Please Extol Kate Bush's "The Dreaming"

i sold back my first copy btw. now i love it.

i think she's a lot more more in control of her mind than people assume -- it's her ideas that are batty, not her. in interviews she always seems to have a very clear picture of what she wants to do creatively.

I get the impression that she's a quite ordinary person who simply has different or more flexible notions of what music should involve. There's no specific reason why it's batty for singers to impersonate braying donkeys on record, except that this somehow breaks the unwritten rules of what pop music is and isn't allowed to do.

Actually there was a funny interview recently where she was saying how a friend had told her he loved The Dreaming except for the animal impersonations. And she thought to herself, "But I like the animal parts, I thought they were the best bits!"

"Get Of My House," the title track, and "Sat In Your Lap" are all great, yeah.

xpost

um, but as far as the actual music is concerned: the most i really can say is give it time, it'll likely grow on you if you're already sympathetic to her overall creative vision. i loved it nearly instantly and i didn't approach it in the way jbr recommends (singles-first), but the donkey braying and the off-kilter production felicities didn't take long to acclimate myself to. after however-many-listens i still can't really pin down what the hell she's doing but that makes it rewarding as well as occasionally (but by all means not often) frustrating.

Even "The Ninth Wave"?

alfred, pretty scarce, i knew her mostly from trips to the british isles

2xpost Yes, "All the Love" is another one.

Lots! At any rate lots on WXPN, in Philadelphia. Never Forever and The Dreaming both got played very heavily there (probably about 3/4 of the songs from each).

and the cover!

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000006MS3.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

most memorable part of which is

EEYORE! EEYORE! GET OUTTA MY HOUSE!!!!

And yes no incense!!! There was a guy at my work who burned a certain type of incense and it made me nauseous and normally I don't mind incense at all but it was fuckin' horrible I was gonnna upchuck it, yeah.

But it's too late because you'll never hear a better female musician or singer than Kate Bush. And I'm not a religious person, but she makes me think about religion. Go figure.

"My excitement
Turns into Fright
All my words fade
what am I gonna say
mustn't give the game away

We're waiting...."

Surely she is holy. If one were to believe
in a goddess.

"We got the job sussed.

This shop's shut for business.

I hope you remember
to treat the gelgnite tenderly

not going right
let's leave in plenty of time tonight

"That leaves Cagney and Me"

There's a special place in heaven for anyone who
appreciates this album.

This is so key, and it's why I couldn't get behind Aerial entirely -- Kate Bush is, foremost, a producer to me. I don't think I'll ever love an album as much as I love The Dreaming.

This was pretty good on "Never For Ever" too!

Ever.

Same here.

A couple of my fave moments: the bass parts (along with strings and choirboy, respectively) in "Houdini" and "All the Love".

mmmm, yes. but let's not forget the melody of the first line of "All the Love", which sounds to me like someone singing like a sitar being played backwards. also the way the mood switches on Tenner from "Ooh, I remember" onwards is supercool and quite subtly done.

will listen and return with more detailed extolleration

Bad Hair Day OTM re: "Never For Ever", though there's more CS-80 synth going on in that album than there is Fairlight. The progression from, say, the last three songs on NFE into The Dreaming is almost smooth, even though there's a space of years there.

My favorite KB album as well.

So The Dreaming is my #1 album of all time, like by anyone. I agree with what someone said a while ago - I don't think Kate is necessarily some crazy woman; I think she is just a girl who appreciates beauty in sounds of the bizarre.

So here's my Kate rundown:
The Dreaming
HoL
Never for Ever
Aerial
The Kick Inside
Lionheart
The Sensual World
The Red Shoes

The Dreaming is amazing because Bush's taste is uncompromising on it. While HoL dabbled with 80s pop, The Dreaming dabbled with no pop but her own, interweaving sounds at once organic and utterly unusual to create a magnificent sonic texture.

What I want to know is what people think of Aerial. Is there a thread on this? I need someone to talk to about it. Any takers?
I really love it - it was tough for me to decide whether or not it could trump Never for Ever. But in the end, I decided it certainly couldn't. There's something about Joanni, Somewhere in Between and Nocturn that I can't quite come to grips with, though...

