Proving Critics Wrong

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IN marking the fortieth anniversary…

of Kate Bush’s The Dreaming, there are a few areas I want to explore. Her fans will come together on 13th September to celebrate a big and important anniversary. Before coming to specific features about production, songs, and its legacy, there is a great section of information from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia, where they have sourced interviews she conducted where she spoke about her fourth studio album. She spoke about the concept and themes of The Dreaming. Whereas Hounds of Love (the album that followed The Dreaming) has a conceptual second side suite, The Ninth Wave, and one can look at albums like The Kick Inside (her 1978) and see themes there, The Dreaming seems more scattershot and harder to pin down. That said, human behaviour does seem to be a central core to each of the songs. Bush definitely made it clear in interviews that she was changing between albums. Keen to push and evolve her sound, I think many people just expected her to do the same thing. The fact The Dreaming divides people is because there was this expectation Bush would repeat herself and stay in a very convenient and neat box. It is interesting hearing Bush talk about this remarkable album through the years:

“Yes, it's very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I'd hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album - my views change quite drastically. What's nice about this album is that it's what I've always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I've had whizzing around in my head that just haven't been put down. I've always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I've wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I've never really had the time until now. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)

It is interesting what she says about being bored. Disappointed if all her albums were the same. One of Kate Bush’s greatest assets is that she can make albums these very different and new things; we are always invested and engrossed. The Dreaming is Bush proving what a remarkable accomplished, versatile and deep songwriter she was. Still trying to throw off ideas that she was a novelty act or was this singer who was a bit one-note and lightweight, The Dreaming is Kate Bush not only establishing herself as one of the most pioneering and compelling songwriters of her era. She also showed what a truly staggering producer she is. If The Dreaming seems like quite a heavy or negative listen, as Bush said in a couple of different interviews, she was trying to be positive and also put herself and true being into every note and song:  

I think [The Dreaming] is about trying to cope...to get through all the shit. I think it was positive: showing how certain people approach all these negative things - war, crime, etc. I don't think I'm actually an aggressive person, but I can be. But I release that energy in work. I think it's wrong to get angry. If people get angry, it kind of freaks everybody out and they can't concentrate on what they're doing. (Jane Solanas, 'The Barmy Dreamer'. NME (UK), 1983).

I have no doubt that those who buy singles because they like my hits, are completely mystified upon hearing the albums. But if it comes to that, they should listen to it loudly! If a single theme linked The Dreaming, which is quite varied, it would be human relationships and emotional problems. Every being responds principally to emotions. Some people are very cool, but they are silenced by their emotions, whatever they might be. To write a song, it's necessary that I be completely steeped in my environment, in my subject. Sometimes the original idea is maintained, but as it takes form, it possesses me. One of the best examples would be this song that I wrote on 'Houdini': I knew every one of the things that I wanted to say, and it was necessary that I find new ways that would allow me to say them; the hardest thing, is when you have so many things to fit into so short a space of time. You have to be concise and at the same time not remain vague, or obscure. The Dreaming was a decisive album for me. I hadn't recorded in a very long time until I undertook it, and that was the first time that I'd had such liberty. It was intoxicating and frightening at the same time. I could fail at everything and ruin my career at one fell swoop. All this energy, my frustrations, my fears, my wish to succeed, all that went into the record. That's the principle of music: to liberate all the tensions that exist inside you. I tried to give free rein to all my fantasies. Although all of the songs do not talk about me, they represent all the facets of my personality, all my different attitudes in relation to the world. In growing older, I see more and more clearly that I am crippled in facing the things that really count, and that I can do nothing about it, just as most people can do nothing. Making an album is insignificant in comparison with that, but it's my only defense. (Yves Bigot, 'Englishwoman is crossing the continents'. Guitares et Claviers (France), February 1986)”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson

Kate Bush has also said in interviews how critics said The Dreaming was a commercial disaster. The album got to number three in the U.K. and sold well. There is no doubt that The Dreaming was a massive success. Some saw it as a little underwhelming because it didn’t do as well as 1980’s Never for Ever. That reached number one in the U.K. It is good that The critical standing of the album has improved vastly in recent decades. In 1982, there was mixed reaction. In a poll conducted by NPR, they ranked The Dreaming as the twenty-fourth-greatest album ever made by a female artist. SLANT named it as the seventy-first-best album on its list of the Best Albums of the 1980s. I can understand why some did not understand or fully absorb The Dreaming upon its release. It is a lot to take! In 2016, Drowned in Sound showed The Dreaming some real love. There are a few parts that I want to bring in:

“The Dreaming is therefore tirelessly imaginative, asking the listener to submerge themselves in a wealth of illusory and semi-fictional realms. But it’s also remarkable for what happened behind the scenes as well. Bush had made steps into production before, on the EP On Stage and on Never For Ever, where she was aided by engineer Jon Kelly. Here though, she took the bold step to produce the entirety of the album alone. While she did collaborate to some extent with a few engineers (such as Nick Launay, who had previously worked with Public Image Ltd and Phil Collins), the control that Bush had on the record is plain to hear at every twist and turn. She extensively made use of the Fairlight CMI – one of the earliest workstations with an embedded digital sampling synthesiser – and a number of other state-of-the-art machines when recording.

She didn’t look back. In 1983 she built her own 48-track studio in the barn behind her family home, using it to start demoing and producing what is often considered to be her magnum opus, Hounds Of Love. There, she would occasionally channel some of the experimental spirit that defined The Dreaming (especially on its conceptual latter half), but it was far and away more commercially and critically successful, often being hailed as Bush’s best record. Hounds Of Love was nominated for four gongs at the 1986 BRIT Awards: Best Album, Best Female Artist, Best Single (for ‘Running Up That Hill’) and, perhaps most significantly, Best Producer.

The Dreaming, by contrast, remains the overlooked jewel in her canon. But while it may be challenging and uncompromising, it’s almost hard to imagine what Kate Bush would be like today if she hadn’t released it. A staggeringly bold step forward for her as a singer, songwriter and producer, The Dreaming was a milestone both for Bush herself and the wider world of music”.

That is a very relevant thing to end with. What would her career have been like if she hadn’t released The Dreaming?! In the same way The Kick Inside is not a merely promising debut but a fully-formed and incredible introduction, The Dreaming is not a bridge or stepping stone to Hounds of Love. Rather, it is a misunderstood and now-reassessed album that stunned the world and has inspired so many artists since its release. A producer, songwriter and artist who overtook her peers and released an album so ahead of its time people are only recently starting to appreciate its real worth and beauty, I can appreciate why Bush spent so much time and energy getting it to her specifications. Maybe she did go slightly mad making it but, without The Dreaming, the music world would be…

SO much poorer.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Peach PRC

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Peach PRC

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THERE is so much terrific young talent…

emerging right now, that it is hard to keep track. Platforms like TikTok are proving very effective in terms of promotion and awareness. I discovered Peach PRC recently through Twitter. Real name Shaylee Curnow, the Adelaide-based songwriter and artist is an incredible talent. I think there is a generation of young Pop artists who are not only releasing incredibly impressive and original music. They are also discussing and highlighting themes that need to be addressed. Perhaps – if they are an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artist – more easily able to express their sexuality through their music, we are witnessing so many frank and relatable artists who are earning a wide audience through social media. Before getting to some interviews with Peach PRC (I shall refer to her by her artist name), here is some biotrophy regarding the incredibly influential and amazing Australian artist:

“The Australian singer and songwriter packs an often unbelievable journey from writing and recording in her bedroom to social media phenomenon into smart, slick, and sweet songs with a bold bite. Equally funny and sensitive, she holds nothing back when it comes to life’s ups and downs, mental health, and everything in between.

After building an audience of 1.2 million-plus followers, generating over 10 million streams, and attracting acclaim from BuzzFeed and more, she formally introduces herself with new music under her recently signed deal with Republic Records and Island Records Australia.

Growing up in Adelaide, she always wanted to sing and begged mom and dad to allow her to audition for Australia’s Got Talent to no avail. “They said I was too young, sensitive, and it would hurt my feelings,” she laughs. In between listening to Avril Lavigne, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Shakira, she wrote songs on her own and attended talent school where she honed her vocal and performance chops. During high school, she found solace in music.

“For a long time, I didn’t have many friends, or anyone really close to me,” she admits. “When I needed to vent about things, I’d start writing. My songwriting is essentially what I’d say to a friend.”

After dropping out of school, she penned music during her free time and worked as a stripper at night for a short spell before launching a Tik Tok page in 2019. She had danced under the name “Peach Porcelain”—an homage to the Super Mario character Princess Peach. Since “Peach” was taken, she joined the platform as Peach PRC. She organically attracted an audience by posting everything from funny moments to self-care advice and, of course, music. A snippet of her first single “Blondes” played over the background of a video where she discussed the track’s meaning, and it went viral. The full version eventually amassed 4 million Spotify streams as she maintained this momentum with the follow-up “Colourblind” (both produced by a long-distance ex-boyfriend and producer), racking up another 1.5 million Spotify streams. Along the way, she carefully cultivated an undeniable style.

“It’s girly hyper-pop,” she explains. “I’m drawing on the early 00’s and mid-2010’s, but adding my own twist.”

That twist defines the 2021 single “Josh.” Originally previewed as a fan favorite snippet on Tik Tok, the track puts an ex on blast in a clever and hypnotic fashion. With warm vocal delivery, she teases, “Does your mum still buy your clothes?” Meanwhile, 808 claps, distorted guitar, piano, and a ticking clock entwine as she confesses, “I thought you were blocked. Fuck off, stop calling me, Josh.”

“Josh and I dated for ages,” she recalls. ““When we broke up he would always try to get back with me- which I found to be so annoying!  One day, I was writing in the worst mood, and he messaged me. I was like, ‘Go away!’ I was so aggravated he tried to reach out after I finally cut him off. I made a bit of the song and posted it on my Tik Tok spam account with the caption, ‘I’ll probably delete this’. Everyone told me not to delete it! I’m glad I kept it.”

In addition to music, Peach PRC also takes every chance to uplift as a mental health advocate. She’ll post candid videos such as “cleaning my room with you in real time (for people with depression/ADHD)” and “folding my laundry with you in real time (for people with depression/ADHD),” enlightening her audience and reminding them they’re not alone.

“I know it can be really hard to take care of your basic needs when you’re having a hard time,” she says. “So, I try to speak up and help when I can.”

In the end, Peach PRC makes a real connection much like a friend would.

“I just want everybody to feel heard,” she leaves off. “To me, there’s nothing better than when somebody puts how you feel into words”.

It is important to feature some interviews with Peach PRC. I want to start with Rolling Stone Australia’s chat from last year. It is fascinating learning where Peach PRC came from and how she has become this incredible artist who looks set to have a very promising and busy future:  

“Peach began working as a stripper when she was 19 and kept it up for four years. Now that she’s removed from the profession, she’s wary of stigmatising it, but she reserves little fondness for that time in her life.

“I stopped doing music for a bit because I was just in such a low place,” she says. “I thought, ‘What’s the point? It’s not going anywhere.’”

Peach had previously turned to music as a vital form of self-expression. Even in her teen years, songwriting had an explicitly cathartic function for her. But by the time she reached 21, she hadn’t written anything in years and her life was in pieces. She hated her job. She felt financially strangled. And her mental health was unravelling.

“I was like, ‘I need something to bring me out of this really dark, sad place,’” says Peach.

In this state, Peach dug her guitar out of the cupboard. Before long, she had the bones of ‘King Size Bed’ – the first song she’d written in years. “Writing that gave me such a euphoric rush of, like, ‘That’s right, I can express this sadness. I can put it into something,’” she says.

After uploading an unfiltered video of herself performing ‘King Size Bed’ to Instagram – which “got like 20 comments” and had Peach “losing [her] mind with excitement” – ideas for songs started tumbling out of her.

Curnow had chosen the stage name Peach Porcelain when she started dancing. Encouraged by the relative anonymity it offered, she decided to use it as her musical alias too. As for the contraction, “PRC”, that didn’t come about until she joined TikTok. In fact, everything in Peach’s world started to shift once she joined TikTok.

Although she’d been urged to join the platform by her younger sister, Peach was initially sceptical. “I was like, ‘What is this?’” she says. But after browsing its users and finding people who were being “so hilarious and so cool and entertaining” she wanted in on the fun.

Peach has a natural flair for content creation. Her early posts ranged from intimate stories about her daily life to rants about players and mansplainers. There were also snippets of new songs she’d written and covers of current pop tunes filmed with early collaborator and fellow TikTok bigshot, Jeris Johnson.

“Every part of my personality that I would give to my friends in real life, I would just put on the internet in little short form videos,” she says”.

“Josh” came out at the end of February. Peach PRC’s enormous TikTok following has translated into huge streaming figures for “Josh”, including more than seven million Spotify streams and more than a million views of the song’s official video. Peach’s sphere of influence now also extends well beyond social media, with “Josh” debuting at #7 in the ARIA Top 20 Australian Singles chart”.

Billboard spoke with Peach PRC earlier in the year. I think a lot of the attention and acclaim aimed at her stems from the incredible track, God Is a Freak. A remarkable song that has gained a lot of positive reaction, many fans have reacted to it with videos of their own:

“Even with her experience in rapid success, Curnow says that the instant attention given to “God Is A Freak” still blows her away — in the month since she “leaked” her chorus, her original video has received over 2 million views and 400,000 likes, while the sound has been used over 7,000 times by other app users. Even pop mega-producer Finneas recognized the potential of her song, commenting on one of her videos, “This song is so so so good.” 

“When he commented that I was over the moon,” Curnow says, grinning. “It definitely made me feel better about everything, especially when there’s some people being like ‘this sucks,’ it’s like, ‘Well, Finneas said he likes the song.'”

One part of the song’s viral success that Curnow did not expect was a series of extremely moving videos that would go on to be posted using her sound, in which LGBTQ individuals spoke candidly about how they had been made to feel unworthy or less-than by Christian churches around the world. Users quickly began taking the second part of the song’s chorus, in which she sings, “What’s the fixation/ On hating the way he creates/ So why would I spend my eternity/ With God when he’s a freak,” and using it as a means of translating their own trauma.

“It was meant to be this silly song making fun of the ridiculous concept that it is to me. But to see so many people share these vulnerable stories, talk about their religious trauma and the way they’ve overcome — that has been so moving,” she says. “There was one video that made me cry the other day … someone talked about being rejected for being trans, and how they sold their purity ring to pay for testosterone. It was so powerful.”

Curnow says that she spent the last few years identifying as bisexual, until she had a few tough conversations with herself about identity. When she saw the massive response her song was having with her LGBTQ fans, Curnow decided that there was no better time to tell the people about herself. “Eventually, it just got to a point where I said, ‘I need to stop trying to swerve around this and accept it for what it is,'” she says. “[‘God Is A Freak’] became a thing where it was like, ‘Okay, this seems like a good time for me to also drop a line”.

Also putting a spotlight onto God Is a Freak, Consequence interviewed a very modern and captivating Pop artist. Although she is perfectly suited for a TikTok generation, there is so much depth to her music and character that means she will transcend social media and carve out her own space. Here is somebody who can go very far in music:

“At nearly 2 million followers on TikTok, Peach PRC is gaining traction in both her native Australia and elsewhere, but she’s one that’s suited for the new decade through and through. Though Peach maintains a very particular aesthetic (the color pink being a prominent through line), there isn’t a great deal of content on her page that is heavily produced, doctored, or micromanaged by a marketing team.

In fact, it is Peach’s authenticity and humor, her ability to turn the camera on and speak her mind, and her approachable and relatable ideas about humanity, relationships, trauma, and self-care that has captured so many people’s attention.

Naturally, this attitude spills over into her music, and songs like “God Is A Freak” and her breakout single “Josh” (which she wrote about her ex, who would not stop calling her) boast a similar kind of authenticity and hilarity. But this also points to a larger trend in music, from the bombastic online personality of Doja Cat to Ariana Grande’s grounded, personal approach to social media: artists are finding new ways to subvert traditional expectations about what a “pop star” should be, and they’re doing so with an emphasis on authentic expression, online humor, and with the camera always on.

Peach PRC already exists as a different kind of pop star — one where there’s a true hybrid between your TikTok presence and musical one. That comes with a lot of pressure. How have you been handling it throughout the last year? What steps do you take to protect your mental health?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know! It is full-on sometimes, but I think for me, TikTok is just an outlet. It’s something that I do enjoy doing and I love connecting with people that way. So my space away is TikTok, that’s how I kind of relax. But that’s kind of it — there’s nothing that I do, self care-wise, that isn’t already online.

“God Is A Freak” has a real 2000s-y vibe. What are your musical influences? Which albums from the last 10 years have you really connected with?

Yeah, I really love early 2000s pop, or even 2010 pop. I love Kesha and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and all of those people. And I try to put as much of that in my music as I can — that kind of sound. I really look up to them and am definitely inspired by them.

What’s next for Peach PRC?

I have so many demos that I’ve been making over the last year, and just so many songs that I want to put all together into an album release. I don’t know which ones it will be yet, but I’m really passionate about all of them. So I hope I can put out as many as I can! In terms of when, I don’t really know — I’m just scatterbrained all the time and I didn’t really know what I’m doing until I’m doing it. But I am really excited about everything I have coming up this year!”.

I have included mainly interview text in this feature, as it is more important to learn about Peach PRC and hear her music. I love what she is doing. There were years when I sort of went off of Pop music and felt it was either too generic, lacklustre, or overly processed. In the past few years, there has been this wave of Pop that has a complexity and importance to it. Able to produce fun and accessible music with lyrics that are personal and yet speak to her audience, the phenomenal Peach PCR needs to be…

IN your life.

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Follow Peach PRC

PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Gleeson

Official:

https://www.peachprc.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/peachprc/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@peachprc

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/peachprc

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/006j2rer9tZJCYniu7SaWS

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/peachprc

FEATURE: All My Barriers Are Going… Record-Breaking and Underrated: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Two

FEATURE:

 

 

All My Barriers Are Going…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980 signing a copy of Never for Ever

Record-Breaking and Underrated: Kate Bush’s Never for Ever at Forty-Two

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BECAUSE Kate Bush’s…

third studio album, Never for Ever, turns forty-two on 8th September, I am revisiting it. I have already written a feature about its shortest track, Night Scented Stock. This is a bridge between two other songs, The Infant Kiss and Army Dreamers. For this feature, I am going to bring in a number of things. I want to mention three tracks that were not singles but I think deserve wider airplay and investigation. I am also going to source a couple of reviews. The reason for that is because I feel Never for Ever is underrated. Bush’s sound and production – she co-produced Never for Ever with Jon Kelly – changed dramatically when she solo-produced The Dreaming (1982). When people consider the best Kate Bush albums, Never for Ever sort of comes in the middle of the pack. Consider the fact singles like Babooshka and Breathing are among her greatest work, there are also terrific deeper cuts like Blow Away (For Bill), All We Ever Look For and Violin. More political-minded songs like Breathing and Army Dreamers (also a single) sat alongside some of her most exceptional vocal performances and most intriguing songs. I think, up until Hounds of Love, Never for Ever contains the strongest set of Kate Bush singles. The Dreaming sort of had poor fortunes in that market but, with its first and third singles (Breathing and Army Dreamers) hitting sixteen and Babooshka reaching number five, this was a solid outing. Also, in Babooshka, Bush created one of her finest and most spectacular opening tracks. Not only is the song one of her most catchy, powerful and interesting. Its video sees her practically unleashed into a warrior in the chorus. It is most certainty eye-catching!

Never for Ever was Bush’s first number one album. It was also the first album by a British female solo artist to top the U.K. album chart, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at number one. Before coming to a couple of reviews concerning Never for Ever, a trusted source in the Kate Bush Encyclopedia allows me to include interviews where Kate Bush talked about the exceptional Never for Ever:

“Now, after all this waiting it is here. It's strange when I think back to the first album. I thought it would never feel as new or as special again. This one has proved me wrong. It's been the most exciting. Its name is Never For Ever, and I've called it this because I've tried to make it reflective of all that happens to you and me. Life, love, hate, we are all transient. All things pass, neither good [n]or evil lasts. So we must tell our hearts that it is "never for ever", and be happy that it's like that!

The album cover has been beautifully created by Nick Price (you may remember that he designed the front of the Tour programme). On the cover of Never For Ever Nick takes us on an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it's for you to bring them to life. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signs an autograph in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images 

Each song has a very different personality, and so much of the production was allowing the songs to speak with their own voices - not for them to be used purely as objects to decorate with "buttons and bows". Choosing sounds is so like trying to be psychic, seeing into the future, looking in the "crystal ball of arrangements", "scattering a little bit of stardust", to quote the immortal words of the Troggs. Every time a musical vision comes true, it's like having my feet tickled. When it works, it helps me to feel a bit braver. Of course, it doesn't always work, but experiments and ideas in a studio are never wasted; they will always find a place sometime.

I never really felt like a producer, I just felt closer to my loves - felt good, free, although a little raw, and sometimes paranoia would pop up. But when working with emotion, which is what music is, really, it can be so unpredictable - the human element, that fire. But all my friends, the Jons, and now you will make all the pieces of the Never For Ever jigsaw slot together, and It will be born and It will begin Breathing. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)”.

