THE PITCH
I found the experience of selecting one album (just one!) for you to listen to over the course of a week extremely challenging. I kept thinking I had nailed it, but then would think of another album, entirely different. I would listen to it and then it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. So I am finally giving you my choice – which is this week’s choice, which would not be the same as last week’s or next week’s choice.
I did wonder whether this album was just too obvious - it would probably be in the best 100 albums in the world ever in most lists - and it would be great if your listening choices over the year are broader than this, otherwise you could have just got such a list off the internet and ploughed your way through it.
But, but... this choice just wouldn’t go away. It came out in 1985, but I didn’t find my way to it until 1986, and then I listened to it endlessly. I didn’t own it myself at the time - I only bought it on vinyl about twenty years ago. I used to borrow it over and over again from the record library (records were expensive even then). It was the title track The Hounds of Love that first drew me in – from the Night of the Demon lines, ‘It’s in the trees, it’s coming!’ to the metaphor of love, like being chased by a pack of hounds and the joyous refrain ‘take my shoes off and throw them in the lake and I’ll be two steps on the water’.
I love its range: every track has its own unique sound. It tells stories – mysterious stories I don’t quite understand, but that’s okay. It also introduced me to other worlds: I had never read Tennyson’s poetry or encountered Irish traditional music until elements of it popped up on this album. I love how the album is full of joy and sadness, dark and light, that it features an omniscient astronaut’s view of life on Earth, but it also has moments of down-to-earth domesticity, and after much drama, ends on a note of hope. It really is phenomenal.
Even if you end up hating the music, you’ll at least find something in the richness of the words and the stories created. And if it doesn’t move you or touch you, at least you will have had a close encounter with one of the defining albums of the time. And for my next choice, I am going to go much more obscure... but I won’t go into that for now.
Rachel Davison
MY RESPONSE
I love how you’ve thrown yourself into this, Rachel! It’s not often you ask people to do something for you and they answer, “Oh yes please’.
So.
Kate Bush.
What I thought when you sent me this was, I think I don’t like Kate Bush. Something about her voice, I thought. And the interpretative dance.
In 1978, when Kate Bush first appeared on Top of the Pops singing Wuthering Heights, I was watching in the packed TV room at boarding school. You can watch that episode here to see how alien she seemed. What us girls were listening to at that time was Radio 1 in the morning and the Top 40 on Sunday. There was a record player in our common room but we had only two records – Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Queen’s News of the World – which we played endlessly. Lots of people would have found Kate Bush exciting and refreshing, but I was 12 and I had read Wuthering Heights and didn’t get it and I decided Kate Bush was pretentious and actually a bit embarrassing.
However, you told me there were stories and unique sounds in Hounds of Love. I do stories. I think I’m open to unique sounds.
My first listen was on headphones while running because I’ve decided that if I’m going to really hear the music rather than just the words I need to let the music come first with nothing to distract me. After the rich orchestral soundscape of last week’s Mussorgsky, the first tracks with synthesizers and drum machines seemed dull. I think her voice is interesting though. I like the way she plays around with it, though I still can’t say I actually like it. I was relieved to reach tracks with other instruments; they felt more ‘real’. Then, as you go on into the second half, she’s just throwing everything in there. It’s interesting that it’s so obviously two halves. I suppose this is a result of the length of LPs being what it is. If she released these same songs now, would it be in two shorter albums? But there are reflections of the Seventh Wave stuff in the first half.
I’ve put a fair amount of work into trying to get a handle on this album. I’ve read background to the album and about how innovative Kate Bush was. I’ve listened to the podcast you recommended about how the music of Running Up That Hill was made. I’ve read about Tennyson. Perhaps most people just listen and decide whether they like a thing from that experience, but I feel like all this homework is necessary since I haven’t been listening and taking in background information for the last six decades… The thing is, none of it is making me enjoy Hounds of Love any more. Perhaps it’s too earnest? She’s trying to be a poet but I find I don’t believe any of the emotion in it.
I was bored of trying so hard by the middle of the week. But why? Maybe I’m just not interested in ground-breaking? Yesterday though, having digested all this information and with the music now familiar so I wasn’t working so hard at it, I had the best listening experience of the week. I listened while I was cycling, which is perfect for concentrating on the music (although rather fascinating to discover that because I use bone-conducting headphones while cycling so I can hear the rest of the world, some of the distortion hurt my ears, particularly in Watching You Without Me and Waking the Witch). The tracks I like most are Jig of Life, Cloudbusting and Hello Earth. The ones I like least are Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort. I’m not sure I’m going to be coming back to Hounds of Love much though.
The best thing I’ve got out of this week? The fact that I’ve been thinking about what else I like and about what I was listening to when I could have been listening to Kate Bush. I have a whole lot to say about 1985/6 when Hounds of Love came out, but I’ll save that for another time…
WHAT ELSE I’VE LISTENED TO THIS WEEK
Elvis Costello This Year’s Model
Paul Simon Graceland
Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
The Big Easy soundtrack
Van Morrison Moondance
Joni Mitchell Blue
XTC English Settlement
First Ladies of RnB (Charley RnB Masters)
Queen News of the World
This is also one of the albums I had selected for you. I am a huge Kate Bush fan and I completely get what Rachel is saying about the album. I thought you would like it because of the Seventh Wave, of the depiction of witch craft, outer body experience and the whole ecological message. I disagree with your comments about her trying to be a poet. Kate Bush is a poet and full of emotion. One of my all time favourite song is This Woman's Work. If you can stand one more Kate Bush song you should give it a try.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on some of the others this week, particularly Graceland, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and another of my all time favourites (but not one I chose for you) Blue.
Moira I love that appreciate this album as much as I do! Really interesting to read your response Claire. For something that sold so much and had so much exposure, it isn't always an easy listen. And if you're not a fan of Kate Bush's voice then you would never love this record. (And voice is so important and so individual). You touch on something really important with music though, as you say you are exploring what you were listening to in 1986. The context and setting of music is so important and definitely plays a part in how much I love this album. Looking forward to hearing what next week's choice is.