Hahaha.

i haven't had this confirmed yet -- maybe so.

I definitely think it's the Kate Bush Fan's "best" album. And in that way, like Joni fans who claim "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" from the word go it still makes me ever-so-slightly suspicious as an automatic choice.

A: Never for Ever?

I agree it's probably her most truly consistent (and consistently weird) though.

The Dreaming is otoh 10 utterly complete tracks that just make her most solid record ever.

I'm not criticising the drift in those other albums BTW - "Hello Earth" is very drifty in parts and it's my favourite Kate track.

i totally see how "the dreaming" can be described as really catchy. the thing about it is, while "hounds of love" has that first side and "never for ever" has some amazing, melodious pop songs, "the dreaming" is so CONSISTENT in terms of melody, RHYTHM and its arrangements. certainly - striking solidity on that record.

and come on guys, the "drift"y parts of "hounds" or "never for ever"? those are the best parts!!! "egypt" - the voices at the end? hello?! i don't care about catchy - whenever something like that comes on, i can only bow to the throne of Her.

and by the way, "All the Love" is very catchy, even if it's a pseudo-ballad. catchy doesn't have to mean uptempo ear-candy.

now, if that doesn't get caught in your head, i don't know what will.

Well, that's why it's funny. It's not conventional pop, of course. It's just that the description my friend gave me had me expecting something really avant-garde so The Dreaming sounded so normal and 80s-poppy (compared to e.g. a Meredith Monk record) on first listen. I don't think of it as conventional pop at all now.

i know prologue, off aerial, is steve reich-y - is the dreaming like meredith monk or something? i have no idea what kind of music she has made. would bush fans like the monk?

haha, i used to live pretty close to there.

=)

Look, all the hardcore Kate Fans KNOW. That the only sensible choice for best Kate album ever is The Dreaming.

And Aerial is going to kill me, etc. LOOK no one said I had to choose a favourite Kate Bush album, okay? No one said I HAD TO CHOOSE. No one said that. Forget it. I don't have to!

"Cologne and baccy and their yankee hash..."

Although Australian Aboriginal cultures also tell stories about their ancestors situated in place like the Apache, their narratives have a different character and function. Fred Myers argues that among the Pintupi the relationship between place and family is linked to the concept of "The Dreaming," narratives about the mythological past in which "totemic ancestors" traveled from place to place and finally became part of the land. The Dreaming is the means by which Pintupi selves are formed and identity is known, by which an individual "owns" a place, and the rights to live in an area and sacra associated with it. The Dreaming contrasts with the immediate and visible world, constituting an invisible but primary reality that is as unchanging and timeless as the cosmos. Myers says the Pintupi transform the landscape into narrative by invoking The Dreaming in their interactions with it and using each place as a mnemonic for telling and reenacting the story of their whole "country."

i'm getting a nice the associates-meet-japan vibe from this record. parts of it remind me of what sylvian and karn were getting at with their first solo records, a slightly skewed adult/jazz type sound, but this is obviously way more unhinged. her vocal performances are consistantly jaw-dropping. it's the first kate bush album i've listened to, where next?

actually replace "jazz" with "organic" maybe, or fuck it "late-night" to get even cornier; i know kate bush was never really synthetic or anything like japan were... also avalon by roxy music fits in here but again no where near as strange as this

oh god! i'm so sorry i missed this revive. congratulations!

what next? hmm... i don't know, Hounds of Love? Or actually I would get Never for Ever next, u kno cuz it's weird ENUF, but still accessible. Hounds of Love is so good i wouldn't want u to experience that too soon, too fast.

The Dreaming forever!!

yes the vocal performances are, really, jaw dropping. it's almost annoying, how wonderful they are.

hounds of love has to be next, considering it is the greatest album created by any artist, ever

hehe but don't u feel then he/she should wait a little bit toget it? and btw if you remember correctly The Dreaming won the Poll :-))))

this album is awesome all the way through

that is one of a few reasons why it tops hounds of love

the dreaming is astonishingly paced and ends in breathtaking fashion. it's also very rich

Your strategy is brilliant, Ramzi. Just tell them they should wait awhile to get possibly the most canonical Kate album ever, and just like a parent telling them not to do something, you know they will, post-haste. Reverse psychology. Works like a charm. I love it, cheers.