I do genuinely think Never for Ever is underrated. Consider the fact it is filled with variety and wonderful production. Although the Fairlight CMI (a relatively new technology Bush was introduced to by her friend Peter Gabriel) was only part of the album process late on, it adds to songs like Babooshka (the breaking glass sound) and Army Dreamers (the gun cocking). There are three gems (among the many) from the album I want to highlight for particular consideration. Whilst there is a lot of half-arsed praise and three-star reviews for an album that warrants so much more, others have provided greater depth and appreciation of a 1980 classic. Although PopMatters gave an excellent write-up of Never for Ever on its fortieth in 2020, there is a little too much ‘what was to come’ about it: like this was a stepping stone. Although Bush’s work would become more adventurous and ambitious, Never for Ever is the sound of a remarkable artist who co-produced something masterful. Consider the fact she was only twenty-two when Never for Ever was released on 8th September, 1980:

“It is on these songs, in particular, that listeners catch a glimpse of what’s to come. Tracks like “Delius”, with its dreamy and capacious soundscapes, are intermixed with tracks like “The Wedding List”, a sort of companion piece to “Babooshka”. With its dastardly narrative building to a dramatic chorus, “The Wedding List” is a showy vaudevillian number. But it relies on the conventional instruments and string arrangements of Bush’s earlier LPs and would have been at home on either one.

“Blow Away” and “All We Ever Look For” are sweet, sentimental songs that could also fit in the pre-Fairlight era. I particularly enjoy Kate’s voice on the latter, but the Fairlight samples of a door opening, Hare Krishna chanting, and footsteps seem to have been an afterthought. The samples add a narrative layer to the song, but the sounds are not integral to the arrangement.

“The Infant Kiss” is one of the highlights of the album, though it, too, is more of a throwback to earlier compositions. The eerie song was inspired by the film The Innocents, which was in turn based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Lyrically, the song is similar to the title track of The Kick Inside and “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” in its dealing with taboo sexuality. The song’s narrator is a governess torn between the love of an adult man and child who inhabit the same body. Or, as one critic called it, “the child with the man in his eyes.”

What sets this song apart is Bush’s production. Instead of overwrought orchestral arrangements of the earlier albums, Bush relies on restrained, baroque instrumentation to convey the song’s conflicted emotions. With Bush behind the boards, she begins to use the studio as an instrument unto itself. Her growing technical facility, combined with the expansive possibilities of the Fairlight and other synthesizers, allowed her to express her feelings through sound more fully

The penultimate “Army Dreamers” is a lamentation in the form of a waltz, sung from the viewpoint of a mother who’s lost her son in military maneuvers. Here, the samples of gun cocks add a percussive and forbidding element to the arrangement. The sound is restrained but menacing when coupled with the shouts of a commander in the background. Plus, “Army Dreamers” is one of the more political songs in Bush’s repertoire, though situating it inside a personal narrative keeps it from becoming polemical.

The album’s closer, “Breathing”, is a more overtly political song. It was Bush’s crowning achievement at the time, a realization of everything that had led her to this point. The song is told from a fetus’s perspective terrified of being born into a post-apocalyptic world: “I’ve been out before / But this time, it’s much safer in”. Bush plays on the words “fallout” and the rhythmic repetition of breathing—“out-in, out-in”—throughout.

Synthesizer pads and a fretless bass build to a middle section in which sonic textures take precedence over lyrical content, as Bush’s vocals fade to a false ending at the halfway mark. Ominous, atmospheric tones play over a spoken-word middle section describing the flash of a nuclear bomb. The male voice is chilling in its dispassionate delivery, and the bass comes to the foreground once again in a slow march to the finish as the song reaches its final dramatic crescendo. Here, Bush’s vocals, which admittedly can be grating at times, perfectly match the desperation of the lyrics. “Oh, leave me something to breathe!” she cries, in a terrifying contrast to Roy Harper’s monotone backing vocals (“What are we going to do without / We are all going to die without”).

“Breathing” is a full opera in five-and-a-half minutes, written, scored, arranged, and performed by an artist growing into herself and beginning to realize her full potential. It’s a fitting ending for Never for Ever, an album that sees Bush, only 23 years old at the time, leaving behind her ’70s juvenilia. At the turn of the 1980s, she was poised to scale new heights with her music, some of which would define the decade to come”.

Before moving to three gems I have a very soft spot for, I wanted to bring in a few segments from The Quietus’ fortieth anniversary celebration of Never for Ever (many sources say the album came out on 7th September, 1980; Bush’s official website says 8th September, so that is the one I am going with!).

“Never For Ever would change all that. Draining as it was, Bush’s gruelling Tour Of Life gave her the chance to co-produce 1979’s On Stage EP with engineer Jon Kelly, convincing her they could handle a full album together. She ousted Powell and combined the session hands with her band members, swapping them in and out like rolling subs and making them record take after take. Another Bush biographer, Rob Jovanovic, estimates she spent an unprecedented five months writing and demoing at Abbey Road, honing new and old ideas alike, while keyboardist Max Middleton told Thomson the sessions were so exacting because of her obsession with finding “something nebulous that was hard to pinpoint”. For Bush the autonomy was worth savouring, no matter how painstaking the process. “It was the first step I’d really taken in controlling the sounds,” she said, “and being pleased with what was coming back.”

Listen now and you can still hear that fundamental shift Bush spoke of, the birth of some new, peculiar magic. It starts with ‘Babooshka’, in which a paranoid wife impersonates a younger woman to test her husband’s roving eye, and ends up destroying her marriage. It’s a wonderfully wicked premise: Bush based it on the cross-dressing, happy-ever-after hijinks of the traditional English folk ditty ‘Sovay’, but her revamp is less a cheeky romp than a surreal, bitter farce, pitched somewhere between Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Tales Of The Unexpected. Most startling, though, is the way it sounds, like unearthly Russian folk music: there’s something both archaic and futuristic about its echoey keys, eerie synths and the ethereal strings of her brother Paddy’s balalaika, as uncanny as a Cossack band playing on the Mir space station. Bush sings like two different people, flitting from coy trills to operatic shrieks, and eventually her world comes crashing down in a crescendo of squalling guitars and the Fairlight’s splintering glass.

Then, before the debris has cleared, she drifts into the wispy beauty of ‘Delius (Song Of Summer)’, which recounts how Frederic Delius’s amanuensis, Eric Fenby, took down his idol’s compositions from dictation after he was waylaid by syphilis. All the same, if “moody old man” Delius was difficult, there’s no rancour in its shimmering reverie of hazy sitar and bubbling percussion: it hums with the heady buzz of the olde British countryside, and Bush’s vocal has the crisp, bucolic freshness of dandelion and burdock. Both tracks size up the album’s big themes – the push-and-pull of thorny relationships, the constant churn of emotions – but one bursts into thunder, and the other floats on the breeze.

Never For Ever is a starting point, not a zenith, and those miraculous opening six minutes aren’t as groundbreaking as her later innovations. But it is, I’d argue, the first of her LPs that’s genuinely experimental. Paddy’s greater involvement brought weird new instruments – zithers, kotos, musical saws – although Peter Gabriel introduced Bush to the Fairlight, the sonic equivalent of a Jedi being handed their first lightsaber; there were only three in the UK, and while she wouldn’t master it until later, her instant obsession speaks to how determined she was to bend her ornate style into bizarre new shapes. ‘All We Ever Look For’, her happy-go-lucky reflection on knotty parent-child relationships, mutates into several different forms by itself: it jumps between lurching, whistling synths, the koto’s fluttering strings, and a mishmash of Foley-style noises including chirping birds and hurried footsteps. “The whims that we’re weeping for/ Our parents would be beaten for,” sings Bush over its jaunty, oddball din, like the ringmaster at a baroque big top”.

I will do another feature or two before Never for Ever’s forty-second anniversary on 8th September. There are three cuts from the eleven that, whilst not singles and songs that are played on the radio much (if at all!), they definitely warrant your attention. I shall be back with you to round up afterwards. For this, again, I am quoting from the invaluable treasure trove that is the Kate Bush Encyclopedia.

“So there's comfort for the guy in my band, as when he dies, he'll go "Hi, Jimi!" It's very tongue-in-cheek, but it's a great thought that if a musician dies, his soul will join all the other musicians and a poet will join all the Dylan Thomases and all that.

None of those people [who have had near-death experiences] are frightened by death anymore. It's almost something they're looking forward to. All of us have such a deep fear of death. It's the ultimate unknown, at the same time it's our ultimate purpose. That's what we're here for. So I thought this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I'm coming to terms with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after someone very special died.

Although the song had been formulating before and had to be written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren't physical: art, the love in people. It can't die, because where does it go? It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves... There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin, Schubert. We're really transient, everything to do with us is transient, except for these non-physical things that we don't even control... (Kris Needs, 'Lassie'. Zigzag (UK), November 1985)”.

“‘The Wedding List' is about the powerful force of revenge. An unhealthy energy which in this song proves to be a "killer". (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)

Revenge is so powerful and futile in the situation in the song. Instead of just one person being killed, it's three: her husband, the guy who did it - who was right on top of the wedding list with the silver plates - and her, because when she's done it, there's nothing left. All her ambition and purpose has all gone into that one guy. She's dead, there's nothing there. (Kris Needs, 'Fire in the Bush'. Zigzag, 1980)

Revenge is a terrible power, and the idea is to show that it's so strong that even at such a tragic time it's all she can think about. I find the whole aggression of human beings fascinating - how we are suddenly whipped up to such an extent that we can't see anything except that. Did you see the film Deathwish, and the way the audience reacted every time a mugger got shot? Terrible - though I cheered, myself. (Mike Nicholls, 'Among The Bushes'. Record Mirror, 1980)”.

“Song written by Kate Bush. It was inspired by the gothic horror movie The Innocents, which in turn was inspired by Henry James' novel 'The Turn Of The Screw'. The story is about a governess who believes the ghost of her predecessor's dead lover is trying to possess the bodies of the children she is looking after. The song was released on the album Never For Ever.

Versions

There are two versions of this song: the original album version and a French version, entitled Un Baiser d'Enfant, released two years later.

Music video

American Kate Bush fan Chris WIlliams made a video for 'The Infant Kiss' using scenes from the movie 'The Innocents'. According to Kate, who contacted him after she saw the video, he'd chosen the exact scenes that were in her head upon writing the song.

Cover versions

'The Infant Kiss' was covered by Kat Devlin.

Kate about 'The Infant Kiss'

'The Infant Kiss' is about a governess. She is torn between the love of an adult man and child who are within the same body. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, September 1980)”.

On 8th September, Kate Bush’s marvellous third studio album, Never for Ever, is forty-two. Although September (specifically 13th) is all about The Dreaming on its fortieth anniversary, one cannot overlook the magnificent Never for Ever. September is a busy month in general for Kate Bush album anniversaries, as Hounds of Love is third-seven on 16th. I wanted to use this opportunity to praise and show proper respect to a…

VERY special album.

FEATURE: Groovelines: The Beatles – Love Me Do

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

The Beatles – Love Me Do

__________

I am going to write about this song again…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Hammond/V&A Images/Getty Images

in October, as it turns sixty then. On 5th October, 1962, The Beatles’ debut single, Love Me Do, was released. Although it was not a number one in the U.K. in 1962 (it got to seventeen), it did reach number one in the U.S. when it came out there in 1964. I will explore the significance of Love Me Do that anniversary feature. Today, I want to give more of an overview of it. For that, I am going to turn to Beatles Bible. Of course, as Love Me Do is one of the most important songs in music history, you could talk about for ages! I am going to be a bit briefer than that. It is interesting how it came together. Although the percussion is not a major part of the track, a Beatles track without Ringo Starr featuring prominently is hard to get your head around:

“Love Me Do’, The Beatles’ debut single, was released in the UK on 5 October 1962.

The song was an early Lennon-McCartney composition from 1958, although it wasn’t recorded by the group for another four years.

Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was 16, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle.

John Lennon, 1972

Lennon spoke again of the song in an interview conducted shortly before his death.

‘Love Me Do’ is Paul’s song. He wrote it when he was a teenager. Let me think. I might have helped on the middle eight, but I couldn’t swear to it. I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters.

John Lennon, 1980

All We Are Saying, David Sheff

Despite this, McCartney remembers ‘Love Me Do’ as a joint effort between the two of them, and that it came out of their early songwriting experiments.

‘Love Me Do’ was completely co-written. It might have been my original idea but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea.

We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period. ‘Love Me Do’ was our first hit, which ironically is one of the two songs that we control, because when we first signed to EMI they had a publishing company called Ardmore and Beechwood which took the two songs, ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘PS I Love You’, and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back.

Paul McCartney

Many Years From Now, Barry Miles

Although The Beatles started out by performing cover versions, as Lennon and McCartney grew as songwriters they began introducing their own compositions into their live shows.

Introducing our own numbers started round Liverpool and Hamburg. ‘Love Me Do’, one of the first ones we wrote, Paul started when he must have been about 15. It was the first one we dared to do of our own. This was quite a traumatic thing because we were doing such great numbers of other people’s, of Ray Charles and [Little] Richard and all of them.

It was quite hard to come in singing ‘Love Me Do’. We thought our numbers were a bit wet. But we gradually broke that down and decided to try them.

John Lennon

Anthology

As well as being their debut single, the band also recorded ‘Love Me Do’ eight times for the BBC. A version from 10 July 1963, recorded for the Pop Go The Beatles programme, is available on Live At The BBC.

In 1976, Ringo Starr described how ‘Love Me Do’ was a turning point for the group:

For me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can’t believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!

Paul McCartney confirmed that the song was the point at which The Beatles knew they were becoming successful.

In Hamburg we clicked. At the Cavern we clicked. But if you want to know when we ‘knew’ we’d arrived, it was getting in the charts with ‘Love Me Do’. That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go”.

Chart success

The Beatles recorded ‘Love Me Do’ over three sessions. The first was at their EMI audition on 6 June 1962, featuring Pete Best on drums.

They returned to the song during the 4 September session, where it was considered for release along with ‘How Do You Do It’. The group tackled it again on 11 September, after which it was deemed good enough for release as a single.

Although Ringo Starr had played drums on 4 September, George Martin brought in a session drummer, Andy White, for the subsequent recording, and Starr was relegated to tambourine.

On my first visit in September we just ran through some tracks for George Martin. We even did ‘Please Please Me’. I remember that, because while we were recording it I was playing the bass drum with a maraca in one hand and a tambourine in the other. I think it’s because of that that George Martin used Andy White, the ‘professional’, when we went down a week later to record ‘Love Me Do’. The guy was previously booked, anyway, because of Pete Best. George didn’t want to take any more chances and I was caught in the middle.

I was devastated that George Martin had his doubts about me. I came down ready to roll and heard, ‘We’ve got a professional drummer.’ He has apologised several times since, has old George, but it was devastating – I hated the bugger for years; I still don’t let him off the hook!

Ringo Starr

Anthology

The presence of the tambourine is the easiest way to distinguish the two recordings. Initial copies of the single had Starr on drums, though the Andy White version became the preferred version from the release of the Beatles Hits EP on 6 September 1963. To consolidate the decision EMI destroyed the master tapes of the 4 September recording.

It is White’s version which appears on the Please Please Me album, though Starr’s drumming can be heard on Past Masters. The recording featuring Pete Best appeared on Anthology 1 in 1995.

George got his way and Ringo didn’t drum on the first single. He only played tambourine.

I don’t think Ringo ever got over that. He had to go back up to Liverpool and everyone asked, ‘How did it go in the Smoke?’ We’d say, ‘B-side’s good,’ but Ringo couldn’t admit to liking the a-side, not being on it.

Paul McCartney

Anthology

The relegation of Starr wasn’t the only change made by George Martin to the song.

George Martin said, ‘Can anyone play harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn’t think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you, John?’ John played a chromatic harmonica, not a Sonny Boy Williamson blues harmonica, more Max Geldray from the Goon Show…

The lyrics crossed over the harmonica solo so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, ‘Love me do’, where everything stopped. Until that session John had always done it; I didn’t even know how to sing it. I’d never done it before. George Martin just said, ‘You take that line, John take the harmonica, you cross over, we’ll do it live’…

I can still hear the nervousness in my voice! We were downstairs in number two studio and I remember looking up to the big window afterwards and George Martin was saying, ‘Jolly good.’

Paul McCartney

Many Years From Now, Barry Miles

Chart success

The ‘Love Me Do’ single reached number 17 in the UK charts, with sales mainly concentrated in and around Liverpool.

Love Me Do single - United KingdomLove Me Do single artwork - USALove Me Do single artwork - Norway

There were enough fans of The Beatles around because we were playing all over the Wirral, Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool. We were quite popular, so the sales were real.

First hearing ‘Love Me Do’ on the radio sent me shivery all over. It was the best buzz of all time. We knew it was going to be on Radio Luxembourg at something like 7.30 on Thursday night. I was in my house in Speke and we all listened in. That was great, but after having got to 17, I don’t recall what happened to it. It probably went away and died, but what it meant was that the next time we went to EMI, they were more friendly: ‘Oh, hello lads. Come in.’

George Harrison

Anthology

There were persistent rumours that Brian Epstein had bulk-bought around 10,000 copies to increase its chart ranking, but these remain unproven.

The best thing was it came into the charts in two days and everybody thought it was a fiddle, because our manager’s stores sent in these returns and everybody down south though, ‘Ah-ha, he’s buying them himself or he’s just fiddling the charts.’ But he wasn’t.

John Lennon, 1963

Anthology”.

There is something thrilling and wonderfully raw about Love Me Do. Although not considered the band’s best song, its significance cannot be understated. I can only imagine the hysteria that was in the air in the U.K. when The Beatles released their debut single. Despite its low chart position, it lit a fuse and introduced the world’s greatest band to the masses. The band’s follow-up U.K. single, Please Please Me, reached number two. Word of mouth and radio play meant that they were a sensation in no time at all. This interesting article discusses the legacy and importance of the amazing Love Me Do:

“The Beatles performed "Love Me Do" on British television four other times in 1962. Another appearance on "People And Places" was taped on October 29th and broadcast on November 2nd, this time featuring John Lennon sitting without an instrument as a lead singer would do while the other Beatles stood (Ringo included). Then on December 3rd, they mimed the song on the live program "Discs A Gogo," as well as another mimed live performance the following day, December 4th, on the London-area children's show "Tuesday Rendevzous." Finally, on December 17th, they returned once again for another live performance on "People And Places," their third appearance on this program within a two month period.

Since the song was their first national British hit, it became part of their permanent set list throughout the rest of 1962, both in their home performances and during their Hamburg visits at the end of the year. It also became a prerequisite for their national tours with Helen Shapiro, Tommy Roe/Chris Montez and then Roy Orbison throughout 1963. The last concert appearance of the song appears to have been on June 30th, 1964 at the ABC Cinema in Norfolk. British television saw the song performed in a Beatles medley on the show “Around The Beatles,” which was recorded at IBC studios on April 19th, 1964 for lip-syncing purposes, but broadcast on May 6th and then again on June 8th, 1964. This appears to be the only (albeit partial) performance of “Love Me Do” in 1964, seeing as their catalog of hit songs had progressed quite far by that time.

Paul McCartney also sporadically performed the song, in the above mentioned configuration “P.S. Love Me Do,” during his "World Tour," which ran from July 26th, 1989 (London, England) to July 29th, 1990 (Chicago, Illinois). He then finally decided to include the original version of "Love Me Do" in his set list during his "One On One" tour, which ran from April 13th, 2016 (Fresno, California) to December 16th, 2017 (Aukland, New Zealand). He did the same for his "Freshen Up" tour, which began on September 17th, 2018 (Quebec City, Canada) and ended on July 13th, 2019 (Los Angeles, California).

Paul also performed the song on June 9th, 2018 at the Philharmonic Pub in Liverpool for a special segment on "The Late Late Show with James Corden." A truncated version of this performance was aired on CBS television on June 21st of that year, followed by a prime-time special entitled "When Corden Met McCartney, Live From Liverpool," which was broadcast of August 20th.

Oddly enough, since Ringo had also recorded "Love Me Do" for his album "Vertical Man," he also performed it live with his "All Starr Band" from 1998 through 2000.

Conclusion

“Love Me Do,” understandably, was a pivotal point in The Beatles' career, as well as a milestone that affected them collectively and individually. George Harrison, for instance, felt his father's wrath when he was awoken by George’s screaming when the song was played late at night on Radio Luxembourg. Ringo, after being thoroughly disillusioned by the record industry, felt vindicated when the initial pressing of the record in Britain contained the version with him on the drums. All pressings thereafter contained the Andy White version. For the song's composers, it had an even greater impact. McCartney recalls that the song was evidence to him and John that they had “arrived,” and that it gave The Beatles “somewhere to go.”

The excitement of having a popular national hit song was a dream come true for the band. To be counted among their musical heroes currently on the radio waves, such as The Everly Brothers, Smokey Robinson, and The Shirelles, was an indescribable experience for them. Brain Epstein would call them with the precise times that the song would be played on the radio so they could stop what they were doing and listen. They would even celebrate every time the song moved up on the British charts.  

