THE DREAMING

My first listen to this album was an electric experience, one of those rare moments where you are caught breathless by this new interpretation of what music can be. It wasn't that I'd never listened to 80s music before, nor that I was unfamiliar with music that could be categorised as extremely odd. But I had never, in my life, heard someone sing in the way Kate does on this album. I was immediately entranced.

On this album, it's like Kate wanted to stretch her vocal cords into every conceivable orientation. There are of course the songs where she sings normally (such as "All the Love") but for the most she experiments with her voice on the songs to create interesting contrasts. The most common ingredient is a really high pitched, harsh yet not sharp singing. Just listen to the first 30 seconds of the opening track (Sat in Your Lap) and you will hear exactly what I'm talking about.

Other vocal styles include deep, donkey-like ee-hawing (no joke) and tribal style vocals on the title track.

And it all works, because Kate not only has a superb voice, she has great control and is able to do all of these things with skill. The studio is also used to allow her to layer her voice, or have two of her different "voices" singing at the same time.

Weird singing doesn't a good album make, but Kate has a strong sense of songwriting as well. There isn't really a song in here that isn't memorable. The least attractive one to me is "All The Love", which isn't particularly a bad song - in fact, it's quite emotional - it just sounds less "new" to me than anything else on here. It's the ballad of the album.

Each track on this album is carefully crafted and has a great depth of sound (I read that Kate has said she made this album to be played loud, so you could hear all the details). Yet at the same time, they almost all have a memorable melody that will get them stuck in your head, so you will want to spend enough time to listening to discover all these great details.

My favorite track is Suspended in Gaffa, which is incredibly catchy and has interesting lyrical content (it's about seeing God and then never being able to again) (and if you youtube it, you can find Kate doing some crazy interpretive dance to it). Get Out of My House is the darkest thing here, and this is the one where the aforementioned donkey braying is from. This one is based on Stephen Kings "The Shining".

Definitely a very strong album, and one that I have been unable to stop listening to since I first heard it. Very strong, very memorable and creative, and a lot of emotion.