I LOVE LIFE I LOVE LIFE I LOVE LIFE

in the space of a fortnight this record is fast becoming one of my favourites ever in this short life so far. i feel like when i bump it a year from now i'll still be hearing new things, words, noises. so sick

=) absolutely

totally putting this on now

can u imagine having Pull Out The Pin as ur ringtone?

i can.

the only Kate Bush album I really like a lot!

"There Goes a Tenner" - when Phil Collins does the faux-Cockernee accent, he makes you want to saw his head off. Kate, on the other hand, is allowed to do this shit and somehow I buy it. But she drops it after 2 or 3 lines, or at least she veers between it and her own hyper-enunciation. I'm not sure if the plot-line is a straight cop from a film, probably not, although it is the plot for the beginning of Grand Theft Auto 3. And then the dude is drifting into reverie under the remains of a jewellers and he's dreaming of his father and Warner Brothers gangster movies and "remember when we used to vote for him"?? WTF? So family equals (failed) destiny and Harold Macmillan was a bankrobber, or something.

Okay. Remember.

That brass/piano arrangement is absolutely early 80s but it keeps evaporating away, bank notes lost in the wind.

And then the Viet Cong.

Playground taunts too,

Oh and I need to do the chorus of "Suspended in Gaffa" but frankly it kills too much for rational discourse right now. Kate and George Eliot have the melodrama of the quiet life mapped out like nobody's business. It's only about going crazy when everybody's out and the washing machine WON'T WORK

needs to be remastered stat!
-- a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Tuesday, August 29, 2006 8:34 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

^^

I guess it could stand to be louder but I think the gloopiness of the sound is pretty, crucial.

Kate and George Eliot have the melodrama of the quiet life mapped out like nobody's business.

mm

it's funny when the richness of There Goes A Tenner hits you, b/c at first it seems like a throwaway. but then you get the patience in the melody, the phrasing and the thickness of the whole thing. I love it when her voices coo beneath the tune at the end. and yes, the last line is perfect, especially as the transition into Pull Out The Pin.

KB is in my very limited canon of artists where the words are a big part of Getting It.

must listen now

the japanese box version of this sounds great, doesn't need remastering...haven't heard the other versions in a long time

guys it's a little too real, the goodness.

Yeah. Good time to talk about this album again. I compared one of the 7" singles I posted recently on my blog to it because I couldn't think of anything else to compare it to. Doesn't mean I really thought it was anywhere near the goddess, though.

and more and more Ther goes a Tenner becomes a highlight. it was released a single, i believe

"the government will never find the money"

I pity the fool who will try to argue that Kate Bush is not god.

that rich, windy weather

http://windyweather-bimble.blogspot.com/

awesome!

i like the dreaming more than hounds of love, even.

i listened to this this morning, the sleeve credits the didjeridoo played on "the dreaming" to rolf harris. is this a joke? i though it was a fairlight?

no joke.

Hi.

hey you

It has what is possibly her finest song, "Suspended in Gaffa", and some of the rest of it has slowly grown on me over the years - "Pull out the Pin", for example - but as a whole it ain't all that.

no

i just realized i haven't really listened to this on headphones, like not on the subway. i mean usually if i'm home i play it loud. but uh,

GOOD

EEADPHONES

all those pulsing little synth things on there goes a tenner!

honestly this album is too much, it's just i mean i can't believe it. i can't believe it exists.

I'll buy you a drink?

Dudes, I mean ladies, I mean. Oh shit. Whoever is out there.
This song "All The Love". I've been dying to play it for about a week now. And now I have my thrill.