It's impact in America was immediate, even without any promotion behind it. The Beatles never performed the song in any American concert or television appearances. They didn't need to.

They may have felt that they had pressed on so much further in their career by mid 1964 that they didn’t sense a need to promote their first British single in the states. The irresistible harmonica hook, the all-too-familiar harmonies, and the captivating melody line were enough to stick in the minds of American youth and skyrocket the song to the top of the US charts. "Love Me Do" has to this day become one of the most identifiable trademark recordings in The Beatles catalog”.

A monumentally important song in the history of popular music, The Beatles’ Love Me Do is sixty in October. A song which contains some exceptional harmonica work from John Lennon and great harmonies, its simple message has meant it resonates and hits people to this day. We will be playing this song for decades and generations more. Even if The Beatles’ debut single did not light the charts up in the U.K. upon its release, nowadays, it is very much considered…

A classic.

FEATURE: Pulling Out the Pin: Kate Bush's The Dreaming at Forty: Three Great Promotional Interviews

FEATURE:

 

 

Pulling Out the Pin

Kate Bush's The Dreaming at Forty: Three Great Promotional Interviews

 __________

I recently…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush signing copies of The Dreaming for fans at the Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street, London on 14th September, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Still/Redferns

did this for Kate Bush The Kick Inside. That was recorded forty-five years ago this month. I united a few promotional interviews from around the time of the album’s release (1978). It is a nice way to see what the press were saying about the album, in addition to how Bush herself reacted to its perception and various questions. In all interviews, she is fascinating and composed. I am marking the upcoming fortieth anniversary of The Dreaming. That is forty on 13th September. In future features, I will explore various songs, aspects of her production, critical reception of the album, and how it compared to her other studio albums. Two years after Never for Ever, Bush released her first album as a solo producer. It was a very different-sounding album. More experimental, layered and denser than its predecessor, you could tell how intensely Bush had worked on The Dreaming. Not that Never for Ever was a particularly commercial album, but songs like Babooshka and Army Dreamers have an accessibility to them. There is something altogether more important, atmospheric and beguiling about The Dreaming. Bush was more interested in her own vision and producing something deeper than before. Maybe intentionally moving away from writing anything radio-friendly, The Dreaming has been ignored by some because they think it is too out-there and strange.

I want to bring together three interviews from 1982. Hearing Bush discuss the album in different ways. The first was published by Poppix in the summer of 1982. I particularly love how Bush talks about The Dreaming’s title track:

“The multi-talented skills of one of Britain's finest female performers, Kate Bush, are to be found on her new album. Entitled The Dreaming, the album is a departure in style from Kate's three previous albums, but in quality it remains at its usual high standard.

The album pulls no punches. It's as mysterious as its name, as striking as its cover picture and as powerful as its first track, Sat In Your Lap.

However, probably the most interesting song on the album is its title track and first single, The Dreaming. [Actually, Sat In Your Lap, though preceding the album by nearly a year, was really the first single from The Dreaming. ] Unfortunately, it wasn't a great commercial success, as it wasn't really picked up on by the radio stations, but it certainly warranted genuine critical acclaim for being one of the more original singles of 1982. [Most English reviews were in fact quite hostile.] I asked Kate what the single was about and why she decided to record it.

"Well, years ago my brother bought Sun Arise and I loved it, it was such a beautiful song. [An early single by Australian musician Rolf Harris.] And ever since then I've wanted to create something which had that feel of Australia within it. I loved the sound of the traditional aboriginal instruments, and as I grew older, I became much more aware of the actual situation which existed in Australia between the white Australian and the aborigines, who were being wiped out by man's greed for uranium. Digging up their sacred grounds, just to get plutonium, and eventually make weapons out of it. And I just feel that it's so wrong: this beautiful culture being destroyed just so that we can build weapons which maybe one day will destroy everything, including us. We should be learning from the aborigines, they're such a fascinating race. And Australian--there's something very beautiful about that country."

The title The Dreaming is a haunting name for a song, but what does it mean?

"The song was originally going to be called Dreamtime, which is the name the Aborigines gave to a magic time before man was man as he is today--when man was an animal and could change shape. This magical time was also known as the Dreaming to the Aborigines, so I thought it would be an ideal title for the song. The Dreaming is such a strong title, too: 'dreaming' on its own means little, but with 'the' in front of it it takes on a whole new meaning."

The album is entirely produced by Kate Bush, something she has never done before, her previous albums being co-produced by her and Jon Kelly. [Actually the first album was produced by Andrew Powell, and the second by Powell with the assistance of Kate.] So why did she decide to do the production of the album herself?

"After the last album, Never For Ever, I started writing some new songs. They were very different from anything I'd ever written before--they were much more rhythmic, and in a way, a completely new side to my music. I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure--make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff. The main link was engineer Jon Kelly. Everytime I was in the studio Jon was there to helping me, so I felt that in order to make the stuff different enough I would have to stop working with Jon. He really wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and realised that it was for the best." [Phrased with typical Bush delicacy.]

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a single cover outtake for Sat In Your Lap/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Sat In Your Lap, Kate's last major hit in the British charts, is also included on the album.

"We weren't going to put it on initially, because we thought it had been a single such a long time ago, but a lot of people used to ask me if we were putting Sat In Your Lap on the album and I'd say no, and they would say 'Oh why not?' and they'd be quite disappointed. So, as the album's completion date got nearer and nearer, I eventually relented. I re-mixed the track and we put it on. I'm so glad I did now, because it says so much about side one, with its up-tempo beat and heavy drum rhythms--it's perfect for the opening track."

You mentioned earlier that you wanted the album to be different, to be a change. Is that aspect of change particularly refreshing to you? Is it important for you to keep changing?

"Yes, it's very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I'd hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album--my views change quite drastically. What's nice about this album is that it's what I've always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I've had whizzing around in my head that just haven't been put down. I've always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I've wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I've never really had the time until now."

Your songs are nearly always based around a story of sorts. Is it important for you to have a meaning behind your songs?

"Oh yes, I think it gets more and more so, because although on the first two albums the songs were always based on something, they weren't all that strong; but now I get more involved with the ideas behind a song, and I do my best to make the concept as vivid and as solid as I can. On the new album, for instance, there is a track about the legendary ecapologist Houdini. During his incredible lifetime Houdini took it upon himself to expose the whole spiritualist thing--you know, seances and mediums. And he found a lot them to be phoney, but before he died Houdini and his wife worked out a code, so that if he came back after his death his wife would know it was him by the code. So after his death his wife made several attempts to contact her dead husband, and on one occasion he did come through to her. I thought that was so beautiful--the idea that this man who had spent his life escaping from chains and ropes had actually managed to contact his wife. The image was so beautiful that I just had to write a song about it." [The full story is quite complicated, but Mrs. Houdini later stated that no such contact was ever made. Kate has indicated in other interviews--conducted presumably a bit later than this one--that she was aware of the dubious aspects of the story, but that the beauty of the concept and imagery were no less true for that.]

"Now that the album is completed, it doesn't mean that my work has ended. There are so many things that I want to do connected with music, and I want to do them as soon as possible. In fact, I see myself being pretty well committed for the next couple of years. I'd like to do a show with both this and the last album, and there are a few videos as well, but I just don't know if or when I'll get the time”.

I think the immediate reaction from a lot of the media – and perhaps Bush herself – was that this very unusual and dense album would take a while to be appreciated. Would that nuance and need for dedicated listening drive fans away? In an interview for Kerrang!, Bush answered the question as to whether she was worried about alienating some fans and risk putting barriers up to potential new followers:

“Maybe the album is more difficult for people than I meant it to be. It isn't intended to be complicated, but it obviously is, for some. A lot of it is to do with the fact that the songs are very involved--there's lots of different layers.

"Hopefully the next one will be simpler, but each time it gets harder, because I'm getting more involved. I'm trying to do something better all the time."

Do you worry about losing fans?

"Yeah, I do, because obviously from a purely financial point of view I depend on money to make albums, and if they're not successful it's quite likely I won't have the scope to do what I want on the next one.

"But, I'd rather go artistically the way I want to than hang onto an audience, because you have to keep doing what you feel. It's just luck if you can hang onto the people, as well."

The time and cost of The Dreaming has already been fairly well documented--did you intend to spend that long recording it?

"No, not at all. But I find that a lot of things I do now take so much longer than I thought they would."

What is it that takes the time? Translating your ideas onto record?

"Yeah, that's what's really hard. In so many cases you need to be in the studio to get the sounds, and it can maybe take a couple of days just to get one idea across. Sometimes you wonder if you should just leave them."

How do you feel about your early records now?

"I don't really like them. A lot of the stuff on the first two albums I wasn't at all happy with. I think I'm still fond of a lot of the songs, but I was unhappy about the way they came across on record.

"Also, until this album I'd never really enjoyed the sound of my own voice. It' always been very difficult for me, because I've wanted to hear the songs in a different way."

Why didn't you like it?

"I think a lot of people don't like the sound of their own voices. It's like you have to keep working towards something you eventually do like. It was very satisfying for me on this album, because for the first time I can sit and listen to the vocals and think, 'Yeah, that's actually quite good.'"

Were you pushing it more to create different sounds?

"In a way. But I probably used to push it more in other ways. I went through a phase of trying to leap up and down a lot when I was writing songs. I used to try to push it almost acrobatically. Now I'm trying more to get the song across, and I have more control. When I'm trying to think up the character is when it needs a bit of push."

Do you always try to put yourself in the role of a character, then?

"Yeah, normally, because the song is always about something, and always from a particular viewpoint. There's normally a personality that runs along with it.

"Sometimes I really have to work at it to get in the right frame of mind, because it's maybe the opposite of how I'm feeling, but other times it feels almost like an extension of me, which it is, in some ways."

You have been accused in the past of living in some kind of fantasy world. Would you say you refuse to face up to reality?

"Now. I think I do, actually, although there are certain parts of me that definitely don't want to look at reality. Generally speaking, though, I'm quite realistic, but perhaps the songs on the first two albums created some kind of fantasy image, so people presumed that I lived in that kind of world."

Where do you get the ideas for songs from?

"Anywhere, really. They're two or three tracks that I had the ideas for on the last album but never got together. Others come from films, books or stories from people I know. That kind of thing."

What about Pull Out the Pin, a song about VietNam? Was that something you'd always wanted to write about?

"No, I didn't think I'd ever want to write about it until I saw this documentary on television which moved me so much I thought I just had to."

The title track concerns the abuse of Aborigines by so-called civilised man. Where did that interest come from?

"That's something that's been growing for years. It started when I was tiny, and my brother bought Sun Arise [a hit of the early 1960s by Rolf Harris.]. We thought it was brilliant--to me, that's a classic record. I started to become aware of the whole thing--that it's almost an instinctive thing in white man to wipe out a race that actually owns the land. It's happening all around the world."

Do you hope to change people's opinions by what you write?

"No. Because I don't think a song can ever do that. If people have strong opinions, then they're so deep-rooted that you'll never be able to do much. Even if you can change the way a few people think, you'll never be able to change the situation anyway.

"I don't ever write politically, because I know nothing about politics. To me they seem more destructive than helpful. I think I write from an emotional point of view, because even though a situation may be political, there's always some emotional element, and that's what gets to me."

The thoughts and ideas are expressed through a variety of sounds, an adventurous use of instruments and people--from Rolf Harris on dijeridu to Percy Edwards on animal impressions! Kate has also discovered the Fairlight, a computerised synthesiser.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson 

"It's given me a completely different perspective on sounds," she enthuses. "You can put any sound you want onto the keyboard, so if you go 'Ugh!', you can play 'Ugh!' all the way up the keyboard. Theoretically, any sound that exists, you can play.

"I think it's surprising that with all the gear around at the moment, people aren't experimenting more."

Whatever you may think of Kate Bush, you could never say that she's not been prepared to take risks. In the four years that have passed since her startling first single Wuthering Heights, she has grown increasingly adventurous and ambitious, creating music that she hopes will last longer than much of today's transient pop.

Of The Dreaming she says: "I wanted it to be a long-lasting album, because my favourite records are the ones that grow on you--that you play lots of times because each time you hear something different."

Never particularly a public fave, her last live shows were three years ago, and although she plans to do some in the future, they'll take at least six months to prepare. [Try six years and counting.]

She admits that she found her initial success hard to cope with at times.

"I still find some things frightening. I've adjusted a hell of a lot, but it still scares me. There are so many aspects that if you start thinking about are terrifying. The best thing to do is not even to think about them. Just try to sail through”.

The final interview takes me to NME. Bush made it clear during the interview that, with The Dreaming, she was not interesting in making songs as singles. This was more about the entire album and creating a whole, as opposed a series of singles that one could pick from the pack. At the age of twenty-four, this was a very mature and brave artist risking a certain commercial loss to pursue something deeper and richer:

“You have no regard for those instantaneous qualities of the single? A rocket going up brilliantly for a moment?

"Each album is like a rocket. I build it up as much as I can, and see how high it goes. I'm never aware of any commercial value. I never sit down to write a single. Whenever I write, I'm challenging myself in some area. Everyone who creates something considers themself an artist in some way, don't they?

I wonder whether you really want to do music--whether you'd rather do poetry or theatre or dance or...

"I'm doing that as well, really, aren't I? Maybe it's wrong to see me as a pop personality. You're going to keep changing-- Wuthering Heights was a story with music and dancing, but I've changed so much since then. The things that the media most remember about me are those things. Some people see that I am changing, but...oh, not as many as the people who hang onto those singles. But I am beginning to be seen as an albums artist."

What's an albums artist?

"It's not being a pop personality or whatever it was you called me. I'm not interested in making singles. Maybe I will make some 'singles' one day... 

Pull Out the Pin

The Dreaming is an ornate, billowing record. Its songs are peculiarly ambitious: their grand design all but drives out the spirit of lowly pop music.

The ghosts of famous men pace their dark corridors; great tunnels of sound emulate mighty and multi-levelled conceptions. Songs are sung in a multitude of voices, like a chittering, half-heard spirit-world. Bush's operatic entreaties are finally matched to music of a similar size and shape. At any one moment

It's already a huge success. Despite the failure of the title song in single form--there are surely no singles on the record--Bush has found that her admirers have not gone away. I suggest to her some of the things it seems to be about, like the struggle between public and private faces, and the ability to disappear inside a recording; she is scarcely drawn. Not suspicious--simply not interested in the ambiguity and anatomy of music so intensely organised. <The meaning of this statement is unclear to IED.> Kate Bush is a dedicated artist.

Is she there?

The Dreaming

"Primitive? I'm not sure about that word...Perhaps. There are traditional roots in it. Basic forms of music."

I think it's extremely sophisticated.

"Do you? Sophisticated? Well, I'd rather you say that than turdlike.

"I could explain some of it, if you want me to: Suspended in Gaffa is reasonably autobiographical, which most of my songs aren't. <Doug Alan is loving this. IED can just see him chortling with glee.> It's about seeing something that you want--on any level--and not being able to get that thing unless you work hard and in the right way towards it. When I do that I become aware of so many obstacles, and then I want the thing without the work. And then when you achieve it you enter...a different level--everything will slightly change. It's like going into a time warp which otherwise wouldn't have existed.

"Oh, yes, quite a few people have surmised that from listening to the song. But when you explain it like this it doesn't sound like anything. The idea is much more valuable within the song than it is in my telling you about it. When you analyse it, it seems silly.

" Leave It Open is the idea of human beings being like cups--like receptive vessels. We open and shut ourselves at different times. It's very easy to let your ego go " nag nag nag " when you should shut it. Or when you're very narrow-minded and you should be open. Finally you should be able to control your levels of receptivity to a productive end.

"The Dreaming is very different from my first two records. Each time I do an LP it feels like the last one was years and years before. The essence of what I'm playing has been there from the start; it's just that the expression has been changing. What I'm doing now is what I was trying to do four years ago. If I do a show, it will only be music from the last two albums.

"I wish I had a five-year plan, but I never plan too far ahead. I get into trouble because I always take longer to do things than I expect. That's why I knew I had to wait for another two albums' worth of material before doing another show.

"I suppose I'd count myself an old-fashioned person. I like to think I'm open-minded, but when it comes down to basic codes, I am old-fashioned. Everyone has vices. I have vices, but I don't think I've got any...glaring ones--is that what they're called?

"It would really worry me if I thought my art was being untruthful. Being true to something is the closest way to express things. But then in another way, the whole thing is untruthful--I'm being someone I'm not; I'm writing about situations I'll probably never be in. Behind it there has to be sincerity. Insincerity doesn't ring right; it has a nasty taste.

"The worst thing? The pressures, I suppose. They come in from so many different levels--from so many people--that they feel destructive towards me as a human being. Although it happens very rarely. And I have so little time to do things I want to."

Are you ever worried that you are absent from your art?

"Oh, no. I am expressing myself, but it's also something else--it's something that's coming through me. My intentions are to put across situations that aren't that close to me but which are more interesting.

"It scares me that I work too hard. I can be so tired and involved in work that I'm not living on another level. It's a reality of the situation. I have to do things I don't want to, so that I can do what I want the rest of the time. It's that I don't seem to have time to myself.

Still breathing

"I want to do a show next. It'll take at least six months to prepare, because there'll be so many levels to it. The musical challenge will be the hardest I've set myself..." <This show never materialised, of course.>

A lot of people would like to see you just sitting at a piano and singing a set of your songs.

"Not nearly as many. It would be too easy, as if I couldn't be bothered to prepare a proper show. It wouldn't do anything for the blend of movement and music. That is what I really want to do. Music and movement together in a modern sense. People like it that you're not taking the easy way out”.

On 13th September, The Dreaming turns forty. I am keen to explore it from a number of different sides. It is such an important album. Bush’s first solo producer step, The Dreaming was followed by 1985’s Hounds of Love. Whilst that album gets a massive amount of love, its predecessor is not as dissected and celebrated. Maybe that is because it is very different in terms of it sound, structure and its singles. I know there will be a lot of new consideration and inspection of The Dreaming before 13th September. If you have never heard the album, then go and listen to it now and…

LOSE yourself in its brilliance.

FEATURE: The First Cut Is the Deepest? Why Even Mediocre Songs from My Young Years Hold Up Today

FEATURE:

 

 

The First Cut Is the Deepest?

PHOTO CREDIT: Bruno Guerrero/Unsplash

Why Even Mediocre Songs from My Young Years Hold Up Today

 __________

I have written before…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay

how nostalgic reminiscence can be a dangerous thing. That is what people say. Especially if you indulge in it too much. In the coming weeks, I might venture into writing about the current weather and how environmental destruction and global warming might not only effect how musicians’ travel plans, but it also may impact vinyl production and shipping. I think we will see artists play less often abroad. Many others will do fewer gigs. In terms of production of C.D.s, vinyl and physical music, that is sure to be effected by climate change. It is all very worrying and grim but necessary. These things need to be discussed, as artists, venues and manufactures will need to adapt and rethink. In the current year, I don’t think there is anything wrong succumbing to the lure of nostalgia and escapism. It is impossible to lock away and ignore the issues swirling around us. In order to detach and offer some form of relief and stability, music from my past has been more and more important. I think most people, when they listen back to music from their past, take everything from their youngest years up to the age of eighteen, perhaps. That is what I am doing. Right now, I am exploring and reacquainting myself with music from high school. I entered high school at age eleven in 1994 and left five years later. It was a magnificent time for music. One of the things I noticed, not only about my high school favourites but songs from earlier than that, is that a lot of them are a bit naff. That might be a subjective call, but they are either one-hit wonders, tracks from great artists that do not stand up again their best work, songs that are not seen as brilliant, or others that are obviously quite shocking. I am not going to drop them in here in case of offending those artists, but the first album I bought with my own money was Now That’s What I Call Music! 24. That came out in 1993 - I was about nine or ten when I bought it. There are a few tracks from that album that are not exactly awesome.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @mohammadmetri/Unsplash

I guess there are psychological reasons why we latch onto particular tracks. Some might be quite child-like or catchy (but lack any real depth). Others might hit us at a very difficult time and offer comfort, whereas there might be a part of brain that has a soft spot for particularly mediocre songs. I have been feeling a bit conflicted listening back to songs form my childhood and teenage years that other people dislike. Should I feel embarrassed liking a song that is clearly not that good or credible?! There are some that are important because they were released at a challenging or exciting time in life. Others have something about them that appeals to a sense of compassion – maybe adopting these songs that others do not. In any case, I have found that these nostalgic songs have not faded in the years since! I have not really revisited many and decided that, at the time, I was foolish for liking them. Many other people feel the same. If we heard these so-so songs now for the first time, our opinions might be very different. I don’t think there is any such thing as a guilty pleasure song. Everything has its place. I am proud to play loud songs that would make others cringe or be seen as uncool and dated. Maybe the reason people like me still love these sort of records is because they are unmovable and intrinsic part of our growing up. Formative days that are defined by music, whether good or bad.

