It's New to Me: The Dreaming by Kate Bush

Illustration from an advertisement for AC Spark Plugs, 1957

A friend of mine once said that The Dreaming is the favorite Kate Bush record of true fans, and you aren't a real Kate Bush fan until you love The Dreaming. I love Hounds of Love, the only Kate Bush album I know well, so I thought that it was time to find out if I'm a true fan. The answer is ... maybe not. The Dreaming, released in 1982, was the predecessor to Hounds of Love - they are the first two albums that Kate Bush produced on her own, and they are considered by many to be her best work. They are very different animals to me, though - Hounds of Love benefits from being split into two distinct portions, a side-long conceptual piece and a set of stand-alone pop singles.

The Dreaming, on the other hand, is an abstract anthology, drawing inspiration from books, movies, and history and spewing it all out in a stream of ever-shifting musical tones and ideas. Bush sings in so many different voices on this record that I feel like I'm inside the head of a person with Multiple Personality Disorder. And not in a good way. It's too much - most of the songs are impenetrable to me. Still, maybe I'm on my way to being a "true Kate Bush fan" - I keep coming back to The Dreaming even though it always leaves me baffled and overwhelmed. It's confounding without being repellent.

There are only two songs on The Dreaming that make sense to me at this point. The first is "Suspended in Gaffa", the closest thing to a real pop song on the record (oddly, it was not widely released as a single, and the more bizarre "Sat in Your Lap" was the album's minor hit.) The other song that clicked with me immediately is "Houdini", probably because it's simplicity and beautiful string-based arrangement offer some solace late in the album's track-list (before the totally insane closer "Get Out of My House"). It is elegant and uncluttered, and Bush's vocals are much easier to follow and enjoy. It's not entirely un-unhinged, though - the climactic removal of Houdini from the water-tank is accompanied by Bush singing in a deranged tone, "With your life the only thing in my mind, WE PULL YOU FROM THE WATER!" Nice.

"Houdini" by Kate Bush