Bimble's computer is dying. Bimble is lucky just to be able to even post this.

please don't talk about bimble in the third person

reviving to say this album is infuckingcredible and quite possibly better than HoL. it is one of those albums that does that wonderful trick where the songs that were initially my favorites (suspended in gaffa, the dreaming) start to get out-shined by tracks that i overlooked (houdini, get out of my house) and so it ends up that at some point every song has been my favorite on the album. i've gotten chills from multiple parts of every single song. there are no highlights to pick out from the album, this entire album is a highlight... like... of life, duuuude.

ya

haven't got to the stage where the little tracks are outshining the big 'uns, but thirded anyway. Plus 'Suspended in Gaffa' provokes an overwhelming emotional reaction, for reasons I've never been able to ascertain.

like she says 'i don't know why'

tho there are many emotional watershed moments for me, the highlights seem to be: all the love, the string section in houdini, and get out of my house. night of the Swallow is almost too striking for that sort of emotion, i'm kind of in shock the whole time

this was the second KB album I heard after Hounds of Love and I had the same reaction; I was also really disappointed to hear "the kick inside" after this, it seemed so tame and boring (I like it now but not nearly as much as this).

i first got into Hounds of Love (back in high school), then the Kick Inside, then Aerial, then The Dreaming. a pretty good order, i'd say. i'm now starting to get into The Sensual World, but I haven't gotten very far into it because I just keep listening to the title track over and over.

if you can get into the trajectory of her career there is a certain innocence to the Kick Inside that is really charming.

this house is full of M-M-Madness! <---- glorious moment

after all these years i still really don't know what's she's up to on the dreaming. it goes in all these different directions, has such a weird mishmash of narratives and set pieces and the freakiest freakouts she ever committed. hounds of love seems very orderly in comparison, which is one reason i love the dreaming more. i'd be really interested to hear her talk about what the hell was going on in her head circa the dreaming.

The one interview I read which discussed this actually downplayed the idea of it being a piece of "mad genius". It was more like "I like using animal noises, I think they work." There's actually something very sensible and practical about Kate's personality I reckon. Once you get past the oddity of the music, the sentiments of songs like "Sat In Your Lap" and "Suspended In Gaffa" are very universal and rational - not that frustrated ambition (and specifically ambition frustrated by the limits of one's own capacities) is a typical pop song topic, but Kate makes it seem like it should be.

yeah i guess the mad genius is all in the music. talking about it maybe just diminishes it.

(and of course part of the oddness of the sound is just the things she can do with her voice, but to her that's just going to seem like something completely natural.)

"yeah i guess the mad genius is all in the music."

This. I think it's good though: too often there's just this lazy critical conflation of idiosyncratic music and eccentric persona. I guess Kate is still eccentric, but the madness in her music is entirely in the music.

somebody once commented that Kate Bush sings her lines like they're the most catchy poppy pop songs on the radio at the moment, which i feel really helps make this album what it is

I am the concierge chez-moi, honey.
Won't letcha in for love, nor money.

My home, my joy.
I'm barred and bolted and I...

and she makes those lines sound totally natural.

just demonstrates a rare combination of intense difference with an irrefutable sensibility for pop.

reading the lyrics makes her much easier to follow. there is a logic to each song that you can put together once you get a sense of what she's singing about. its just hard to keep up with her unless you know what she's saying, its like keeping up with a great rapper, but maybe even more difficult because the music is constantly twisting and turning to mirror the emotions of her lyrics.

xpost: yeah, i pointed those out because they're incredibly odd and catchy and make perfect sense in context

or "with your life

the only thing in my mind

i pull you from the water"

i just don't think there's anything else like this on record. correct me if i'm wrong, by all means.

http://www.alwaysontherun.net/kate.jpg

"I'll track him 'til he drops

Then I'll pop him one he won't see"

love that pic!

Fuck me this album still has the power to astonish...unbelievable

Very much otm - I think it's actually my favourite album of hers. When I first heard it (about '89 I guess) the tracks awash with Fairlight sounded a bit hokey to my indie teen ears, but these days I'm always amazed by the singular artistry of the whole damn thing.

<3

Jeez, I just had a look at Amazon UK with an eye to replacing my (cassette) copy with the cd and it's £59.47 new! from £15 used! Cannot believe this can have been allowed to go oop?

both hounds of love and the dreaming are OOP in the US

what

yes

Okay, remember. Okay, remember.

That is absolute insanity, cutty!

definitely my favorite, not really close. this, art bears and xtc from about the same period form a kind of art pop required reading list for me

It's not just her best album.....

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/kate-bush-the-dreaming-round-17-toms-selection/