 PHOTO CREDIT: @rocinante_11/Unsplash

The more I wrap myself inside the warm cocoon of nostalgia and better years, the more I am rediscovering and enjoying some of the more questionable tracks in my collection. One might argue that, if I love these songs so many years later, then it must mean they are great. There are many songs that, undoubtably, are just plain bad or dated. I think that all music, good or bad, resonates at a point in our life either because we need them at the time and they go deep, the soundtracks of our young and teenagers lives mirror our own. I treasure great memories from those days, but I also think that others, whether they are hard, tragic, boring or just plain dumb, are just as important. I would not want to get rid of them. In the case of the songs, I owe these tracks a debt. They have widened my tastes and appreciation of music. Each have played their part and scored some great memories. There is a great comfort in hearing these older tracks and realising that, for better or worse, they keep me looking forward. These mediocre songs have not waned or lost significance. I feel uncomfortable and plain wrong subjugating or erasing a song from my memory because I am grown up and it seems embarrassing to like particular music. Without these songs, I think I would be a different person. Genuinely. They have made a difference when I needed them. They have provided a few smiles. They have lodged in my head when I needed them most. More than anything, I still love these tracks today and, when playing them, I am transported back to an easier time. Of course, we cannot live in the past and pretend we can go back! Though it is nice that we can escape. If only for a brief time. If you have been uneasy spinning tunes from your past that you would not embrace easily, get over that and understand how important this music is. They meant something to you then, so why bother about whether they are cool tracks or they are not among the best?! This music asked nothing of you and, for one reason or another, they made an impression on you. And for that alone, you should be…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @floschmaezz/Unsplash

VERY grateful indeed!

FEATURE: A Never for Ever Jewel… The Brief Majesty of Kate Bush’s Night Scented Stock

FEATURE:

 

 

A Never for Ever Jewel…

PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith

The Brief Majesty of Kate Bush’s Night Scented Stock

__________

THIS is going to be a short Kate Bush feature…

which is kind of fitting, as the song that I am covering is very short. The shortest song on any Kate Bush album. Whereas Aerial’s (2005) Aerial Tal is 1:02, Night Scented Stock runs in at a mere fifty-two seconds! Not to be confused with the flower of the same name, Night Scented Stock is an instrumental song consisting entirely of layered, wordless vocals. It is a series of breathy and gorgeous sounds. There are a few reasons why I am writing about this song. I am thinking more and more about Bush’s catalogue, and the fact that very few of her songs are played. I was among those to congratulate her on Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) going to number one after being featured on Stranger Things. It is a marvellous song but, since then, I feel radio stations have been playing it more than any other. Hounds of Love (the album it is from) is featured more than any of Bush album. I feel this rather narrow radio worldview of her music will remain rigid because songs like Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) are successful and commercial. Think about 1980’s Never for Ever and how under-explored that is. Aside from Babooshka, not a lot else is played. Maybe Army Dreamers and Breathing, but you never get the deeper cuts played. I have also been thinking about song length and how an album like 50 Words for Snow is a more expansive work that allows songs to unfold and unfurl more gradually.

I love the fact that Bush, on her most recent studio album (2011), pushed so far away from the radio-friendly and immediate sound that many artists write. Whereas it takes guts to write longer songs and engage and keep people hooked, it might be even more difficult to write very short tracks and make them work. There are a few short songs/links on Aerial’s second side, a Sky of Honey. Up until Never for Ever, Bush had not written anything as brief as Night Scented Stock. If Bush had meant it as a sorbet or bridge between the beautiful and swooning The Infant Kiss and the haunting and affecting Army Dreamers, it is much more than that. I think, if she jumped from The Infant Kiss to Army Dreamers, it might have been a little jarring. The songs are very different in tone and sound, so you need a little bit of a transition. Consider the fact Breathing follows Army Dreamers, it is wise having this moment of heavenly escape and something almost otherworldly before we get there. To me, it is like being out at night and smelling the jasmine or perfume of flowers. Maybe a song that you could see sung at church or used as this sort of hymn. I am not sure whether Bush had this song intended as something longer with lyrics, or whether it was a late addition to Never for Ever that she couldn’t add to another song but did not want to scrap.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Phillips

I love her vocals on this track. Consisting of ‘ahs’ and ‘ooos’ for the most part, it coos and seduces! You get the impression of multiple voices twirling and tangling with one another. Everyone will imagine their own visuals and what the song is about. It is a fascinating standout in her discography as there are no lyrics. Bush has not really discussed its origins. Not the only instrumental she has written, it is so different to anything on Never for Ever. It shows how productive and varied her songwriting was around the time. Producing Never for Ever with Jon Kelly, Bush had a lot more freedom regarding what type of sound and songs could feature on her albums. This wouldn’t have been the case with The Kick Inside and Lionheart (both 1978). Although Night Scented Stock sandwiches between The Infant Kiss and Army Dreamers, it could also easily fit between The Wedding List and Violin (which would have allowed some brief calm before the rush and raw energy of Violin). It is this mobile and utilitarian song that you can use to bridge two very different numbers. I feel Night Scented Stock should be known more widely. Maybe it is too short for a radio spin, but it is under a minute long, so it could perfectly slip into the playlist without too much fuss. I feel people would be intrigued by it. It is a song that not many non-Kate Bush fans have heard. The more I think about Night Scented Stock, the more thoughts come to me. This feature has actually turned out…

LONGER than I thought!

FEATURE: Revisiting… The Raconteurs – Help Us Stranger

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

The Raconteurs – Help Us Stranger

__________

ALTHOUGH they are a popular band…

 PHOTO CREDIT: David James Swanson

and can be considered a supergroup – consisting of Jack White (vocals, guitar), Brendan Benson (vocals, guitar), Jack Lawrence (bass guitar), and Patrick Keeler (drums) -, their third studio album, Help Us Stranger, does not get as much play and attention as their previous two. Released on 21st June, 2019, I wanted to spend time with it. I wonder whether the band will release a fourth studio album. Jack White put out two albums this year, so you have to think he has been too busy to think of working with The Raconteurs. I hope they do have more work in them. Help Us Stranger is a fantastic album that went to number one ion the U.S. and scored positive reviews across the board. It may be their best-received and successful album to date. With Brendan Benson and Jack White proving what an incredible songwriting partnership they are, Help Us Stranger is a triumphant album. Few expected The Raconteurs to put out a third album. their first studio album in eleven years since Consolers of the Lonely (2008), Help Us Stranger was recorded at Third Man Studio in Nashville, Tennessee. I am going to come to a couple (of the many) positive reviews for a tremendous album. Prior to that, Entertainment Weekly featured an interview with Jack White and Brendan Benson in promotion of Help Us Stranger:

“There have been numerous (in)famous pairings throughout music history: Mick and Keith. Sonny and Cher. Metallica and Lou Reed. So how to characterize Jack White and Brendan Benson, of rock quartet the Raconteurs? Well, according to White, they might just be the oddest of the bunch.

“We both really inspire each other, but we both think each other is the strangest person,” says White. “Brendan’ll say to me, ‘You are just the weirdest guy I know.’ It’s so funny, every time he says that, I wanna say it back to him, but I don’t wanna argue with him! Most of the people I’ve loved and admired — mentors I’ve had — are people I’ve found to be odd. Not at first glance, but maybe as time goes on. I find an appeal to their eccentricities.”

Their collaboration proved wondrous rather than strange on Help Us Stranger, the new, long-time-coming Raconteurs record. The band’s 2005 debut, Broken Boy Soldiers – along with lead single, “Steady As She Goes” — were nominated for Grammys. And in the 11 years since their second album, Consolers of the Lonely, fans and critics alike have been eager for more of the lineup’s driving, precise, and clever melodies.

“It was just timing, we never broke up or anything,” explains Benson of the group’s decade-long absence. “There wasn’t some epiphany. I was busy producing and writing, Jack was busy with his solo career, and Patrick [Keeler, drummer] moved to Los Angeles. So when Patrick came to visit Nashville recently we got together and jammed; it was really fun and I think we actually recorded some stuff.” (Bassist Jack Lawrence, who also plays in the Dead Weather with White, is the fourth full-time member.)

The first song the group tracked was a cover that appears on the album, a lesser-known Donovan song called ‘Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness).” “Right from the get-go it was like, ‘Press record, let’s go, we’re doing this.’ Not much discussion, not much planning — as is often the case with the Raconteurs,” says Benson, laughing.

However, there was a method to their madness. “The morning we recorded [“Hey Gyp”] I heard [the Donovan original] on the radio in my car,” says White. “It was this trick I’ve used over the years, which is to record someone else’s song — any song will do — just to get our brains working on the first day back in the studio. Then we’ll move on to our own stuff. It’s an icebreaker; like if you’re at a party, and you just bring up the weather.” The only issue? “This trick usually backfires, and we end up falling in love with the song and having to put it on the record. I did that on [Little Willie John’s] ‘I’m Shakin’ on my solo record and with Bob Dylan’s ‘New Pony’ on the Dead Weather’s first album.”

That spiritual intuition comes through in the dozen tracks off Help Us Stranger. Like the previous two Raconteurs releases, the album title is the plural version of a song on the record (“Help Me, Stranger”). “It’s one of those things that the band thinks is funnier than it actually is in real life,” says White, laughing.

Given White’s fame, he admits he’s a stranger to very few, though anonymity is one of his fondest wishes: “My favorite thing is to be at the airport and not be recognized and be able to just talk to people. That’s a blessing. Once they recognize me, the conversation’s over, basically. It’s a shame, because they’re coming with preconceptions, so it’s kind of ruined.”

With the exception of “Hey Gyp,” White and Benson wrote all of Help Us Stranger. Though the duo generally work separately on the lyrics, Benson explains, “we might help each other out on a few words now and then; if somebody gets stuck on something, it’s always great to have another brain.” White, an encyclopedic musical obsessive, adds, “It’s nice to have that much songwriting history that has come before you, because it gives you a lot of places to say, ‘Oh well, that’s been done,’ or ‘Don’t go there; someone’s tried that, and it didn’t work.’ It gives you places to aim for and places to stay away from, to be knowledgeable of that history.” White even harkens back to the Bard for inspiration. “William Shakespeare, whether it’s a comedy or his love sonnets — I think those are, of course, the most incredible work. It’s almost like written by God herself.”

The release of Help Us Stranger also finds the duo dissecting their music and process in the press, which wasn’t done with their last release. Consolers of the Lonely dropped almost as a surprise in 2008. (Per White, “Years later, you saw Beyoncé doing it, and everyone was flipping out. ‘Oh, it’s amazing! The record just came out of nowhere.’ We were like, ‘Wait a minute, we did that like eight years ago,’ which clearly wasn’t the right time to try it.”)

“I think all artists would probably rather create and not talk about it, in a perfect world. It would be as hard for a painter to describe a painting,” adds White. “But at the same time, you’re putting it on a record store shelf, you’re going onstage, you’re trying to share it with people. You’re trying to see if there’s anybody out there who can dig it, and if they do, you keep going with it. That could be a hundred people. You never know what’s gonna happen. You’ve just gotta go with your gut”.

Before I wrap things up, I want to source some reviews. There is so much to enjoy when it comes to Help Us Stranger. Even if you do not know about the band, you will be instantly interested and won over by their chemistry and amazing songwriting. This is what AllMusic wrote about their 2019 album:

“Reconvening after a decade's absence, the Raconteurs resemble nothing less than a guild of craftsman united by taste and work ethic on their third album, Help Us Stranger. Ever since their debut, the quartet displayed a shared love for the rock and pop made before the advent of MTV, and while they've never abandoned an aesthetic steeped in FM radio, they've gotten livelier with each passing LP. Which isn't to say Help Us Stranger is a slack, loose affair. One of its considerable pleasures is how Brendan Benson encourages Jack White to stick to a strict outline and color within the lines, trends the latter largely abandoned on his willfully obtuse 2018 album Boarding House Reach. There are jokes and asides peppered throughout Help Us Stranger -- the best of these is an intentional skip at the start of the title track, the kind of thing that will drive vinyl freaks batty upon the initial listen -- but the album is distinguished by its velocity, a momentum delivered as much through writing as it is through performance. Whether they're stitching together individual ideas or writing in tandem, Benson and White are full collaborators, honing their hooks and melodies so they're gleamingly lean, then they dress up these handsome bones with squalls of guitar, vintage synths, campfire acoustics, ghostly piano, gypsy violin, and thundering rhythms. On the surface, the sound may seem as retro as the record's tight 42-minute running time, but that's where the Raconteurs' dedication to craft comes into play. The group intentionally works with old tools so they can fit within an album-rock tradition, yet they have little interest in re-creating the past. Apart from a hypercharged cover of Donovan's "Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)," none of the songs bear hallmarks of another time; the tunes teem with modern-day ennui, right down to White's gripes about cell phones. Despite this contemporary flair, what keeps Help Us Stranger lively is how the Raconteurs blend and mix barbed pop and blues skronk so their classicism seems fresh, not stale”.

I shall leave things with an excellent and glowing review from DIY. They had some very kind words to say about one of the very best albums from 2019. Help Us Stranger proved that the band lost none of their excellence and stride eleven years after their second studio album:

“11 years since the release of second LP ‘Consolers of the Lonely’, it seemed unlikely that we’d ever be staring down the barrel of a new Raconteurs record. Having quietly gone on hiatus at the turn of the decade, co-frontman Brendan Benson then declared a few years later that the hiatus was actually more of a split, and talk of the supergroup that he, Jack White, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler had first unleashed back in 2005 soon dwindled away. In the interim, Brendan released a couple more solo records, and Jack L and Patrick continued playing in various projects – most notably those connected to Big Jacky W, who… well, safe to say the prolific star hasn’t exactly been lazy since.

First teasing their return last year, the advent of a new album proper should yield the obvious question that’s floored so many bands attempting a second spin of the wheel: coming back to a musical landscape that’s changed immeasurably in the interim, where do they fit in 2019? And yet, now as ever, The Raconteurs don’t really fit anywhere. Theirs is a union as progressive as a tin can on a piece of string, as zeitgeist-chasing as an old man playing shuffleboard; the beauty of The Raconteurs is in the timeless joy of hearing two world-class songwriters, cut from two very different sides of a similar cloth, come together to make something if not greater, then at least as good as the sum of their considerable parts. And in that sense, ‘Help Us Stranger’ succeeds, and then some.

If Jack White has always been the bigger star pull in this operation, then on the band’s third, the two frontmen stand perhaps on more equal footing. Of course, it’s the White Stripes legend who underpins the likes of ‘Live A Lie’ and ‘Only Child’ with fizzing fretwork and strange piano inserts, but it’s Brendan whose more major-key driven, simple melodies bring something fresh to the table. The sassy kiss-off of the Jack-led ‘What’s Yours Is Mine’ or the histrionic, wild-eyed fire of ‘Don’t Bother Me’ are classic White and make for easy highlights, but they’re also more familiar; having released solidly for years, we know what Jack can do. But it’s when the pair truly come together, on the stadium stomp of opener ‘Bored and Razed’ or the lighters-aloft ‘Now That You’re Gone’ that The Raconteurs remind exactly why there’s a place that still remains for them as a unit. Whether they continue ablaze or leave it another 10 years, it’s a place always worth returning to”.

I will round up soon. If you have not heard Help Us Stranger, then go and listen to it now. I am surprised that songs from it are not really played on the radio. With no filler or any weaknesses, this is a work that needs to be picked back up and shared. Take some time with Help Us Stranger and…

LISTEN to it now.

FEATURE: And Feel Your Arms Around Me: A Truly Original Visionary: My Five Favourite Kate Bush-Directed Videos

FEATURE:

 

 

And Feel Your Arms Around Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

A Truly Original Visionary: My Five Favourite Kate Bush-Directed Videos

__________

I have been thinking about…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush directing the Hounds of Love video/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Hounds of Love, as the album was featured in the latest edition of MOJO. They explored its creation and importance because so many new fans have discovered it. That is no small part because of Stranger Things’ use of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). After that single and video was released, Kate Bush started to direct her music videos. I suspect that she was keen to direct during The Dreaming. I know she was quite involved when it came to the concept and look of the title track’s video. Hounds of Love’s title track came out on 24th February, 1986. That was the first video that Bush directed solo. She directed two further videos in 1986: one for The Big Sky (from Hounds of Love) and one for Experiment IV (from the greatest hits collection, The Whole Story). Bush has directed videos on and off after that. The latest one she directed was Kate Bush: Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe. Alongside videos, she also directed the 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. I think she is a very accomplished and visionary director with her own style. Although she is influenced by directors like Alfred Hitchcock (which you can definitely see in Hounds of Love’s video), I really admire her concepts, colour palettes and ideas. To celebrate that, I wanted to present the five videos that Kate Bush directed. In previous features, I have selected my five favourite music videos of hers. This one is specifically about the videos she directed. It is a hard decision ranking them, as she has directed some incredible videos! Maybe you have different opinions, or there are great videos that I have missed out. Regardless, this is my ranking of the best five music videos…

THAT Kate Bush directed.

____________

1: The Big Sky

Single Release Date: 28th April, 1986

Producer: Kate Bush

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Background:

“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)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia

2: Experiment IV

Single Release Date: 27th October, 1986

Producer: Kate Bush

From the Album: The Whole Story (1986)

Background:

“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.

The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine - a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used - me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia

3: Hounds of Love

Single Release Date: 24th February, 1986

Producer: Kate Bush

From the Album: Hounds of Love (1985)

Background:

“When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)

In the song 'Hounds Of Love', what do you mean by the line 'I'll be two steps on the water', other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why 'two' steps?

Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think "two steps" suggests that you intend to go forward.

But why not "three steps"?

It could have been three steps - it could have been ten, but "two steps" sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia

4: Rocket Man

Single Release Date: 2nd December, 1991

Producer: Kate Bush

From the Album: Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (1991)

Background:

“I was really knocked out to be asked to be involved with this project, because I was such a big fan of Elton's when I was little. I really loved his stuff. It's like he's my biggest hero, really. And when I was just starting to write songs, he was the only songwriter I knew of that played the piano and sang and wrote songs. So he was very much my idol, and one of my favourite songs of his was 'Rocket Man'. Now, if I had known then that I would have been asked to be involved in this project, I would have just died… They basically said, 'Would we like to be involved?' I could choose which track I wanted… 'Rocket Man' was my favourite. And I hoped it hadn't gone, actually – I hoped no one else was going to do it… I actually haven't heard the original for a very long time. 'A long, long time' (laughs). It was just that I wanted to do it differently. I do think that if you cover records, you should try and make them different. It's like remaking movies: you've got to try and give it something that makes it worth re-releasing. And the reggae treatment just seemed to happen, really. I just tried to put the chords together on the piano, and it just seemed to want to take off in the choruses. So we gave it the reggae treatment. It's even more extraordinary (that the song was a hit) because we actually recorded the track over two years ago. Probably just after my last telly appearance. We were quite astounded when they wanted to release it as a single just recently. (BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 December 1991)

I remember buying this when it came out as a single by Elton John. I couldn’t stop playing it - I loved it so much. Most artists in the mid seventies played guitar but Elton played piano and I dreamed of being able to play like him. Years later in 1989, Elton and Bernie Taupin were putting together an album called Two Rooms, which was a collection of cover versions of their songs, each featuring a different singer. To my delight they asked me to be involved and I chose Rocket Man. They gave me complete creative control and although it was a bit daunting to be let loose on one of my favourite tracks ever, it was really exciting. I wanted to make it different from the original and thought it could be fun to turn it into a reggae version. It meant a great deal to me that they chose it to be the first single release from the album.

That meant I also had the chance to direct the video which I loved doing - making it a performance video, shot on black and white film, featuring all the musicians and... the Moon!

Alan Murphy played guitars on the track. He was a truly special musician and a very dear friend. Tragically, he died just before we made the video so he wasn’t able to be there with us but you’ll see his guitar was placed on an empty chair to show he was there in spirit. (KateBush.com, February 2019)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia

5: The Sensual World (with Peter Richardson)

Single Release Date: 18th September, 1989

Producer: Kate Bush

From the Album: The Sensual World (1989)

Background:

“Because I couldn't get permission to use a piece of Joyce it gradually turned into the song about Molly Bloom the character stepping out of the book, into the real world and the impressions of sensuality. Rather than being in this two-dimensional world, she's free, let loose to touch things, feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. (...) In the original piece, it's just 'Yes' - a very interesting way of leading you in. It pulls you into the piece by the continual acceptance of all these sensual things: 'Ooh wonderful!' I was thinking I'd never write anything as obviously sensual as the original piece, but when I had to rewrite the words, I was trapped. How could you recreate that mood without going into that level of sensuality? So there I was writing stuff that months before I'd said I'd never write. I have to think of it in terms of pastiche, and not that it's me so much. (Len Brown, 'In The Realm Of The Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)

The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world - the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual - you know... the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand - the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that's an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I'm sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (...) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary - such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the book Ulysses by James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn't get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time - probably about a year - and they wouldn't let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that's why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. (Roger Scott, Interview. Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989)” – The Kate Bush Encyclopedia

FEATURE: Groovelines: M.I.A. – Paper Planes

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

M.I.A. – Paper Planes

__________

JUST over…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

fourteen years ago, the fantastic M.I.A. released a track that ranks alongside her very best. The final single from her second studio album, Kala, Paper Planes is a magnificent song. In fact, Kala turned fifteen earlier this month. It is an album that I would urge everyone to hear. Paper Planes was produced and co-written by M.I.A. and Diplo. Among the notable layers of the song is the interpolation of The Clash's 1982 song, Straight to Hell. The music video for Paper Planes depicts M.I.A. as an undercover dealer and features images of paper planes flying overhead. Paper Planes was M.I.A.'s biggest commercial success to that point, entering the top twenty on the U.K. and four on the U.S.  Billboard Hot 100. It is a magnificent song from an artist who is releasing her sixth studio album, MATA, later this year. She has released the new single, Popular. It proves that she has lost none of her brilliance and consistency! There are a couple of articles about Paper Planes that I want to introduce. I was interested discovering more about the origins and success of Paper Planes. ODD MAG looked into the meaning of the song last year:

“That’s amazing,” said recording artist M.I.A. in 2018 when she heard that her hit song Paper Planes earned her the Number 1 spot on NPR Music’s The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women. “I’ve never come first at anything. Like definitely a massive historical moment in my journey, to be recognized as someone who’s made this song. It’s nice because to me it’s so layered. And it did represent a time where we had the financial crisis and also the immigrant stuff, also it’s about sort of mixing genres. To me, it has a lot of memories and meaning. Yeah, people still like the song, which is kind of amazing.”

