THE KICK INSIDE

Kate Bush is certainly a bit of an enigma, so it’s pretty difficult to come up with any really definitive statements about her music. Her sound is very hard to classify, and for me at least even how to rate her albums seems to depend on what day it is and how her music hits me at any particular moment. This means that there are times when her voice grates on me and I can’t get through all forty-five minutes of an album without a break. Then there are other times when her angelic tones and painfully intimate lyrics can bring me to tears. And the level of experimentation in her music is also acquired taste, particularly in her later albums.

So I think what I’ve just described is a prog music diva, for lack of a better term. And even that is a generalization, as it doesn’t fully and accurately describe Ms. Bush. She truly is an original.

I’m a bit torn on where to place this album against the rest of her discography. On the plus side there isn’t a bad track here, although there are a couple (“James and the Cold Gun”, “Oh to be in Love”) that have never really grabbed me emotionally, which is what I think the measure should be for a great Kate Bush song. Also, it has the benefit of being the debut of a completely unique sound, which meant at the time it would either hit or miss with very little chance of landing anywhere in between. It hit, so that’s good. But it’s also worth noting that this album was over two years in the making, so Ms. Bush certainly had plenty of time to get it right. Her next two albums would suffer somewhat from the lack of such a long time to perfect them. She also had the benefit of the most impressive production support imaginable for a young teenager in David Gilmour and Alan Parsons Project arranger/conductor Andrew Powell. Several of the songs on the album had been written years before, and there are indications from the Phoenix recordings that Ms. Bush had spent considerable time rearranging these are experimenting ad nausea until she got them right, and she had the incredible fortune of a record label that was supportive and permitted her these artistic freedoms.

So really, this is an album that would have been very hard to screw up. Not that she should be begrudged her good fortune; it’s just that Ms. Bush’s big break could not have been handed to her on a more silver platter.

But she certainly did capitalize. Hearing Kate Bush’s voice for the first time is like being struck by lightening and living through it. You’re not quite sure what happened to you, but the experience causes you to rethink things you once held to be immutable.

The opening track “Moving” is either about being in love, or being pregnant, or about having sex. My vote goes to being pregnant, which is in fact the recurring theme of the album. The whale songs and references to life and lilies and moving liquid all kind of lean in that direction. Musically this is closer to a pop song, with very tasteful piano and keyboards, understated saxophone, and a fairly straightforward arrangement. A nicely done (though conservative) coming out for Ms. Bush.

“The Saxophone Song” gets a bit more interesting in its more prominent featuring of that instrument, as well as in the greater vocal range demonstrated by Ms. Bush. This is a lovers’ song, and presents itself quite well as just that. It also has one of the more priceless lyrics I’ve heard in many years:

“The stars that climb from her bowels, Those stars make towers on vowels”.

Not sure what that means, but you have to admire someone who sings those words with a straight face.

On “Strange Phenomena” Ms. Bush seems to be showing a bit of a crush on, or at least some tender admiration for David Gilmour. Musically this is kind of fluff, but again there is some very elegant piano work from the artist, and overall it is a decent enough song.

With “Kite” Ms. Bush shows just a little of the wild side that would fully bloom in ‘The Dreaming’ and become mature with ‘Hounds of Love’. There’s some jerky percussion, slightly strident piano, and vocals that seem to sometimes challenge the notion of what can be considered ‘carrying’ a tune. Combine that with some keyboards and a little funk on guitar and bass (undoubtedly influenced by the adult producers in the room), and you have a quirky but pleasant tune.

But everything to this point pales once “The Man with the Child in his Eyes” starts to play. Here Ms. Bush demonstrates her ability to show restraint, with piano and vocals that can only be described as utterly gorgeous. The synthesized string sounds add a touch of class, and this is one for the ages. If I’m not mistaken this was one of Ms. Bush’s biggest hits.

But not as big as “Wuthering Heights”, which has a lot of the same characteristics as the previous track but adds greater vocal range, as well as a more dynamic arrangement and a little piano passage that could have easily ended up as the theme music for an airline somewhere. Pretty decent guitar work here too, courtesy of Alan Parsons sidekick Ian Bairnson I believe.

I just can’t get past the fact that “James and the Cold Gun” strikes me completely as a Pat Benatar song with its rock one-two punch, dated guitar work, affected vocal squealing from Ms. Bush, and ‘trailer trash hits the road’ lyrics. The guitar riffs are catchy enough, but overall this is not a particularly memorable work.

“Feel it” is another lovers’ song. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising since Ms. Bush wrote most of these songs in the mid-seventies while she was a budding teenager, but there is certainly a lot of lust being expressed on this album. ‘Went to a party, came home, got laid’ is the basic message here, albeit stated much more tastefully by the artist herself. Again, a decent song musically but doesn’t do much for me lyrically, as I could have gotten this off a Motels album, or maybe Martha & the Muffins.

And again more of the same lyrically on “Oh to be in Love”, but musically the keyboards are much more interesting, the peppy refrains are catchy, and the addition of male backing vocals gives this song a dimension that the rest of the album doesn’t have. I’m not sure what instrument is making the organ-like choppy keyboard sounds, but I like it.

And once more with the titillating teenager on “L'amour Looks Something like You”, but this is also a refined arrangement with some great piano work and vocals.

“Them Heavy People” is an odd little tribute from protégé to teacher with an obscure reference to dance guru and spiritual nut-job G.I. Gurdjieff. This and the previous song are the two on the album that have not stood the test of time particularly well, and do sound a bit dated today, particularly due to the bouncy keyboards wrapped around a bland bass line. This one just kind of fades into the woodwork on the album and isn’t really missed.

“Room for the Life” is another song about having babies, this time in the context of trying to connect a woman’s ability to do so with some sense of immortality. I’m not sure if Ms. Bush was obsessed, or affected, or simply wanted to have some thematic continuity to this album, but there sure is a lot of discussion around having babies. The mildly calypso feel to the percussion here is another preview of the striking direction she would take on ‘The Dreaming’.

The title track closes the album with the most bizarre song of all, the tale of a girl who is impregnated by her brother and commits suicide as a result, still clearly enamored of her sibling even as she prepares to turn her own lights off. And to think in the American Midwest during the seventies our parents burned and banned albums from the Beach Boys and Rod Stewart for being too racy, while at the same time the erstwhile Ms. Bush was cranking out tunes about lust and incest and suicide to great acclaim on the other side of the pond. Go figure.

Anyway, this is a fun little album to listen to, and I may have had a different opinion of it had I heard it first, instead of discovering Kate Bush in the eighties and picking this one up after the fact. But considering all the things that were stacked up in her favor to make the success of this album all but a foregone conclusion, I have to say that it can’t be ranked as any better than pretty good. So three stars seem right, and this would be her best effort until ‘The Dreaming’ nearly five years later.

Note: the version of the album here in the U.S. was the one of her sitting on the floor with red leggings and a slightly bemused look on her face. I like the British version better.

peace