kate bush "aerial"

Hello? This is Kate Bush we're talking about! Since when has "cheese" been an optional extra?

x-post exactly.

"Somewhere In Between" reminds me of Marillion's Afraid of Sunlight!

xpost

COMPLETELY otm... "naffness" is a great word, innit?

If she'd just released A Sea of Honey by itself I think I'd be a bit underwhelmed ... but... A Sky of Honey is a work of genius.

Tim OTM here, I think. (Based on one listen only, mind)

Despite the Don't Put Your Daughter On The Record Mrs Astley! moment on Sky, this could well be her greatest achievement.

"Bertie" the song is as awkward as I'd feared, the only song I actively disliked. Some other bits of Sea are a touch underwhelming. I do like the washing machine song though. And "Pi" is more genius. As others have said, Kate's not just singing numbers, it's how she sings them that's so striking.

I was trying to think of what it reminded me of. The Blue Nile? Talk Talk? And then: of course! It's worthy of Bark Psychosis.

there's a mournfulness to the whole record that belies the surface joy. it doesn't seem that naive once you look beneath the new-age stuff.

So, what of the people who don't happen to already like Kate Bush? How will this record speak to them?

otm

You want the honest truth? This thread makes me hope I never have to hear the bloody thing!

I find it hard to imagine a non-Kate fan listening to Aerial actually.

Yep

I haven't gone back and listened to her old stuff again. But I never found her cheesy before. And I am a Kate Bush fan. I agree with Jerry the Nipper re: eccentricity vs. mushy contentment. A track like Mrs Bartolozzi has that old quality for me. It's wonderful. Too much of the other stuff is bland.

Dull and insipid: a bland little drama.
Having little or no distinctive flavor: bland cooking.

I like a little irritant, a little stimulant, a little flavor, myself :)

Going back to the discussion about comparisons with earlier LPs...

Most of, say, The Dreaming was Kate identifying a character and then writing a song around her (Houdini's assistant, the wife of an Irish terrorist, etc.)

Over successive later albums, the songs have become more and more about herself, her family and loved ones, I think. Consequently, fewer character studies. Aerial is clearly her least outward-looking record yet. I can understand why people might not respond to that.

there's a word that could use a dictionary definition. pretty meaningless at this point.

And A Sky of Honey is so James/Woolf-esque it could be about anyone.

not the way i'm using it. i'm trying to challenge the taken-as-a-given belief that easy listening is bad!

apparently SOME people here needed to be reminded.

As I recall the diff b/w us Jerry is that I love Maria to bit.

I don't think these are quite the same - you could definitely picture Kate as [character] in the older songs. There's no body swapping going on here.

And A Sky of Honey is so James/Woolf-esque it could be about anyone
I dunno. It struck me it could only be set in and around Kate's house and garden, although I accept the message is intended to be universal (and I'm not sure where Rolf Harris fits in yet - is he supposed to be God-as-painter?).

Totally get the Woolf reference though ("Mrs Bartolozzi" also seemed very Woolf-esque to me).

I am glad you have not RENEGED in your view of the LP.

Did anyone else hear the Radcliffe interview last night? I was slightly touched by the people mailing him to say 'I got up and went to the Piccadilly Station HMV at 7am to buy the LP', etc.

Though I found some of her statements unconvincing or incoherent, and doing (at least, releasing) nothing for 12 years is the laziest road to being a revered legend.

This record is very much the antidote to the last two that way (which incidentally, I didn't hate at all).

She even manages to make birdsong(!) sound great (by putting it massively upfront & vivid in the mix?) which is some achievement at this point in time.

*Is this what you mean by 'easy-listening' JBR?

No, no, no. That's Coldplay's "X&Y". You have the wrong thread.

As far as blandness, I think whoever mentioned Zen had it OTM. Two sides of the same coin.