Determined to record her second album and in a move that prioritized the Global South against American imperial hegemony, M.I.A. decided to record on the road, sampling local music on the album in countries like India, Trinidad and Tobago, Liberia, Jamaica, and Japan. The result was explosive and M.I.A. further cemented her sound of multicultural mashups, described as “a pastiche of hip-hop, electro, Jamaican dancehall, reggaeton, garage rock, Brazilian baile funk, grime, Bollywood bhangra and video game soundtracks”.  Responding to accusations and describing her music in her own words, M.I.A. said, “I don’t support terrorism and never have. As a Sri Lankan that fled the war and bombings, my music is the voice of the civilian refugee.”

This voice was particularly loud on Paper Planes, a song which catapulted M.I.A. into stardom. With its catchy melody and banging baseline, the song was featured in an exhilarating montage sequence of children hustling to make money in the film Slumdog Millionaire and is perfectly matched to the raw scenes depicting courage, brotherhood and extreme poverty.

With Paper Planes, M.I.A. established herself as that rare pop artist who addresses politics and brings issues into the mainstream. Positioning herself in this way rendered her the target of a censorship campaign and being constantly badgered about her music and it’s messages. Providing further clarification about her hit song, M.I.A. said, “[it’s] about people driving cabs all day and living in a shitty apartment and appearing really threatening to society. But not being so. Because, by the time you’ve finished working a 20-hour shift, you’re so tired you just want to get home to the family. I don’t think immigrants are that threatening to society at all. They’re just happy they’ve survived some war somewhere”.

In another article, the Financial Times delved deep into one of the greatest songs of the first decade of this century. I hear Paper Planes played a lot today, and it still holds that power to really affect you. A track that helped define the Noughties, it is a shame that Paper Planes was met with some controversy upon its release (M.I.A.’s music was not being played on Sri Lankan radio or television due to government pressure as the Sinhalese–Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka dragged on). It is unquestionable now that Paper Planes is a modern classic:

“Paper Planes” is not a paean to gangster life, but a mocking, coruscating attack on the pernicious, superficial assumptions people make about that which is unfamiliar, those who are “other”. Fuelled by the British-Sri Lankan rapper’s own experiences as a refugee and her personal indignation at being refused a working visa in the US due to her alleged — and denied — links to Tamil militia groups, M.I.A. (real name Mathangi Arulpragasam) set about skewering the febrile post-9/11 climate of xenophobic paranoia in which ethnic diversity became more or less synonymous with danger. As she put it in an interview at the time: “[they thought] that I might fly a plane into the Trade Center.”

And while the song’s title refers to counterfeit visa documents, it cannot help but also evoke the Maoist phrase “paper tiger” — broadly meaning something or someone whose perceived threat is entirely illusory. The wickedly sardonic implication here is that immigrants, feared to be terrorists, are in fact a threat to no one, or just “paper planes”.

The track’s musical reference points are similarly wide-ranging. Despite being labelled as a hip-hop record, the song is freighted with a pugnacious, punkish attitude that is driven by the extended sampling of the hook from a single by The Clash (who are credited as co-writers): 1982’s “Straight to Hell” — a track that likewise attacks nativism. The chorus of “All I wanna do”, meanwhile, appears to stem from new jack swing ensemble Wreckx-N-Effect’s concupiscent 1992 hit “Rump Shaker”. The line here is used as a winking response to M.I.A’s  purported criminal intentions and is later followed by the equally arch “Some I murder/some I some I let go”.

Despite boasting such a light, acerbic touch and an irrepressibly catchy melody, it wasn’t until it was featured in the trailer for the stoner comedy Pineapple Express — and, perhaps more appositely, in an exhilarating montage sequence of Indian children grifting in the Oscars-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire — that the song exploded into the mainstream, going multi-platinum in the US and reaching the top 10 in charts across the globe.

Soon enough, all the biggest names in hip-hop were queuing up to pay homage to “Paper Planes”. 50 Cent remixed it, Rihanna and Dizzee Rascal covered it at their live shows, and a rap supergroup of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and T.I. built an entire song around the sample of the line “No one on the corner had swagger like us”. A heavily pregnant M.I.A. joined the rappers in a rendition of “Swagga Like Us/Paper Planes” at the 2009 Grammys — a performance so electrifying that it was named as one of the 50 key events in the history of world and folk music by The Guardian”.

I was eager to spend some time with M.I.A.’s Paper Planes. As she is preparing a new album, it is worth looking back at one of her biggest songs. If you have not heard the track – or not listened to it for a while -, then go and play the incredible Paper Planes. The 2008 track is…

AN extraordinary thing.

FEATURE: Oh, Here I Go, Don't Let Me Go… Hounds of Love’s Bewitching and Fascinating Title Track

FEATURE:

 

 

Oh, Here I Go, Don't Let Me Go…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the video for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

Hounds of Love’s Bewitching and Fascinating Title Track

__________

IN this part…

of four new features I am writing about Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (after MOJO recently dived into the album for their new edition), I am coming back to the stunning title track. To many, Hounds of Love is the finest track from the album of the same name. Maybe The Ninth Wave (the conceptual second side of the album) is more accomplished and impressive; many feel Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is better (and more successful). To me, Hounds of Love is one of the very best song Kate Bush ever released. Her was the first video that she directed too, and I love what she did with it! Coming to the MOJO feature on Hounds of Love, and they talk about songs like the title cut as being Pop…but not as we know it. I am going to expand on something writer Andrew Male observed about the incredible Hounds of Love. Before getting there, let’s read some interviews from Kate Bush where she discussed the origins of the spectacular title track:

“['Hounds Of Love'] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn't as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being - perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)

The ideas for 'Hounds Of Love', the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it's very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you've got to run away from it or you won't survive. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985)

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought 'Hounds Of Love' and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna... when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of... being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love'. BBC Radio 1 (UK), 26 January 1992)”.

Lyrically, as Andrew Male observes, Hounds of Love starts out like a short story. “Told in the first person, about a child convinced she is being hunted by dogs who, like an image from a medieval bestiary, embody the imagined pain and responsibility of romantic love”. I love how Bush was seen by many as a Pop artist in 1985, yet her music is complex and cannot be easily defined. What I love most about songs like Hounds of Love is how they are accessible and easy-to-love, but they are also detailed, intelligent and can be interpreted in different ways. It is Pop, I guess, as the song is popular. Compare Hounds of Love’s title track with anything else that was being released at the time. Released as a single on 24th February, 1986, Bush’s contemporaries were not doing what she was! It reached number eight in the U.K. and featured drums by Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott and cello from Jonathan Williams. It is addition of instruments like the cello that lends this unique edge and sophistication. Many define 1980s Pop with being about synthesisers and drum machines. Bush was using this too, but she could elevate and distinguish her songs with something more elegant, classical, and unexpected. Andrew Male, for MOJO, looked at the different phrases and lyrical references. The fact that she opened with dialogue from the 1957 horror film, Night of the Demon (directed by Jacques Tourneur), shows that this is a more cinematic song.

Male asserted that Bush recontextualised this ghostly and urgent piece of film dialogue as she saw love (through this song) as a “runic malediction”.  She was fleeing from these hounds of love. One can almost imagine physical beings! Although the video does not show a monster or animals chasing Bush and her lover, you feel that something lurks in the dark. Bush’s own dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, can be seen on the cover of Hounds of Love (the album). I always think of them when hearing the title track though, in the photograph, they are asleep as Bush gives a relaxed look to camera. In the song, she imagines something far more sinister. In the lyrics, Bush does employ violence and harrowing images to enforce this message: “I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”. Bush sings about being a coward and never knowing what’s good for her. We get these images of something coming through the trees, chasing Bush. Among the hounds of love, whether physical or mental, Bush/the heroine feels safe arms around her. The listener can see Hounds of Love as a horror setting or drama where Bush, as a young woman, is being hounded by dogs and chased by spirits and something demonic. Throughout Hounds of Love, you get songs that reference horror and dark psychology. Maybe you picture this woman wrestling with anxiety, doubts, fears, and past experiences of love.

In the MOJO feature, Andrew Male continues: “Gradually, subtly, these two strands, the childlike fear and the feral invocation, begin to merge…”. I like how there is this childlike aspect together with something more grown-up and relatable (to me). It is spellbinding Pop music. Bush’s vocals change from terrified to erotic. She sort of submits to love and passion. We almost feel her grow through the song. From a child scared by visions and things racing through the trees and coming at her in the night; then, this fleeing and stepping into the water. Maybe a baptism, rebirth or unshackling of her fears and psychological terrors, what emerges is this more lustful and braver woman who seems like the heroine on the album cover: someone more relaxed, passionate, and comfortable. Of course, there is no correlation between Bush’s cover and the title track’s hounds. I just get that connection in my head. I never really thought to think about Hounds of Love as this artistic and deep Pop song that had all these different interpretations and possibilities. It is so catchy and easy to hear, you do not necessarily dig deep or stop and unpick it – so thanks to MOJO for opening that particular avenue! That is the beauty of Kate Bush. Songs reveal new layers and possibilities all of these years later! A brilliant title track that I feel should have been a number one, it also boasts a phenomenal video. Bush’s direction and presentation of the track is fascinating. It is like you are watching something pulled from the big screen. I first heard Hounds of Love as a child, and I have loved the song ever since. It is one of the reasons I have pursued and adored her music since. It is clear that there are…

NO songwriters quite like her.

FEATURE: Step On: Shaun Ryder at Sixty: The Best of Happy Mondays and Black Grape

FEATURE:

 

 

Step On

Shaun Ryder at Sixty: The Best of Happy Mondays and Black Grape

__________

A music legend…

who has led Happy Mondays and Black Grape, Shaun Ryder turns sixty on 23rd August. He is a terrific songwriter and singer who was one of the pioneers and key voices of the Madchester scene during the late-1980s and early-1990s. To mark his upcoming sixtieth, I wanted to put together a playlist featuring the best songs from Happy Mondays and Black Grape. Before getting there, AllMusic have some biography about the great man:

“Shaun Ryder was the poster boy for rock & roll excess in the late '80s and early '90s, at least in the U.K. As the potty-mouthed, drug-using leader of the Happy Mondays, Ryder was voted most likely to become an international star as well as the next rock & roll casualty in pre-Brit-pop Great Britain. Ryder was born in Manchester, England, on August 23, 1962. In 1982, Ryder formed the Happy Mondays, drawing upon '60s psychedelia, '70s funk, and '80s house music. The group released its debut LP, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), in 1987, but it didn't have the impact of its follow-up, Bummed, appearing a year later. Bummed thrust the Happy Mondays into the open arms of indie purists who once choked on anything on the dance charts. Ryder's sleazy, rap-influenced vocal style was more punk than funk, reflecting the street talk of club-hopping Manchester youths.

However, it didn't translate well in America, as the band's third full-length, 1990's Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches reached the country on a wave of hype that sank once commercial radio refused to bite. While "Step On" received some attention on alternative stations -- then only a handful -- the Happy Mondays' real audience was in England, as Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches hit number one on the U.K. charts and Ryder's love of narcotics provided fodder for the tabloids. Ryder's heroin addiction and the lackluster sales of 1992's critically roasted Yes, Please tore the band apart. In 1993, Ryder formed Black Grape, further developing the Happy Mondays' party-all-the-time sound with a greater emphasis on rap and funk. Black Grape's first album, 1995's It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah, debuted at number one in England.

Another Black Grape album, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, followed in 1997 but the band fell apart the next year. Ryder quickly returned to a reunited Happy Mondays, which toured through 2000. Next up, Ryder released the solo album Amateur Night in the Big Top in 2003, but this venture proved short-lived. He returned to another incarnation of the Happy Mondays -- one that only featured himself, Bez, and Gaz Whelan -- in 2004 and after some live shows, including festival dates in 2005, the group released the "Playground Superstar" single in 2006.

The full-length Uncle Dysfunktional followed in the summer of 2007, and the group toured the record throughout the year. This version of the Happy Mondays splintered in 2010, after which Ryder appeared on the tenth series of the reality show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! An autobiography called Twisting My Melon arrived in 2011 and, over the next few years, he was a regular fixture on U.K. television, even scoring his own program, Shaun Ryder on UFOs, in 2013.

The original lineup of the Happy Mondays reunited in 2012 for a tour and they continued to tour into 2013, teasing the possibility of an album of new material. Before that materialized, the Mondays celebrated the 25th anniversary of Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches with a tour in 2015 and, afterward, Ryder switched gears and reunited Black Grape for a tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah. Black Grape leapfrogged the Happy Mondays in Ryder's priorities, with the reunited band releasing Pop Voodoo in the summer of 2017”.

I hope that a lot of Shaun Ryder’s music gets played on 23rd August. Happy Mondays have suffered some tragedy recently (Ryder’s brother died; bandmate Bez’s dad also died), so I do hope things improve for them and they can tour far and wide. With nobody quite like him in the music industry, we need to cherish…

THE magnificent Shaun Ryder.

FEATURE: I Want Alchemy: Why I Want to Own an Expensive Purchase or Prized Item Relating to Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

I Want Alchemy

Why I Want to Own an Expensive Purchase or Prized Item Relating to Kate Bush

__________

I wanted to ask a question…

for this Kate Bush feature. If we had a few hundred pounds set aside for a rare Kate Bush piece of memorabilia or item, what would that be? I got to thinking about it after looking at an old lot that advertised some early handwritten lyrics. Included were the original lyrics for The Man with the Child in His Eyes. For anyone who knows anything about Kate Bush, this is something of a treat! She wrote this song at the age of thirteen. That might explain why it is in pink felt tip. I like to think that she was at school at the time and was daydreaming! Her first real love, Steve Blacknell, claims the song was about him. I believe he was the one who may have allowed it to be put back up for auction (as I understand he did have the lyrics in his possession). I would not let them go! It is an incredibly mature song, and I love the fact that The Man with the Child in His Eyes was written in hot pink felt tip, complete with Bush’s putting little circles where the dots should be for the letter ‘I’. I think handwritten lyrics would be very hard to come by now. If you are a fan, it is worth looking on 991.com to see what comes up. I am not sure whether there are many original lyrics circulating. I know Bush has written fan letters that go to auction sites, but there is something more precious about handwritten lyrics. To frame those and have them for the rest of your life would be something amazing! Not that I necessarily have hundreds to spend on a Kate Bush item, but I recently asked about merchandise and offering a new range for fans.

It would be great to have this special memorabilia or piece that you could preserve and show off to people. I know there are coffee table photobooks that retail for quite a lot. They are pretty great. I guess what I mean is something rare. I have written features about Before the Dawn, as the residency is eight next week (the first date of twenty-two was 26th August, 2014). Having a piece of the set or something from that residency would be awesome! I think maybe having a prototype or early design of the poster or programme would be a must-have for fans. That takes my mind to 1979’s The Tour of Life. There must be rare memorabilia from that time, in the form of posters, programmes and that sort. I think there are websites where you can buy these, but I wonder if there is something a little rarer from that time that people might not know about. I wonder how many outfits from that tour are available and have not been discarded. I know that she had quite a few costume changes. To own the outfit that she wore for James and the Cold Gun or Wuthering Heights. The clothing side of things is interesting. Consider all the videos and live performances. It would seem foolhardy to bin all of these, and one suspects Kate Bush herself does not own many of these. I guess costume designers and friends might have these but, as a piece of Kate Bush history, having something she actually wore would be very exclusive. Not in any weird way either. This is not about fetishising or being sexual. It is a connection with an artist who made this ground-breaking tour. You would keep it somewhere specials. I don’t know. I am not sure how much there is in the way of anything more extensive than handwritten lyrics such as journals or Bush’s writing. I feel some demos on cassette would also be must-own.

Bush’s early recordings from 1975 and before would be a prized possession. I know The Cathy Demos were bootlegged and you can hear them on YouTube. I wonder what happened to the tapes that she recorded on at East Wickham Farm as a child and young teen? I can imagine that many are still in the family, but you can only imagine how much has been collected through the years. Album cover designs and early tracklistings would also be really great. I think that rare (non-personal) photos would be treasured by fans. There have been photobooks – including her brother John Carder Bush’s essential KATE: Inside the Rainbow -, but there will be others that have never seen the light of day or the right project. From a personal level, any polaroid or early photo of Bush at her home whilst composing songs for The Kick Inside would be near the top of my list. Though you’d think they’ll be in her hands at the moment. All of this got me thinking what that one item would be. The one that you’d pay good money for and ensure that it never left your possession. I would love anything related to The Tour of Life or Before the Dawn, whether that is reissued merchandise, drawings, private sketches, outfits, or anything Bush has handwritten (stage directions or any drafts or scripts). My favourite album is The Kick Inside, so the very first copy of that would be gold dust I mean the very first copy of the album that was made for vinyl.

Although the handwritten lyrics for The Man with the Child in His Eyes is right near the top of my list, Wuthering Heights is a song that endlessly fascinates me. I am not sure what memorabilia would be available for it. I know the song was recorded quickly, so there aren’t going to be demos or various takes floating on tape. Although Bush wrote the song one summer’s night at her piano whilst looking out of the window, you have to image there are lyrics somewhere. Anything in the way of studio notes or anything handwritten relating to that song. I would pay pretty much anything for that! The fact Wuthering Heights is her debut single makes it very rare and treasured. Something jotted down even from Kate Bush regarding the song. We will never get video or audio of the conversations happening when she recorded and oversaw the mix late into the night. It is great that we have memorabilia and there are auction sites where fans can purchase something lesser-known and hard-to-find. One wonders just what is in the archives, Bush’s collection and somewhere in the world. I think every Kate Bush fan has an idea of what they would want to own if there was something rare available. I would like nothing more than to own a rare sketch, early cover or tour set design or, as I said, handwritten lyrics for a classic song. If your chosen Kate Bush items was available for purchase…

WHAT would you go for?

FEATURE: Spotlight: Camden Cox

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

Camden Cox

 __________

HERE is an artist…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Amelia Walker for 1883 Magazine

that I featured on my blog back in 2017. She has forged a wonderful career and has accrued a loyal and loving fanbase. I wanted to push her music to more people. Someone who I think is going to be a big name, she is an amazing songwriter and D.J. If you have not heard of the wonderful Camden Cox, then do make sure that you check her out. It has been a very busy past few years for the incredible Cox. I think that she will continue to put out music that you just have to listen to. Earlier this month, she released her phenomenal new song, Elevated. I will come to an interview that is based around that. Before that, here is an interview from 2020. VENTS MAGAZINE spoke to Camden Cox about her recent success, in addition to what she had coming up for the rest of that year:

“With the major recognition you got last year – do you feel increased pressure with your new material?

Not at all, if anything it’s just inspired me and my project! I have so much cool stuff in the making so it’s given me a bit of a platform to get my own music out there! I’m feeling proper motivated, especially since I released ‘Healing’ a few weeks ago and it’s doing pretty well, I can’t wait to show more.

What other music do you have coming up over the coming months?

Another exciting collab, plus my next single!! 2020 is looking good!

Any plans to hit the road?

Not immediately, but it’s definitely a dream of mine so watch this space…

What else is happening next in Camden Cox’s world?

You’ll be hearing a lot more of my songwriting! I have co-writes coming out that I’ve done for other artists so I’m really buzzing about that because songwriting is a huge part of what I do, and I’m proud of everything that I’m a part of”.

Camden Cox is a respected and inspiring D.J. As an artist, she may be new to you. I am not sure whether there is an album coming later in the year, but you definitely need to have her on your radar. Someone who I have a lot of respect and admiration for, Camden Cox is one of Britain’s finest voices and talents. I hope that the music and interviews I have dropped in here give you a greater impression and understanding of Cox. Next, I want to draw from 1883 Magazine’s interview with her:

“You have been in the dance world for such a long time but I think it shows a lot about how seriously people take their artistry when they are interested in exploring other areas. From a listener’s perspective, artists who get involved in the production and have input show that they care about their art in all aspects of it.

