On \u201cSnowflake,\u201d the introductory track to 50 Words For Snow<\/i>, Kate Bush croons: \u201cThe world is so loud, keep falling, I\u2019ll find you.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s any artist for whom the world seemed overly loud, it\u2019s probably Kate Bush. For someone who shot to popularity in a distinctly excessive moment in popular music history, she\u2019s never seemed to relish the spotlight. More than anything, Kate Bush appears to treat her fame as a duty, a necessary by-product of her nearly unparalleled talents as a songstress. <\/p>\n
In this sense, her 2011 album 50 Words For Snow<\/i> is a brief emergence from a decades-long retreat. Coming six years after the release of 2005\u2019s Aerial<\/i>, an album that itself broke a 12-year album silence from Bush, 50 Words<\/i> comes at an interesting point in her career. No longer beholden to a major label and with, admittedly, very little left to prove, 50 Words <\/i>is an album for Kate Bush and Kate Bush only. This context enabled Bush to create an album that is, underneath its grand and cinematic concept, a meditation on the life of an art-pop icon who never truly wanted to become one. <\/p>\n
As the title suggests, this record is a wintery one. Bush described the album as \u201cset against the backdrop of falling snow,\u201d and this sense of world-building is a central component of the listening experience, right from the start. <\/p>\n
The aforementioned \u201cSnowflake\u201d kicks the LP off, and we immediately know that this is a different kind of record for Bush. We\u2019re not getting a \u201cRunning Up That Hill\u201d or a \u201cBabooshka\u201d to introduce the album; hell, we\u2019re not even getting a \u201cSymphony In Blue.\u201d This nine-minute monster moves glacially, driven almost entirely by the simple pairing of Bush\u2019s piano and vocal. \u201cSnowflake\u201d is also one of the first instances in which the album draws considerable (and refreshing) inspiration from early post-rock acts, particularly some Laughing Stock<\/i>-era Talk Talk, in its free-flowing structure and subtle jazz elements. And while Bush is long past her once-electrifying vocal prime, there\u2019s a quiet, tentative beauty to her performance here (and nearly everywhere on this record). Lyrically, with its first-person humanization of a snowflake, the track sets the tone for the entire album\u2014spiritual musings on the season of winter, with emotional, distinctly human<\/i> undertones. <\/p>\n
\u201cWild Man\u201d served as the album\u2019s lead single and is about the closest thing we get to a classic Kate Bush alternative-pop hit, albeit filtered through the patient, snowy lens that permeates 50 Words<\/i>. It\u2019s a decidedly subtle single, but the way in which the timbre of the synths bounces off Bush\u2019s voice is\u2014dare I say it\u2014Hounds Of Love<\/i>-esque? And, lyrically, this track is another example of Bush using the album\u2019s wintery theme to reflect, describing (in her typically pictorial way) sightings of a Yeti in the Himalayan wilderness. Kate Bush is a \u201cWild Man\u201d in and of herself\u2014reclusive, even as the outside world desperately attempts to track her down. <\/p>\n
Sonically, the deeper cuts generally fall somewhere in between the two aforementioned songs. There\u2019s the winding and cinematic \u201cMisty,\u201d the cavernous title track, and the gorgeous piano-led closer \u201cAmong Angels.\u201d That\u2019s before even mentioning the Bush\/Elton John duet \u201cSnowed In At Wheeler Street,\u201d a surprisingly high-profile and well-executed collaboration for a record as intimate as this one. <\/p>\n
The one major gripe I hold with 50 Words <\/i>is that the album occasionally falls victim to its own atmosphere and commitment to sonic cohesion. Over the course of these very long and meditative tracks, the album has a tendency to blend together in a way that isn\u2019t exactly flattering or exciting. There are moments on \u201cLake Tahoe\u201d and, to a lesser extent, \u201cMisty,\u201d where Bush just seems to lose herself in the snowscape that this album conjures so well. <\/p>\n
Now, as I\u2019ve alluded to, 50 Words For Snow<\/i> is not an album for the impatient, nor is it an album for those uninitiated into the Kate Bush canon. To a certain extent, this record requires the listener to \u201cbuy in\u201d\u2014to buy into the atmosphere, the world, the mythos that Bush is trying to construct through these long, winding tracks. However, if you\u2019re able to navigate your way through what is a dense, esoteric blizzard of an album, there\u2019s a quiet, art-pop gem waiting on the other side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":34669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6100],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46524","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kate-bush","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46524"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}