Category: 50 Words for Snow Page 5 of 12

Nate Chinen reviews the new album for the New York Times here. ““The world is so loud,” murmurs Kate Bush in the first of many disarming choruses on “50 Words for Snow,” her unhurried, utterly self-contained, exquisitely strange new album….if (Director’s Cut) was the effort needed to jostle her into the right frame of mind for “50 Words,” it was worth it. The new album rightly glistens, its sonic parameters set by Ms. Bush’s supple pianism, its lyrics firmly girded by her imagination….the mood is slow and somber but not lugubrious — even when, as on a glacial ghost story like “Lake Tahoe,” there’s real pathos in play”

In my humble opinion one of the best reviews yet from Simon Moore at Live4Ever:

“She’s a storyteller. She was always a storyteller … these songs … are incredible, genre-defying songs, but Bush has never been one for resting on her laurels, so a new sound is necessary … Those little piano flourishes are jazzier, more sustained. That eloquent, silky voice has lost the fanciful swoops and dives of yesteryear; it comes to the front of the mix and gains a whole new poise and vitality … stripping the music down to its core elements … If this is startting to sound overly poetic, then you at least have some idea of what this music does to you. This mellow soundtrack to dark country evenings doesn’t grab you, it creeps and tip-toes up inside your ear and works on you, letting each song grow on you until you can’t help but lose yourself in the whole album … With every listen, this album will reveal another layer, another part of the story you’d never heard before. There’s a lifetime’s worth of listening here. Best get started.”

Tjames Madison at Soundspike is a lover of Kate’s voice:

“Bush remains a singular talent draped in the furs of surreality … It feels like she’s talking about herself by not talking about herself, and why not? The spiky peaks and higher peaks of her youthful chops have been replaced with a sort of smoky mid-range purr, all the better — devoid of much of that voice’s avant garde divisiveness — to examine her role in our modern world as mentor to a bumper crop of spiritual progeny … The instrumentation — Bush accompanying herself with stark, lovely, slightly jazzy piano; the occasional muffled guitar or brushed cymbal or sublimated string section drops in — is gorgeous, and the first half of the wintry song-cycle arrives exactly like its subject, a light, enchanted icefall in near-silence, everyday magic unfolding before your eyes. The tunes wander long and walk softly in this world … But all is not perfect. Elton John’s sudden appearance on “Snowed in on Wheeler Street” feels like an unwelcome intrusion … Fortunately the demure “Among Angels” ends the set back where we started, lost in that haunted, white-dusted graveyard, Bush alone once again with her voice and her piano…”

Album of the week from Tom at Stereogum, a new convert and not the first we’ve heard of since Kate’s new work has been released:

“To this point, I’ve lived a full and happy life without ever much considering the works of Ms. Kate Bush. I knew the singles, sure, and I had a general understanding of her influence on later art-pop spell-weavers … But the singles, with their twisty helium squeals and their non-Euclidean melodies, never convinced me to dig much further. For the most part, Bush has been, for me, one of those canonical blind spots that everyone has. But her new 50 Words For Snow is the sort of album that convinces skeptics like me to go back and reconsider. At first glance, 50 Words For Snow comes waving plenty of red flags of pretentiousness. There’s the butt-ugly cover art. There are the virtually-nonexistent song-structures and the sprawling running times; not a single track dips under six minutes, and most go way longer. There are the loony concepts …  But when you actually give into the album’s seductive calm, all these weaknesses (except maybe the cover art) become strengths. Musically, 50 Words For Snow is a spare and delicate album, one that can unfold hazily in the background without demanding your full attention. Instrumentally, it’s arranged to flutter and waft, with its brushstroke drums and its impressionistic splashes of piano and its unobtrusive electronic ripples. Bush’s formidable voice remains in whisper-coo range most of the time, and her simple phrasings are enough to get under your skin. And with her lyrics so deliberately paced-out, it’s easy to forget how specific and absurd those story-songs can be … And once the album sinks in, which it will, even the most far-out ideas start to raise goosebumps. … the theme of ephemeral love slipping away is even more prevalent …  Once you let the album in, it’s powerful stuff.“