Yeah, I think, to be honest, I always want to go bigger and better. That’s just always been who I am. I’m always trying to aim higher. I think what made me believe that I could expand my skills that was during lockdown I learned vocal produce and learn and understand all of the ins and outs of vocal production. I never used to record my vocals. I used to just be the singer and the writer and when I added that to my toolkit, I started to think that I could probably lean into a bit of production. Then I thought maybe I could start DJing because it’s all about waveforms and knowing the sequences of the bars, the keys to the songs and the BPMs. It’s like a jigsaw that you can bring together.

How do you think this has changed you as an artist?

I think seeing the crowd’s reactions and what makes them tick was just really inspiring. Although I was concentrating because I didn’t want to make any mistakes, I was keeping an eye on what the crowd was loving and when they moved away and went to get a drink, or when they all started to dance. I got some amazing tips from MistaJam as well because the music that I make is quite euphoric and emotional.

The tips that MistaJam had given me were “you don’t have to stick to the dark, emotional euphoric vibes because people are going to want to party, pick your songs wisely.” He let me have freedom of what I played, but he gave some great words of advice to help the crowd not to switch off. I know that it can differ for each venue and time slots and the vibe of the night, I just thought you know what, this is a great opportunity to just pay a lot of my songs. So the set ended up being 80% of my songs. I wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t given me those tips. I think that’s why I was so so chuffed with how it went down as well. because knowing that it was a lot of my songs that people were dancing to, and there was one that maybe people didn’t realize I’d written in there as well. Seeing people sing along to them was just… Well, it was a massive eye-opener for me that I’ve come a long way. So it’s an amazing feeling.

Do you think now you’ve seen a different perspective of your music that writing will be different for you?

I think it will be. it’s helped me to understand what crowds want and what they want to dance to and when to drop the more emo moments. When to make them cry and when to pick them back up again. I think it just helps you understand the dynamics of dance music.

I’m just curious, how different is it to be able to play your music to people and watch them react to it compared to singing it live and watching them react then? It must be different.

It’s weird, it’s so different because when I’m singing, I’m so lost in my world in my head and thinking about getting the vocals perfect. I don’t have a chance to see what the crowd is even doing. Evert time I come offstage, it’s sad because I don’t even remember half of it because it is so overwhelming. Whereas with this, the concentration and my world in my head are there when I mix a song but then I’ve got two minutes of the song to play out and I can channel it into the room. It’s like being in a different dimension. When I’m DJing, I have two different dimensions and I can nip in and then nip back out whereas with singing, I feel like I’m just in that one dimension and I don’t even see the crowd’s reaction, I get so lost in the moment when I’m singing. My lyrics are quite raw, I think I delve deep into the emotion when I’m singing them. This gave me a whole new perspective where I could be present in the room at the same time”.

Prior to winding things up, I will quote from an interesting House of Solo interview. Elevated is a blinding new track from the sensational Camden Cox. As an interviewee, artist, and D.J., she is so compelling and impressive. I am going to look with interest to see what comes next from her. Everything Camden Cox has a hand in is magnificent:

“Over’ is your first release since signing with RCA, tell us more about the concept and meaning behind the single?

The song is about that crazy transition after you’ve broken up but you’re both still hanging around – unable to let go! Feelings are all mixed up and you’re questioning whether it’s actually the end.

To coincide with the release you’ve also shared the music video, how was the filming process? The video captures the essence of the song.

Ahhh I loved helping out the concept together for the video, I knew exactly what I wanted it to portray, as I basically wanted to recreate the exact moment I went through it. The house we filmed in was so cold! I think my lips may have even turned blue under my lipstick but it was absolutely worth it, the crew smashed it!

MistaJam called you “one of the most prolific songwriters in the dance music world”. What is your creative process when writing music and how do you get into the zone whilst writing?

I always start with melodies, once the producer has laid down some lush chords I just start doing my thing without thinking about it too much. It’s usually the first idea that turns out to be the best! Sometimes I just improvise on the mic and find the vibe, then I add the lyrics to it! I absolutely love it.

What have been some of your favourite tracks to write to date?

Kx5 feat. Hayla – Escape! I’ve been a huge fan of kaskade and deadmaus, heavily influenced by them, so to have written one of their tunes was another pinch me moment! I’ve actually written my next single with Hayla as well, so you can expect some of the same vibes – it’s another of my faves!

I’ve read that you’ve done sessions with Gorgon City, 220 Kid, LP Giobbi, Anabel Englund and Meduza. How was that experience and what did you learn whilst in sessions with them?

All of the above are absolute icons so to be honest, surreal! We all have the same taste in music so it’s a nice process with all of them. I gain confidence working with these kinds of artists because the talent is incredible, so to collaborate is an honour!

Having made some great dance driven music, what are some of your earliest music memories of dance music and what inspired you to pursue making within the dance genre?

My mum promoted drum and bass nights in Lincoln and Birmingham when I was super young so I grew up with her mixtapes! My voice suits heavy beats as well so it was kind of a no brainer for me to fall into dance music. I love anthemic music so that’s all I’ve ever wanted to make!

What are some of your goals for the rest of the year?

I have my first festival booking which is so exciting – so if I can get more of those I’ll be happy! I love performing live so getting back on stage is the main thing, I also can’t wait to release some of this new music I’ve been working on! I’m so ready”.

If you get a chance to see her play or perform near you, then definitely do go! Keep an eye out on her official website and social media channels. Someone who is primed and ready for the major stages and big leagues, Camden Cox is a sensation! If you have not heard her or she is new to you, then make sure that you go and…

SHOW her some love.

___________

Follow Camden Cox

PHOTO CREDIT: Joe Magowan

Official:

https://www.camdencoxofficial.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/camdencoxmusic/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@camdencoxmusic

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/CamdenCoxMusic

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5mNpMP01Co4vXZ3U0fWP3C

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlWZHyhlKHOKwi7N1Vwt4g

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/camdencoxmusic/

FEATURE: The One I Love: R.E.M.’s Document at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The One I Love

R.E.M.’s Document at Thirty-Five

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AN album that took R.E.M. to the mainstream…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Bill Berry, and Michael Stipe in Athens, Georgia, on 8th April, 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin/Getty Images

Document is less mainstream than many of their albums. As articles like this explain, R.E.M. were trying to reflect the reality of the world in 1987, rather than release an album that was radio-friendly or followed their past work. Released on 31st August, 1987, I wanted to mark the upcoming thirty-fifth anniversary of R.E.M.’s fifth studio album. In my mind, one of their very best works, Document is an album that did not necessarily win over all critics. Perhaps less celebrated than Automatic for the People (which is thirty in October), it is a remarkable album that features a few of their best songs. My standout is the single, It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Before coming to a couple of reviews for Document, there is a great article from Udiscovermusic.com from last year that revisits R.E.M.’s fifth studio album. The legends from Athens, Georgia were about to put College Rock to mainstream audiences:

“For R.E.M., 1986 had been a pivotal year. The band’s fourth album, the brash, yet highly accessible Lifes Rich Pageant had rewarded them with their first gold disc, while their extensive Pageantry tour of the US had garnered considerable critical acclaim. As 1987 rolled around, confidence was at a high within the R.E.M. camp. The Athens, Georgia, quartet had already worked up a clutch of promising new songs for what would become their fifth album, Document, and they had completed a successful initial studio session with new producer Scott Litt prior to Christmas ’86.

Litt had already assembled an impressive CV. He began his career as a studio engineer during the late 70s, working on recordings by artists as diverse as Carly Simon and Mott The Hoople’s Ian Hunter. He debuted as a producer in 1982 with The dB’s Repercussion album, a record R.E.M. was already familiar with, having shared stages with the band. In fact, the two groups’ histories would continue to intertwine when The dB’s co-frontman, Peter Holsapple, later joined R.E.M. as their fifth member on the Green tour and then played on Out Of Time.

R.E.M. and Litt began their fruitful, decade-long partnership with the successful recording of the quirky “Romance.” Though intended for the soundtrack of the film Made In Heaven, the song also later featured on the rarities compilation Eponymous. Litt reconvened with the band at their regular demo studio – John Keane in Athens – for an extensive demo session, before R.E.M. took a break and briefly embarked on extracurricular activities, including some studio contributions to Warren Zevon’s Sentimental Hygiene album.

The band was back in the harness with their new producer at the end of March, with all of April ’87 given over to the recording of Document at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Several of the songs had already been worked up onstage, and the band’s keen pre-production work paid dividends: for Document, R.E.M and Scott Litt captured the sound of a rock band at the absolute top of their game, capable of taking on all comers.

The accessibility that seeped from Lifes Rich Pageant’s every pore was again apparent, but this time around the band had taken things up a gear. Indeed, the R.E.M. of Document was a sinewy, muscular rock beast, primed and ready to dominate the airwaves. Peter Buck’s distinctive jangle and chime were still apparent on “Disturbance At The Heron House” and “Welcome To The Occupation,” but, for the most part, his guitar playing took on a sharp, steely quality. Accordingly, he turned in some of his most memorable recorded performances: launching “Finest Worksong” with urgent, metallic riffs; embroidering the swampy funk of “Lightnin’ Hopkins” with Andy Gill-esque tension and atonality; and punctuating the band’s supercharged cover of Wire’s “Strange” with a neat, Nuggets-style psych-pop solo.

Meanwhile, the newfound confidence and vocal clarity Michael Stipe proffered on Lifes Rich Pageant continued apace, and on Document he summoned up a clutch of startling performances: bending and twisting his voice like an old time preacher around “Lightnin’ Hopkins” and rattling off a rapid-fire alternate history of the 20th Century on the exhilarating “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

Lyrically, the socio-political concerns Stipe addressed on Lifes Rich Pageant again loomed large. Featuring barbed observations such as “Listen to the Congress where we propagate confusion/Primitive and wild, fire on the hemisphere below,” “Welcome To The Occupation” was widely reputed to be a commentary on American intervention in South America. The deceptively infectious “Exhuming McCarthy” also delved into political hypocrisy, drawing a parallel between the communist-baiting of the Joe McCarthy era of 50s American politics and the recent Iran-Contra affair during which senior politicians under President Ronald Reagan had secretly facilitated the sales of arms to Iran: a country which was then under an arms embargo.

Sonically, Document also afforded the band the chance to further broaden their palette. Special guest, Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, added his distinctive saxophone skills to “Fireplace,” while lap steel and dulcimer colored the hypnotic, raga-like “King Of Birds.” From their earliest days recording Murmur with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, R.E.M. had always relished the opportunity to try out different sounds and textures – and experimental approach that would continue through Green and Out Of Time, wherein the band members often swapped instruments and fashioned new songs from riffs and melodies worked up on acoustic instruments such as mandolins and accordions”.

Maybe some R.E.M. fans have not heard Document. I would advise them to ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary in 1987. Before rounding off, I want to highlight a couple of positive reviews for an amazing album. Pitchfork reviewed Document back in 2012:

“Released in September 1987, R.E.M.'s fifth album, Document, contained something no one ever expected to hear from the Athens band. It wasn't the Wire cover or Steve Berlin's saxophone skronking through "Fireplace". It wasn't Michael Stipe singing what purported to be a love song, which he had sworn at one point never to do. The record packed an even bigger surprise: an actual radio hit. Before the year was over, "The One I Love" had peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard singles chart, and this was back when that meant something. It was R.E.M.'s first foray into a mainstream crowded with hair metal bands, mall-pop acts, and AOR interchangeables. Few of these acts would survive the decade, but this unlikely smash signaled only the start of the group's prolonged ascent.

How did this Southern rock band, who had more in common with Wire than with then-popular Peach Staters Georgia Satellites, find a spot in the public consciousness alongside U2, Guns N' Roses, and George Michael, who all more or less owned 1987? R.E.M. cultivated an air of mystery that extended from their music (the obscure lyrics, the refusal to lip sync in videos) to the packaging (mismatched tracklists, head-scratching instructions to "File Under Fire").

And "The One I Love" was an odd choice for a hit: Peter Buck's guitar possesses a rich, strange grain that charges the song with vague menace, especially when he unspools that psych-rock solo, and the mosaic hook itself is split between Stipe shouting "Fire!" in an empty theater and Mike Mills adding a descending countermelody. Lyrically, the song is one contradiction twisting into another: "This one goes out to the one I love/ A simple prop to occupy my time." Twenty-five years later, it remains nearly impossible to parse the implications of that particular couplet; on the other hand, 25 years later, it's still worth trying, as the latest in Capitol Records' reissue series proves.

If 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction was their most self-consciously Southern record to date and 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant their most overtly political, Document maintained both their regional self-definition as well as their indirect social engagement, even going so far as to sample Joseph Welch reprimanding Joseph McCarthy. ("At long last, have you left no sense of decency?") The album is a prolonged meditation on the idea of labor, opening with "Finest Worksong" before teasing out the implications on "Welcome to the Occupation". The defiantly chipper "Exhuming McCarthy" opens with the clack of Stipe's typewriter, connecting the work of the band with that of the journalist, and even "Fireplace" is less about the dance party than the preparations for it: "Hang up your chairs to better sweep, clear the floor to dance," Stipe sings, twisting his lines with each repetition until the entire building has been dismantled in an act of constructive destruction”.

I want to end with the BBC’s take on Document. Often ranked alongside R.E.M.’s best albums, I think that it sound relevant to this day. Reaching number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, Document is one of the best albums of the 1980s. If they hit a peak in the early-1990s, I think that albums like Document are hugely important because of the firepower, melodies and incredible performances from Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe:

“Back in 1987 R.E.M. were the darlings of college radio and their quirky alternative act had not yet registered on the global stage.

Document was to change all that by being so bloody marvellous that even the mainstream listening audience took the Athens, Georgia-based four-piece to their hearts and propelled them on the road to international superstardom.

Containing their first top 10 hit in the States, The One I Love, and also providing the band with their first platinum album, Document showcases a band at the top of their game and hints at more stunning work still to come.

Featuring Michael Stipe’s increasingly political lyrics and distinctive vocals, combined with Peter Buck's elegantly twisted guitar lines and the superb rhythm section of Mike Mills and Bill Berry, Document doesn’t lose a trick and is a complete rock album from start to finish.

The second single off the album, It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine), cracks along at a scintillating pace and, whilst it didn’t make a big impression on the mainstream charts, is a firm favourite with fans at live shows.

R.E.M. display a wonderful versatility in their songwriting here, and are not content to pen tracks aimed simply for radio play. Other highlights include the wonderfully feedback laden intro to Oddfellows Local 151, the catchy Exhuming McCarthy and Finest Worksong which gives us the cue that this is definitely their finest hour”.

Thirty-five on 31st August, it is one of two R.E.M. albums – the other being Automatic for the People – that have big anniversaries this year. Document is a fantastic album with some of R.E.M.’s deepest and most important material. If you have not spun the record in a while, go and check out the wonderful Document. There is no denying that this phenomenal work is…

ONE of the very best.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God): Hounds of Love’s Remarkable Catalyst

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and Michael (Misha) Hervieu 

Hounds of Love’s Remarkable Catalyst

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I did say…

that I wasn’t going to feature Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) before but, as I just got the latest copy of MOJO, I have been inspired by their Kate Bush spread. Of course, as I have said a few times, we are talking about Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) again because it was used in Stranger Things. I will drop in the moment in featured, but I wanted to look at other aspects of the song. I didn’t think of this before, but this track was a catalyst in many ways. Hounds of Love’s best-known song, it was released as the first single on 5th August, 1985. With its B-side, Under the Ivy, this was a remarkably strong start to the album! Bush clearly had a lot of confidence in the song, not only to put it out as the introduction single for Hounds of Love. The song also opens the album. Although it wasn’t the very first thing that she wrote for Hounds of Love, I do think it opened the door and made the rest of the writing process flow more naturally. MOJO made an observation about the song that I want to mention. Before that, and in case you don’t know the story behind Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), then here is some information and detail:

“'Running Up That Hill' was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I'd always hoped that would be the way. It's very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they're so concerned that things could go wrong - they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It's really saying if there's a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they'd understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren't meant to hurt, that they weren't meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we'd understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985)

It seems that the more you get to know a person, the greater the scope there is for misunderstanding. Sometimes you can hurt somebody purely accidentally or be afraid to tell them something because you think they might be hurt when really they'll understand. So what that song is about is making a deal with God to let two people swap place so they'll be able to see things from one another's perspective. (Mike Nicholls, 'The Girl Who Reached Wuthering Heights'. The London Times, 27 August 1985)”.

Moving out of London and setting up operations outside of Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1983, Bush constructed a songwriting room centred around her piano, her Fairlight CMI and an 8-track recorder. She began building a studio at East Wickham Farm (her family home) in 1983, and she moved operations there at the start of 1984. This was her family home where her parents lived, so it provided that security, peace, and inspiration. Demoing a song first called A Deal with God – it was later changed to Running Up That Hill as to not offend conservative countries and territories because of potential blasphemy -, the band arrived to add their parts. Bush’s brother, Paddy, provided some wonderful and essential balalaika part; Del Palmer (one of her engineerd and boyfriend) delivered a pulsating bassline, whilst Alan Murphy’s guitar and drummer Stuart Elliott percussion completed the cocktail. By all accounts, the recording of the song sounded like a lot of fun. I think the mood, the combination of the band and the layers of the song really did provide push and fuel for Kate Bush. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is a song that has so many twists and different sounds. In terms of the vocals, there is this intoxicating choir call (“Yeah, yeah yo…”) alongside a myriad of emotions.  As MOJO noted, there is an urgency to the delivery of “Come on darling, let’s exchange the experience!”. It is a conversational song whose composition is just as multifarious, nuanced and changing.

It is small wonder the song has endured and hits people all these decades later. Bush’s vocals and lyrics are superb and relate. You can understand what she is saying and why. With such a fascinating and textured vocal, complete with a composition that matches the scale, wonder, and changes the song throws up, it is all topped off with her exceptional production skill and instinct. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) did provide this catalyst. A clear winner of a song, Bush did say later that the album process steadily rolled after that. It is a shame there was trouble regarding the title. In the past, Bush may have fought her corner to keep the title A Deal with God. Maybe feeling this was a battle she could afford to lose, she compromised and changed it to Running Up That Hill – adding A Deal with God in parenthesis. The rest, I guess, is history! Before finishing off, is an accompanying interview and recollection from the person who danced with Kate Bush in the video for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Misha (then Michael) Hervieu was the lucky sole who will go down in Kate Bush history. When it came to videos, Bush felt that they did a disservice to dance. Flashy and haphazard images were not what she wanted to do. From Wuthering Heights’ video (her debut single) onward, Bush wanted to bring dance and movement into her work. In 1985, Hervieu was working full-time at  West End circus spectacle, Barnum. Arriving for an audition at the London dance studio, Pineapple, she didn’t know it was for a Kate Bush song at first. “She was hiding a bit”, she recalled to MOJO.

I love the fact that there was this sense of the low-key. Hervieu recalls how there were some issues. At 5”10 – with Bush being more petite -, the choreography meant they didn’t instantly slot in rhythm. Even so, Hervieu noted how Bush could wrap around her like a snake; she could lift Bush high up. Choreographer Diane Gray provided instructions regarding movement and expression. It was a long process more akin to a film than a traditional video. The rehearsals at Bush’s home with arduous and intense. The part where they rugby tackle one another caused Bush to bruise or crack a rib. Hervieu was told to go for it and, complying, it did result in a bit of trouble for Bush! Hervieu now modestly claims how she was “just the dancer” but, as part of a historic and hugely important song, she should be very proud! Now, the song has taken on new life and is seen as this history-making work. In a 2005 MOJO interview, Bush was asked by Tom Doyle – who wrote the new feature about Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – whether she consciously wrote more melodic and hooky songs following the more experimental and less commercial The Dreaming (1982). Bush did admit there was an element of that. It definitely paid off! The first of four hits singles from Hounds of Love – the others being Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love and The Big Sky -, this year found Bush break Guinness world records: the oldest female artist to reach number one (aged sixty-three); the longest time for a track to reach the top spot (thirty-seven years); the biggest gap between numbers ones (1978’s Wuthering Heights was her first). Think back to 1983 when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) – just called A Deal with God – was in its embryonic form. It kickstarted Kate Bush’s acclaimed and adored fifth studio album. I wonder whether, in 1983 in that rural home near Sevenoaks and back at her family home in 1984, she knew that this wonderful song would still be discussed and storming the charts…

ALL these years later.

FEATURE: Watching Them Without Her: Merchandise, Streaming and Footage: Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Eight

FEATURE:

 

 

Watching Them Without Her

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

Merchandise, Streaming and Footage: Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Eight

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THIS is the second feature…

PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

I am writing about Kate Bush’s live residency, Before the Dawn. The first night at the Eventim Apollo was on 26th August, 2014. I want to mark eight years since Bush came back to the big stage after twenty-five years away. If she experienced nerves every night, audiences and critics did not detect that. By every account, this was a masterful artist delivering a theatrical and immersive experience that will stay with people forever. I have a few questions and points to make regarding Before the Dawn. Before that and, if you do not know about Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, here is some information from Wikipedia:

“Before the Dawn was a concert residency by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush in 2014 at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The residency consisted of 22 dates; it was Bush's first series of live shows since The Tour of Life 1979, which finished with three performances at the same venue. A live recording of the same name was released in physical and digital formats in November 2016.

On 21 March 2014, Bush announced via her website her plans to perform live. Pre-sale tickets were on sale for fans who had signed up to her website and an additional seven dates were added to the original 15, due to the high demand. Tickets were on sale to the general public on 28 March and were sold out within 15 minutes.

With the program, Bush won the Editor's Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards;[3] and was subsequently nominated for two Q Awards in 2014: Best Act in the World Today[4] and Best Live Act but did not win either award.

Before the Dawn was presented as a multi-media performance involving standard rock music performance, dancers, puppets, shadows, maskwork, conceptual staging, 3D animation and an illusionist. Bush spent three days in a flotation tank for filmed scenes that were played during the performance, and featured dialogue written by novelist David Mitchell. Also involved with the production were Adrian Noble, former artistic director and chief executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company, costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel, lighting designer Mark Henderson and Italian Shadows Theatre company Controluce Teatro d'Ombre. The illusionist was Paul Kieve, the puppeteer Basil Twist, the movement director Sian Williams and the designer Dick Bird. The video and projection design was by Jon Driscoll”.

The reaction to Kate Bush bringing Before the Dawn to the people was amazing. I remember hearing the news and the sort of electricity there was. I love the live album of the residency. It is almost like you are there when you listen to it! Bush spent a lot of time mixing and producing the album. It is available on vinyl and, if you can find a copy then go and get it. This is what Pitchfork observed in their review:

“Live albums are meant to capture performers at their rawest and least inhibited, which doesn’t really apply to Before the Dawn. Bush is a noted perfectionist best known for her synthesizer experiments and love of obscure Bulgarian choirs, but her recent work has skewed towards traditional setups that reunite her with the prog community that fostered her early career. With marks to hit and tableaux to paint, the 2014 shows were more War of the Worlds (or an extension of 2011’s Director’s Cut) than Live at Leeds. But never mind balls-out revamps of Bush’s best known songs; with the exception of tracks from Hounds of Love, none of the rest of the setlist had ever been done live—not even on TV, which became Bush’s primary stage after she initially retired from touring. These songs weren’t written to be performed, but internalized. Occupying Bush’s imagination for an hour, and letting it fuse with your own, formed the entirety of the experience. Hearing this aspic-preserved material come to life feels like going to sleep and waking up decades later to see how the world has changed.

“Jig of Life” is the midpoint of Before the Dawn, and its crux. It forms the part in “The Ninth Wave” where Bush’s character is exhausted of fighting against drowning, and decides to succumb to death. A vision of her future self appears, and convinces her to stay alive. “Now is the place where the crossroads meet,” she chants, just as her (then) 56-year-old voice channels her 27-year-old one. Despite her alleged taste for burning one, Bush’s voice has gained in power rather than faded with age. It’s deeper now, and some of the songs’ keys shift to match, but it’s alive and incalculably moving, still capable of agile whoops and tender eroticism, and possesses a newfound authority. When she roars lustily through opener “Lily” and its declaration that “life has blown a great big hole through me,” she sets up the stakes of Before the Dawn’s quest for peace. In Act One, she’s running from the prospect of love on “Hounds of Love” and “Never Be Mine,” and from fame on “King of the Mountain,” where she searches for Elvis with sensual anticipation. She asks for Joan of Arc’s protection on “Joanni,” matching the French visionary’s fearlessness with her own funky diva roar, and sounds as if she could raze the world as she looks down from “Top of the City.”

 Rather than deliver a copper-bottomed greatest hits set, Bush reckons with her legacy through what might initially seem like an obscure choice of material. Both Acts Two and Three take place in transcendent thresholds: “The Ninth Wave”’s drowning woman is beset by anxiety and untold pressures, with no idea of where to turn, mirroring the limbo that Bush experienced after 1982’s The Dreaming. That suite’s last song, the cheery “The Morning Fog,” transitions into Aerial’s “Prelude,” all beatific bird call and dawn-light piano. The euphoric, tender “A Sky of Honey” is meant to represent a perfect day from start to finish, filled with family and beautiful imperfections. “Somewhere in Between” finds them atop “the highest hill,” looking out onto a stilling view, and Bush’s eerie jazz ensemble anticipates the liminal peace of Bowie’s Blackstar. “Not one of us would dare to break the silence,” she sings. “Oh how we have longed for something that would make us feel so… somewhere in between.”

Purgatory has become heaven, and in the narrative Bush constructs through her setlist, “A Sky of Honey” represents the grown-up, domestic happiness that staves off the youthful fears explored on Hounds of Love. For her final song, she closes with a rendition of “Cloudbusting,” a song about living with the memory of a forbidden love, which is even more glorious for all the hope that it’s accumulated in the past 30-odd years. Bush’s recent life as a “reclusive” mother is often used to undermine her, to “prove” she was the kook that sexist critics had pegged her as all along. These performances and this record are a generous reveal of why she’s chosen to retreat, where Bush shows she won’t disturb her hard-won peace to sustain the myth of the troubled artistic genius. Between the dangerous waters of “The Ninth Wave” and the celestial heavens of “A Sky of Honey,” Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

At the moment, you can get a copy, but it is quite expensive. I know there four vinyl albums in there to cover everything but, even if the price can be knocked down to £50 or lower, it would make it more affordable and accessible to fans and those new to Kate Bush. You can stream Before the Dawn on Apple Music. I have asked whether it will come to Spotify or Amazon. I guess Bush wants people to buy the album if they are streaming so, with Apple Music, you can only preview songs for free – there is that possibility in Spotify to stream it all with no charge. I would love to see, if humanly possible, a cassette release of the live album. Maybe it would need to be on four cassettes, but even a triple cassette release would be great. This sort of brings me to merchandise. You can get stuff on eBay, and there is a lot of great merchandise from Before the Dawn. It occurs that there must be programmes, merchandise or other bits either unsold or in new condition. For those people (like myself) who did not see one of the twenty-two dates, it would be wonderful to get merchandise. I would love a programme and poster at a reasonable price. Maybe they could be reprinted. In a couple of years, Before the Dawn turns ten. It is as important as any Kate Bush album. It begs the wider question when we might get merchandise from Kate Bush related to her albums – either in the form of posters or T-shirts and other things like that. Rather than being overly commercial or Bush milking her work, there is a whole new generation of fans who would snap up merchandise. This is true of anything relates to Before the Dawn.

I want to finish, before I get to part of a review for Before the Dawn, to thinking about footage. There was a camera in the venue to film it (though only one or two nights I think). Bush has that footage, but she wanted people to experience the album and not be distracted by a DVD. I think, as it was professionally filmed, there is this demand. I can see what she means though. If you were there, it was a unique experience. It seems like a pale comparison trying to experience the show through your screens. If she does not release the whole performance, maybe official videos would be an idea. Releasing a few tracks on her official YouTube channel would be a treat for fans. I also wonder whether there was any behind the scenes footage of The KT Fellowship rehearsing. Again, if it was a small clip, having some footage from Before the Dawn would be really interesting. It as this special and incredible event that should be treasured. There were many who did not get a chance to see her perform. I am going to round off with a bit of the review from The Guardian:

“Over the course of nearly three hours, Kate Bush's first gig for 35 years variously features dancers in lifejackets attacking the stage with axes and chainsaws; a giant machine that hovers above the auditorium, belching out dry ice and shining spotlights on the audience; giant paper aeroplanes; a surprisingly lengthy rumination on sausages, vast billowing sheets manipulated to represent waves, Bush's 16-year-old son Bertie - clad as a 19th-century artist – telling a wooden mannequin to "piss off" and the singer herself being borne through the audience by dancers clad in costumes based on fish skeletons.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that Before the Dawn is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable 12 months ago.

There have been a lot of improbable returns to the stage by mythic artists over the last few years, from Led Zeppelin to Leonard Cohen, but at least the crowd who bought tickets to see them knew roughly what songs to expect. Tonight, almost uniquely in rock history, the vast majority of the audience has virtually no idea what's going to happen before it does.

Backed by a band of musicians capable of navigating the endless twists and turns of her songwriting – from funk to folk to pastoral prog rock - the performances of Running Up That Hill and King of the Mountain sound almost identical to their recorded versions - but letting rip during a version of Top of the City, she sounds flatly incredible.

You suspect that even if she hadn't, the audience would have lapped it up. Audibly delighted to be in the same room as her, they spend the first part of the show clapping everything she does: no gesture is too insignificant to warrant a round of applause. It would be cloying, but for the fact that Bush genuinely gives them something to cheer about.

For someone who's spent the vast majority of her career shunning the stage, she's a hugely engaging live performer, confident enough to shun the hits that made her famous in the first place: she plays nothing from her first four albums.

The staging might look excessive on paper, but onstage it works to astonishing effect, bolstering rather than overwhelming the emotional impact of the songs. The Ninth Wave is disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does. As each scene bleeds into another, they seem genuinely rapt: at the show's interval, people look a little stunned. A Sky of Honey is less obviously dramatic – nothing much happens over the course of its nine tracks – but the live performance underlines how beautiful the actual music is.

Already widely acclaimed as the most influential and respected British female artist of the past 40 years, shrouded in the kind of endlessly intriguing mystique that is almost impossible to conjure in an internet age, Bush theoretically had a lot to lose by returning to the stage. Clearly, given how tightly she has controlled her own career since the early 80s, she would only have bothered because she felt she had something spectacular to offer. She was right: Before The Dawn is another remarkable achievement”.

It may be unlikely a DVD of Before the Dawn will come about but, in terms of lowering the vinyl price, bringing it to cassette, and making it accessible on streaming, that would put it in new ears and minds. Merchandise from the residency will be in demand now. You can get some, but it is pretty expensive. Also, thinking about how amazing the twenty-two shows were, maybe a few clips from Before the Dawn would be a compromise between what we have now and releasing a full concert to DVD. For fans like me, it would be awesome to…

RELIVE some of that wonder and genius.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Seventy-Four: Janis Joplin

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

IN THIS PHOTO: Janis Joplin in 1967/PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Marshall

Part Seventy-Four: Janis Joplin

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ONE of the most influential and successful…

female Rock artists of her era, I wanted to include the magnificent Janis Joplin in this feature. With one of the rawest and most powerful voices ever, she has inspired many other artists. In spite of the fact that she died in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven, her legacy remains strong. I am going to come to a playlist of songs from artists who are either influenced by Joplin or they have been compared with her – thus, subconsciously, they have still been inspired by her. Prior to coming to that, AllMusic provide a biography about the amazing and legendary Janis Joplin:

“As well as being one of the finest rock singers of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was also a great blues singer, making her material her own with her wailing, raspy, supercharged emotional delivery. First rising to stardom as the frontwoman for San Francisco psychedelic band Big Brother & the Holding Company, she left the group in the late '60s for a brief and uneven (though commercially successful) career as a solo artist. Although she wasn't always supplied with the best material or most sympathetic musicians, her best recordings, with both Big Brother and on her own, are some of the most exciting performances of the era. She also did much to redefine the role of women in rock with her assertive, sexually forthright persona and raunchy, electrifying on-stage presence.

Joplin was raised in the small town of Port Arthur, Texas, and much of her subsequent personal difficulties and unhappiness have been attributed to her inability to fit in with the expectations of the conservative community. She'd been singing blues and folk music since her teens, playing on occasion with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen in the '60s. There are a few live pre-Big Brother recordings (not issued until after her death), reflecting the inspiration of early blues singers like Bessie Smith, that demonstrate she was well on her way to developing a personal style before hooking up with the band. She had already been to California before moving there permanently in 1966, when she joined the struggling San Francisco psychedelic group Big Brother & the Holding Company. Although their loose, occasionally sloppy brand of bluesy psychedelia had some charm, there can be no doubt that Joplin -- who initially didn't even sing lead on all of the material -- was primarily responsible for lifting them out of the ranks of the ordinary. She made them a hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where her stunning version of "Ball and Chain" (perhaps her very best performance) was captured on film. After a debut on the Mainstream label, Big Brother signed a management deal with Albert Grossman and moved to Columbia. Their second album, Cheap Thrills, topped the charts in 1968, but Joplin left the band shortly afterward, enticed by the prospects of stardom as a solo act.

Joplin's first album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, was recorded with the Kozmic Blues Band, a unit that included horns and retained just one of the musicians that had played with her in Big Brother (guitarist Sam Andrew). Although it was a hit, it wasn't her best work; the new group, though more polished musically, weren't the sympathetic accompanists that Big Brother were, purveying a soul-rock groove that could sound forced. That's not to say the album was totally unsuccessful, boasting one of her signature tunes in "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."

For years, Joplin's life had been a roller coaster of drug addiction, alcoholism, and volatile personal relationships, documented in several biographies. Musically, however, things were on the upswing shortly before her death, as she assembled a better, more versatile backing outfit, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, for her final album Pearl (ably produced by Paul Rothchild). Pearl was solid evidence of her growth into a mature, diverse stylist who could handle blues, soul, and folk-rock. "Mercedes Benz," "Get It While You Can," and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" are some of her very best tracks. Tragically, she died before the album's release, overdosing on heroin in a Hollywood hotel room in October 1970. "Me and Bobby McGee" became a posthumous number one single in 1971, and thus the song with which she is most frequently identified”.

To show how inspiring Janis Joplin is, I am finishing with a playlist of tracks from artists who definitely follow in her footsteps. A voice and artist who will never be equalled or replicated, she was a one-of-a-kind sensation. If you have not heard her two solo albums and two with Big Brother and the Holding Company, then I would advise you to…

CHECK them out.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Shygirl

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Shygirl

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AS she…

releases her debut album, Nymph, next month, I wanted to include Shygirl in this Spotlight feature. The London-based artist is hard to definer and categorise. I have heard some call her a Grime artist; others feel she is more of a Pop artist – albeit one that is more experimental. I will come to that album at the end of this feature. I want to bring in a selection of interviews from through the years that give us more depth and story about Shygirl. Although she has been on the scene for a few years now, this is a year when she will become known to a wider audience. In 2018, COEVAL profiled and spoke with the incredible Shygirl:

“South East London born and raised, Shygirl (or Blane Muise to the government) is a 25-year-old musician and DJ. She’s not too different to mere mortals, - she’s been avidly collecting precious stones and crystals since she was 10 years old, and her day in 3 words – ‘Uber Uber everywhere.’

But Shygirl is best known for her spygirl antics – she is a Jekyll and Hyde. With her trusty fan in hand, she is allusive. But she isn’t cocky or in-your-face, she’s the intentional dark horse because as she puts it, ‘I like to be underestimated.’

A self-proclaimed mashup of garage, grime and general ´club vibes', Shygirl’s sound has definitely provided many of London’s (and my own) club moments. But if PDA is anything to go by - what is a club night and what is a genre ? Shygirl is not defined by any normative label - she is shy, she is rude, she is bossy, she is herself an ‘acquired taste’ and works by no one else's standard.

Her music is the hard-core energy fuelled rollercoaster that leaves you reeling with joy and rage – you want to let loose but her relatable lyrics trigger you to bitch. It’s a wonderfully bitter experience where Shygirl’s ‘pep talks’ become the power anthems we all need to ‘gas ourselves up’. Here, she shares an exclusive editorial shot with friends in her ‘playtime’ and explains the scenarios behind her music - and me being her ‘good time gal’ got to listen to a sneaky bit of her debut EP, Cruel Practice.

Who is Shygirl?

Aspects of my personality but she definitely has a life of her own.

And is Shygirl really shy? Or does she just not like small talk?

She’s not down for small talk, time is precious.

What genre would you say you fit into, or do you even fit anywhere?

It’s more of an amalgamation of genres born in the club but not tied completely to it.

Who are your long-time musical influences?

Moloko, Faithless, Massive Attack are the old school ones but also a lot of grime and UK drill.

Who are you currently obsessed with?

Currently obsessed with this guy Loski and his song mummy’s kitchen, I play it every day.

So, when did Shygirl's magical journey/ spiral start?

I think maybe two years ago the beginnings of Shy started to appear when I started to try some stuff with Sega Bodega but really came through with the first single, ‘Want More’”.

I have been following Shygirl a short time, and it has been interesting reading back at older interviews and checking out her earlier music. An artist who has definitely grown since 2018 (and before), she is going to continue to grow and take her music to the masses. I think Nymph will take her t new heights. Last year, Rolling Stone spoke with Shygirl. It was at a time when things were starting to open up during the pandemic:

“As the world re-opens and live music and nightlife return, you can sense a significant shift of energy in the air. A fluctuation in the cultural mood. More people are returning to the summer parties and club nights that once cemented us in the present moment and reified our participation in living amongst other people. The artist and DJ Shygirl has emerged as the soundtrack to the moment. The 28-year-old musician has seen a steady rise in the U.K. Grime and queer club scenes and is known for her unique synthesis of the two. At one moment, she’s rapping over industrial house beats and at another, she’s floating on internet-y pop beats (SOPHIE was a prominent collaborator of hers, alongside Sega Bodega and Arca). Shygirl utilizes her deep vibrato and smutty lyricism to generate energy that’s raunchy and infectious. Naturally, her sharp and danceable sound has found an audience on Tiktok, where it’s rising in popularity in the same way that nightlife — and specifically, the underground club world — is experiencing its own kind of renaissance.

Shygirl’s upcoming live experience, Blu, is a short film that she conceived of and directed. It uses tracks from her critically-acclaimed 2020 EP Alias, as well as the debut of a new single, “BDE,” featuring the rapper Slowthai. Shygirl’s sound is a gift to our inner hot girls this summer, something we can all get down to in a time that we should use to celebrate being alive.

Shygirl talked to Rolling Stone about her inspirations, defying genre, the power of the dancefloor, and being a woman who doesn’t shy away from knowing what she wants.

PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Ellis 

How has the club scene influenced your approach to making music?

I’d been working at a modeling agency for three years, and I started DJing whilst I was there. I had links to fashion parties. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Like, I literally just started learning on the job. It was fun. In that respect, it influenced me, because the way I approach music is [similar to DJing] in terms of how I’m selecting sounds and how the development of the track goes like I’m mixing within the track. When I first started making music, I didn’t have any technical terms. I was talking about energies and I was referencing soundtracks or beats. I’m still painting this picture of the club that I imagined long before I ever started being in them, you know? It’s what we chase when we go to the club, this idea I had when I was listening to club music when I was 12 or 13. You imagine this space where you’re free to completely be in tune with your body, the music, and just lose yourself. That is what I’m still trying to bring forth.

Maybe more important is my core friendship group [that I’ve met] in that club space. We’ll always have that connection of finding each other in that space, especially when you’re in the queer community. I sometimes think of the queer community as this elite group who managed to forge themselves through the flames of the club, you know? Something where people often associate loose morals and fast friends, but we’ve actually found family.

Have you met a lot of the producers through that scene, or more through the internet and social media?

I’m a really sociable person. [When I was still at] uni, I was interning at this design agency as a creative consultant, and one of the things we were doing was rebranding club entities. So through that, I wrote a blog and I ended up interviewing Sega Bodega at this gig, and then we just became friends. We’ve [now] been friends for over 10… Oh, I don’t even know. It feels like a long, long time, through our formative years and adulthood. When I first met him I was finding my feet. I’d just started clubbing and doing things by myself. I think I’d said to myself that year, “I just want to meet people.” And I met so many people when I was in that mood, you know? I would always say yes to things. That’s before I was making music. And then, in 2016 when I did start making music, those same friends were like, “Okay, do you wanna try something out? Like, call us.”

When I first started making music I felt so lucky to be around some people like SOPHIE, who I’d known for a long time; and then to gain their respect [in music], which is something I never thought I would have. I think sometimes you’re probably more self-conscious when you’re in proximity to so many talented people. I thought I was encroaching on their space. They didn’t [think that], and it’s still a constant surprise to me when someone reaches out, new or old, and respects what I’m doing.

How has your mindset changed with making music since when you first started in 2016?

I have more ambition for things, sonically. Once you start doing anything you’re constantly testing your limitations and boundaries. The edges start to form of what you think you can or can’t do, and what you haven’t done yet, and what you want to do more of. When I first started making music I felt so reactionary, like I was treading the shallow end of this huge pool that was available to me. Especially with Alias, it felt way more directional. I had this feeling that I was following. With songs like “Slime,” where I was working with Sega and SOPHIE, at one point everyone was saying,”That’s done, sounds good,” and I was like, “It’s not done.” I know what I’m trying to make. I can’t explain it, but I know what I’m trying to do, you know? I had an inkling of it in the first EP, with “Asher Wolf”. I had to really push Sega to work on it ’cause he was like, “I don’t think this is good,” and I was like, “No, I know what it needs. It should sound like this”.

Before coming to a more recent interview, there is another from 2021 that I was to highlight. Shygirl has made a name for herself here in the U.K., but her music has also reached American audiences. She is someone who is primed for long-term success. Pitchfork sat down with the amazing Shygirl last August:

“Growing up, her parents encouraged matching a wide-eyed approach to the world with pragmatic, stability-first ambition: “They really encouraged me to be studious,” Shygirl explains. “They said, ‘Go get a job that has holiday pay and sick pay.’ I was such a goody-goody. I listened to my parents, because I really respect them. Then I was like, ‘Okay. Now I’m going to do some shit for myself.’” In her early 20s, after leaving home to study practical photography at university, she bloomed, finding asylum in London’s expansive creative community. She worked at a modeling agency during the day, DJed at night, and built a network of like-minded friends. Her music career was a happy accident borne of those friendships. “When people take in the work that I’m making, I didn’t just sit in my room alone and make all that stuff,” she says. “It takes a village. It really does.”