Rich Juzwial reviews the new album for The Daily, an iPad newspaper here. “Not since 1982’s “The Dreaming” has Bush been as gloriously goofy as she is on her 10th album, “50 Words for Snow.” On it, she courts a snowflake, covers the tracks of a yeti to keep him safe from scientists and builds a snowman with whom she has an affair. Her duet with Elton John, “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” plays out much like the hilariously clueless audition duet of “Midnight at the Oasis” in “Waiting for Guffman” (“Just two old flames keeping the fire going/ We look so good together,” growls John.) Even loopier is her collaboration with Stephen Fry on the album’s title track, which finds him listing off increasingly unlikely synonyms for snow (“swans-a-melting,” “faloop’njoompoola,” “creaky-creaky,” “Zhivagodamarbletash,” “bad for trains,” “blown from polar fur”) with Bush interrupting intermittently (“Come on man, you got 44 to go!”). If Bush isn’t having a laugh here, she’s at least plowing the way for everyone else.

Unfortunately, “50 Words for Snow” is more fun to think about than it is to listen to. While Bush retains her interest in brushed drums and upright bass that was apparent on “Aerial,” completely new to her aesthetic is an abandonment of pop structure, which is a shame. These seven tracks come in at 65 minutes, and one of them, “Misty,” runs 13 maddeningly chorus-less minutes. Bush’s piano playing is more a drizzle than a flurry: Repetitive themes just trickle out, leaving plenty of space between. The album crystallizes in the middle, finding a more upbeat structure (“Wildman” even has a hook!), but this is Bush at her most musically obtuse.

Another four stars from Stephen Dalton in The National (Abu Dhabi):

“A new Kate Bush album is always an event. The 53-year-old queen of ethereal English folk-pop may have spent much of the past two decades in reclusive semi-retirement, but the mystique around her has only deepened. … her second album release this year, a lyrically opaque but musically rich meditation on the theme of snow and its attendant folk myths. … a more supple and contemporary affair, with a lightly experimental sound that could sit comfortably alongside recent work by PJ Harvey or Radiohead. Once shrill and piercing, Bush’s midlife voice has grown more rounded and husky, from the dreamy half-whisper … A rambling and eccentric folly, 50 Words for Snow may not satisfy fans of Bush’s early, concise, melodramatic art-pop. But this is still a largely successful experiment, and heartening proof that the creative juices are flowing again.”

Leigh Bartlam at Wears The Trousers magazine writes: “It’s too soon to predict how well 50 Words For Snow will stand up to the inevitable comparisons with her previous “masterpieces”, but with not one dull, waning or filler track on the album, and every one of its sixty-five minutes offering glistening moments of the artist at her most inspired and productive, it could well be that we’re in the presence of yet another Kate Bush classic.” The album is awarded 10/10. Read the full (lengthy) review here. (with thanks to Brian C)

8.5/10 “Best New Music” from Ryan Dombal at Pitchfork Media:

“Bush continues to infuse her narratives with a beguiling complexity while retaining some old-school directness. Because while most of this album’s songs can be easily summarized … they contain wondrous multitudes thanks to the singer’s still-expressive voice and knack for uncanny arrangements. And mood. There’s an appealing creepiness that runs through this album, one that recalls the atmospheric and conceptual back half of her 1985 masterpiece Hounds of Love. Indeed, when considering this singular artist in 2011, it’s difficult to think of worthy points of reference aside from Bush herself … In an interview earlier this year, the 53-year-old Bush told me she doesn’t listen to much new music, and after listening to the stunningly subtle and understated sounds on Snow, it’s easy to believe her … This is an album about trying, oftentimes futilely, to find connections– between Bush and her characters, reality and surreality, love and death … While much of 50 Words for Snow conjures a whited-out, dream-like state of disbelief, it’s important to note that Bush does everything in her power to make all the shadowy phantoms here feel real. Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space– not so much innocent as open to imagination– that never gets old … Snow isn’t a blissful retreat to simpler times, though. It’s fraught with endings, loss, quiet– adult things. This is more than pure fantasy.”