When her pal, the producer Sega Bodega, asked her to hop on a track in 2016, she gave it a go. The result, a trippy industrial banger aptly called “Want More,” was spectacular. In a tone equally disaffected and at ease, she narrates her terms for a sexual encounter: “You wanna go slow, I ain’t into it; you wanna talk shit, I ain’t into it; you want more, I ain’t into it.” Through that expression of desire and control, Shygirl had found her voice, and herself. But where her articulation of the corporeal brought her both delight and existential peace, others saw holy terror. “In my everyday life, me and my friends kiki about sex all the time and we’re healthier for it—because if something fucked does happen, we’re talking about that as well,” she says. “A lot of my process has been writing about stuff that wasn’t very fun for me and giving it a new context, something that is touched by bliss or happiness.”

Over the next few years, Shygirl continued to experiment, racking up releases with Sega and a couple of other friend-collaborators, with whom she co-founded the label and collective NUXXE. Her 2018 debut Cruel Practice, a five-track EP that excavates the contradictory grit and gloss of London youth culture, yielded global attention. When she pranced all over the Sega-produced 2019 single “UCKERS,” cooly challenging a partner to be “the one to turn [her] out,” Shygirl arguably broke through. Her music had already been synced in Fenty ads and runway shows, but soon there were gigs in Asia, link-ups with Arca, and a slot alongside Kendall Jenner and FKA twigs in a Burberry campaign—all inroads to a uniquely sovereign career.

You have a background in creative agency work. Has that helped you navigate the music world?

For the most part, creative stuff is still difficult in this industry. There’s a lot of misogyny. I went on a [Shygirl] video shoot the other day. It was a three-day shoot that I was directing. I tend to take co-direction credits or work with another director because I don’t really like to work with the film crews because a lot of them are hella misogynistic. They don’t listen to female directors anyway, let alone someone wearing two hats as the artist and the director.

But this one in particular, I was like, “If I work with another director, that’s kind of rude because right now I just don’t have the space for someone else’s ideas.” We were in pre-production [for months]. I felt like we had a really, really good team. And then on the day, the [director of photography] was so misogynistic, not listening to anything. Because I’m in the edit process now, I’m seeing where that attitude affected the shots. And one of the guys who was operating the crane for the camera, he ended up being really racist. I was like, “If it comes to between cutting the shot and this guy, I’m going to cut the guy and [lose] the shot. I can’t have a rogue racist on set.”

In my experience it’s often Black women who are put in the position of having to stick our necks out for everyone else.

I think it’s really important for someone like myself who is intersectional in these spaces to speak up, because there’s lots of people who can’t. They’re not supported. And I do feel like [ignoring bad behavior] is a gateway to other things like misogyny, racism, sexual assault. They keep finding people doing those things and exposing them, but then not exposing the industry that supports it. I think we do really have to tackle this antiquated idea of how the system runs. I want to make sure that when I’m working with people, they know that they’re entering into a safe space.

A lot of people say things like, “Oh, you’re being too sensitive.” I would rather be sensitive. I don’t think it’s a badge of honor to be stoic. It’s something in the last year that I’ve really kind of taken on board, especially after BLM was being spoken about so much. I really realized that there were a lot of behaviors that I had normalized and in turn had made space for. And I made a promise to myself in order to remove that behavior, I am speaking out more and I have less of a tolerance for it. And I want anyone else I’m working with or who wants to work with me to know that. I don’t want to put up with bullshit at work. I don’t want it anywhere”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Burbridge

The final interview that I am keen to reference is from this year. V MAGAZINE spotlighted a genre-bending artist who is entering a new era with her highly anticipated debut album, Nymph. She is someone that everyone needs to be aware of. She is definitely one of the best and brightest young British artists:

“V: What would you say the conceptualization process for the album was like, what was the recording process like for you?

SG: There's definitely some songs that stay true to what they were in their inception. But a lot of the music I recorded earlier that appears on the album went through a process to become what they are. There's songs like “Nike” that I made in the middle of lockdown around the same time that I made “Tasty” on the second EP (ALIAS) but we changed the production on the song to bring it up to where I'm at currently as an artist and in life. There are some things on the album that have a journey like that. Ultimately I do feel like you're saying a lot of things to yourself subconsciously when [conceptualizing] and recording a [project]—or at least I do anyway. When I'm making music, I start to see or read into the patterns in the messages of the lyrics. When I had everything in front of me and the more music I made, the more I realized what I was, and what kind of environment I was trying to build for myself sonically.

V: That’s interesting that the creation process for you has been more of a natural or organic process. When I think of the beats that your vocals are nestled in, I don’t think organic. When did you know you were done, what was the process like of getting to that place?

SG: It was around December (of 2021) when I probably had a bulk of the album and that's when I started to pull in little things that I'd already made, like maybe two years before that. But I felt I had the same messaging as what I was making currently. Like [the song] “Come For Me” was probably the beginning of this more sensitive side, I was like reaching out, almost like a siren song. I feel like there's a lot of this, siren-like, mythology within how I'm calling out to people to listen to how I feel, you know? Like that's what I identify with the most, a kind of fantasy of that almost. I feel like that ethos seeped into the importance of how I deliver my message and where I kind feel grounded. It is a weird thing to feel grounded in something that's much larger than me. This becomes an idea rather than the reality, but I think that's what I like most about it. We always methodized things like we have this idea of a grand of self-importance. And as soon as you start writing a song, you are sending up an emotion to the highest degree, you are making it important enough to write a whole song about. So I think there should be some mythology around it. And that's kind of how I came to Nymph being the backbone of the album’s energy. I wanted to almost look back on this and see myself encapsulated beyond the reality of me.

V: Leaning into the consumption of your art, we are a few months away from the release of this debut album that has been a labor of love for you, how are you feeling? You are more vulnerable than ever, you take the people who consume your music into a different realm of Shygirl this time around. Is that daunting for you? You just said how the world does affect you, so how does all of that play into how you are feeling ahead of this release?

SG: I hope people have space to consider this side of me, you know, without being blocked so much by their expectations. But I have always really pushed against what people expect of me because I don't understand how people can be so comfortable in their expectations when I don't even know what to expect from myself. I'm constantly trying to surprise myself and I am surprised by what I'm able to accomplish. So when other people have such clear expectations of me, I'm like, “Whoa, like why?” And if I can do anything to assuage those expectations, I would definitely endeavor to do that. But, yes, it is daunting because you're basically putting yourself up for public opinion. What daunts me more is I want to be affected by the space that I put the music out, but I also don't wanna lose sight of the things that bring me pleasure and bring me joy. I want to make sure that I'm always able to decipher what it is that I need from myself through that conversation”.

I am going to wrap things up in a second. Before that, I would advise people to pre-order Nymph. It is going to be one of the most important and best debut albums of this year. It is going to be really interesting seeing what comes in her future. She is an artist who can go very far indeed:

“Experimental pop artist Shygirl releases her debut full-length album Nymph via Because Music. The 12-track album was created with a close-knit group of friends and previous collaborators including Mura Masa, Sega Bodega, Karma Kid, Arca and Cosha along with the producers Noah Goldstein, Danny L Harle, BloodPop, Vegyn and Kingdom. Nymph reveals Shygirl’s inner self-reflection in experimental vocal tones and deconstructed dance melodies and exhibits a new level of intimacy and emotional depth in her songwriting. Simultaneously asserting her power and freedom and yet still longing for love, she delivers us lyrical harmonies and catchy hooks telling stories of relationships, sexual desires and romantic frustrations. Over lush production, Shygirl brings us on the journey of what intimacy is like for a woman who’s seen as ‘too hot to handle’, someone sought after and overlooked at the same time. Shygirl’s melodies intertwine with the sounds of bassline, garage, dancehall and hip hop, all seamlessly flowing together like an artful ribbon dance”.

Go and follow Shygirl and get her amazing debut album. A talent impossible to easily define or pigeonhole, her music is always evolving and being shaped. Even though it is still early days when it comes to her career, Shygirl is standing aside from her peers. You only need to spin one song from her to realise that she is…

A tremendous talent.

___________

Follow Shygirl

PHOTO CREDIT: Hidhir Badaruddin for NOTION

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/0800shygirl/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/0800shygirl

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3M3wTTCDwicRubwMyHyEDy

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMx2-6At2Rx0kapbSjKxwJA

Facebook:

https://en-gb.facebook.com/0800shygirl

FEATURE: In My Place: Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

In My Place

Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head at Twenty

 __________

ALTHOUGH I have not really…

listened to Coldplay’s albums since A Rush of Blood to the Head in 2002, this album particularly is one that I love a lot. Released on 26th August, 2002, I wanted to feature the brilliant second album from the band. Following the celebrated debut, Parachutes, in 2000, there was a lot of critical focus and expectation in their direction. They sort of came out of nowhere and released this stunning debut. Maybe A Rush of Blood to the Head does not garner the same acclaim, reputation and stature as its predecessor, but it is a terrific album that arrived at a very strange time. Less than a year after the terror attacks in the U.S. that shook the world, music was still reacting and adapting. There was still celebratory music, but there seemed to be this brief hiatus as artists created more serious or reflective work. I think that some of the best albums of the decade arrived in 2002. That is definitely the case with A Rush of Blood to the Head. It is an album you can get on vinyl. Go and grab a copy of you can. As I do with album anniversary features, I am going to finish with a couple of reviews. There are features that provide a bit of background about the album.

Albumism looked back at A Rush of Blood to the Head in 2017. They talked about (among other things) how it took Coldplay to a new level and saw their work opened up to a wider audience. It was true that they were a major band by the time their 2002 album was revealed to the world:

“When Coldplay announced their arrival with their debut LP Parachutes (2000) they got what every band starting out hopes for: a critically acclaimed and commercially loved album that saw their appeal spread from their homeland of Britain to every corner of the world. With each passing month and new single release, the band transitioned from playing small intimate clubs to midsize theatres as their popularity around the world grew on the heels of breakthrough hit “Yellow” and follow up singles “Trouble” and “Don’t Panic.” Seeing them live during their debut world tour, you got a sense of a band daring to reach for more than the venues they were caged in. A band wanting to further conquer the musical landscape and ascend to the heights of arena and stadium shows. A band with the desire to be “one of the best bands in the world.”

So it was with this destination in mind that they set about recording their follow up, A Rush Of Blood to the Head. As the title suggests, the album was recorded with a heady sense of haste as if they didn’t want the opportunity to build on their debut’s success to slip through their fingers. The result of initial recordings, however, saw them flounder under both their ambitions and expectations with the album shaping up to be a small evolution from—and in some parts a carbon copy of—the sound of Parachutes, rather than a bold step forward.

At a musical fork in the road they faced a hard decision: build on the momentum gained with a quick release or start afresh and record an album that better reflected who they wanted to be. Thankfully for us, with a release date looming, they decided to put a halt to recordings and push through the growing pains of reaching beyond their comfort zone. In the process they scuttled many of the songs already slated for release and got to work on new material.

As album opener “Politik” attests, the new material grew out of the ambition to cross the threshold of playing small to midsized venues and step into the world of arena rock, moving in on territory usually reserved for the likes of U2. With its slow build and pounding drums, “Politik” announces their intent fittingly, kicking off with an energy akin to a coda. Set to reverberate through stadiums, “Politik” encapsulates a sense of post-9/11 isolation and desperation pitted against a desire to connect and a dare to hope. It’s a more epic sounding, dramatic Coldplay being presented here. One ready for a wider stage.

In fact, it’s possible to view the entirety of A Rush of Blood to the Head as a live show. Perhaps weary of the more intimate moments of Parachutes, A Rush of Blood is Coldplay amped up. The addition of heavier sounding guitars and the greater prominence of piano not only hint at their development and surety as musicians, but also injects their songs with a broader scope.

Upon its release in late August 2002, A Rush of Blood to the Head was lauded by critics and the public alike. It self-fulfilled the prophecy that envisaged Coldplay growing in stature and appeal, conquering a bigger world stage and picking up Grammy awards along the way. It remains Coldplay’s best-selling album to date.

And 15 years after its release, A Rush of Blood to the Head remains a vibrant, relevant, urgent album. None of its lustre has been lost over the years and it remains Coldplay’s defining moment. It has rightfully become the album that the band’s subsequent releases are measured against. For in this perfect storm of ambition and focused follow-through, Coldplay rightfully took their place as “one of the best”.

Also in 2017, The Young Folks spotlighted and revisiting the wonderful second studio album from Coldplay. They note how, like some artists (though relatively few), their lead Chris Martin was unafraid to challenge a post-9/11 world:

“Some records are historical for their unique sound, and some are just important to the society for the time. Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head falls into both categories.  With the horrendous 9/11 attacks still fresh in the minds of everyone, the American people were looking for anything to get the terrible tragedy off of their minds.

Enter in the revolutionary English rock band lead by Chris Martin to help relieve people from grief.  With a perfect blend of love ballads, anthems, and memorable instrumentals, it’s safe to say that Coldplay avoided the so-called “sophomore slump” with their second album.

The sense of urgency to create this record was evident through the production style and songwriting.  Martin said it himself in an interview that although the band didn’t exactly know how to approach this project, they still knew that a hopeful tone would be their backbone.

Coldplay has shown throughout their discography how stunning but subtle music can be, while being just as impactful.  You wouldn’t think that a band from Britain could make a political statement about America without sounding uneducated, but Coldplay found that balance on A Rush of Blood to the Head of saying something significant while making it a fantastic listen as well.

By using the first official single on the record “In My Place” as a stepping stone for the rest of the tracks, Martin figured out what direction him and his bandmates wanted to go.  The song “Politik” is where we really got a sense of the different underlying themes riddled throughout the album.  Martin solidified himself as an important voice in the music industry right off of the bat with this track, and he wasn’t afraid of challenging the state of our world following 9/11.

Martin also doesn’t shy away from going back to their vintage sound that helped Coldplay get heard on Parachutes.  “Warning Sign,” the eighth song on the record is a perfect representation of that.  That idea is immediately thrown out the window however on “A Whisper” where the track becomes dizzying and daunting, and the lyrics found the band diving headfirst back into the importance of time and how it can be overwhelming for people”.

I am going to wrap things up with a couple of reviews. As I so often do, I will bring in AllMusic, because their take on A Rush of Blood to the Head is one that made me think deeper about an album that cemented Coldplay as a British band who were going to conquer the world:

“In 2002, the members of Coldplay were still in the midst of their ascent, riding the breakthrough success of their sleepy debut, which established wide-eyed vulnerability and earnestness as an indelible part of their image. Soft and soothing, the precious Parachutes set them up for a lifetime of inaccurate comparisons to Radiohead, even though the similarities started and ended with The Bends. And just like Radiohead, they quickly evolved into another beast altogether: plugging in the guitars, amplifying the bombast, tattooing their hearts on their sleeves, and shooting for the arena rafters in a fashion more similar to U2. Their sophomore effort, A Rush of Blood to the Head, made the message clear within the first seconds of the intense opener "Politik." As Will Champion's drums crash, Jonny Buckland's guitar swells, and Guy Berryman's bass churns, frontman Chris Martin bursts through the Wall of Sound, jolting listeners awake with the desperate cry, "Open up your eyes!" Angsty and urgent, songs like "Politik" and the title track introduced fresh elements into the Coldplay repertoire, expanding their emotional palette and showing critics that they could really rock when they wanted to. This was the sound of a new Coldplay, one that developed confidence, a voice, and a budding imagination to separate themselves from the Travises and Elbows of the world. The aggressive wallop of "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" -- a live staple and fan-favorite single -- typified the trademark sound of the era, combining Champion and Berryman's groove with Buckland's outer-space noodling, a style that they'd blast into the stratosphere on the follow-up effort, X&Y. Along with "Daylight" and "A Whisper," the track helped establish Coldplay as an arena rock presence, pulling them out of the indie-dwelling bedroom and onto the big stage. From that platform, Coldplay also delivered three of their most enduring and beloved singles: the sparkling "In My Place," the weepy ballad "The Scientist," and the piano-kissed showstopper "Clocks." With A Rush of Blood to the Head, Coldplay pulled back the curtains to reveal a robust and energized unit, one that would soon conquer the mainstream with a steady evolution into the world of pop. At this moment -- before issuing the two highest-selling albums in the world in 2005 and 2008 and becoming an international stadium sell-out presence -- Coldplay were coming to grips with their music's power and possibility, a young band hungry, bright-eyed, and primed for stardom”.

I will complete things by quoting Entertainment Weekly. They gave A Rush of Blood to the Head an ‘A’ when they sat down with the album in September 2002. Though some gave the album a mixed review, there was more than enough backing, love and kudos for Coldplay in 2002. A Rush of Blood to the Head has earned plenty of applause since then:

“The dramatization of the old Manchester indie rock and rave scene in ”24 Hour Party People” is an occasionally enlightening slice of alt-rock nostalgia. It also offers a few educational lessons on England’s newest hitmakers. Back then, as the movie demonstrates, the throbbing, intense sonics of the bands mattered. But so did the personalities, be they Joy Division’s pale-rider frontman, Ian Curtis, or Happy Mondays’ own 24-hour party animal, Shaun Ryder. They may have been ”new wave,” or whatever phrase we used at the time, but they were also rock stars in the old-fashioned, attention-getting sense.

Manchester’s days as a hugely influential music community may be over, but guitar-wielding U.K. bands aren’t; in the last few years, one boat after another loaded with musicians has docked on our shores. But as striking as some of that music has been, from the ingenious quirks of Clinic to the six-string symphonics of Doves, you’d be hard-pressed to name a single band member or picture one of their faces. Call it Oasis Syndrome: Act like an overbearing, entitled pop star, and you risk alienating as many people as you attract, so best to keep a low profile. The current, post-Oasis bands, taking a cue from the Gallagher brothers’ ascent and crash, seem to purposefully refrain from putting themselves out there. They’d much prefer to hide behind waves of enveloping sound, thank you very much, as if the idea of rock conquering all were just a distant, baffling memory.

Coldplay appeared to be part of this trend when ”Parachutes” arrived two years back. Sober, mildly rocking university types with a singer who was a sucker for his own falsetto, they were immediately labeled Radiohead Lite, and with good reason. But didn’t their ”Yellow” and ”Trouble” age better than most of Radiohead’s meandering ”Amnesiac”? Wasn’t Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin, in some ways a cut above his peers in the charisma department, a sort of rock Rupert Everett? And could Coldplay actually have more to offer than some of their competitors?

The answer to all three questions is yes, and the proof lies in A Rush of Blood to the Head. Second albums are problematic, never more so than when their predecessors are sleeper sensations. But as sophomore discs go, ”A Rush of Blood” is strikingly wonderful, if not immediately striking. If one were to choose a ”Parachutes” track as a starting point, it wouldn’t be the blaring riff from ”Yellow” but the mel-ancholic vibe of ”Trouble.” The songs are built on gentle, stately pianos and elementary guitar patterns. Even when tempos accelerate, as in the tribal stomp of ”Politik,” a dewy-eyed appeal to some higher power to save us, the music remains restrained and mournful.

And for once, there’s nothing wrong with that. Displaying a cohesion rarely heard in albums these days, ”A Rush of Blood” bobs from one majestic little high to another. Songs like ”In My Place” and ”Warning Sign” marry lyrics imbued with deep regret and mistakes (”…You were an island / And I passed you by” in the touching latter song) with lyrical melodies and guitar hooks that twinkle and sparkle. (Momentary sunniness is provided by the fairly jaunty ”Green Eyes,” about a relationship that actually seems to have stuck.) At a time when so many bands, Brit or American, are intent on cramming as many genres as possible into each song, it’s a relief to hear music that revels in the joys of a simple, graceful melody. The overall effect is tuneful and hypnotic — ambitious, but in the sneakiest, quietest way.

Using his falsetto to sublime effect, Martin never overdoes it or turns cloying, an accomplishment in itself. Much like ”Parachutes,” the new album still has plenty of outside reference points: ”Clocks” has a rushing-waterfall piano straight off a Moby album, while ”A Whisper” delves into a space-rock artiness reminiscent of a ’60s hippie-flick soundtrack. But Coldplay manage to pull off an even grander gambit: In their hands, the new low-profile Brit rock actually has a profile”.

Upon its release, A Rush of Blood to the Head went to number one in the U.K. The album spawned the hit singles In My Place, The Scientist, and Clocks. Coldplay received three Grammy Awards for A Rush of Blood to the Head: the 2003 Grammy for Best Alternative Album, which was the band's second win in a row; the 2003 Grammy for Best Rock Performance with the song In My Place, and the 2004 Grammy for Record of the Year with the song, Clocks. Ahead of its twentieth anniversary on 26th August, I wanted to spend time exploring Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head. The band followed 2000’s Parachutes with an album that took them…

TO new levels.