Kate Bush: Aerial
Been musing on Kate this week thanks to fellow posters on this thread! So, Aerial has been getting a few plays over the last couple of days, shamefully I’ve not listened to it for some years, musically I was in other places with what I was listening to, but my impressions of Aerial now are more consolidated. On the one hand some of the music still sounds slightly dated in parts much as it did on its release in 2005, too many preset drum and synth loops, there’s a world of difference between being deliberately retro, or just ending up sounding dated, and this is more apparent on disc two than on disc one for me.
I just hope she open’s herself out to more progressive electro-acoustic influences in future, but I remain with everyone who shares the opinion that disc two is not just the best part of the album, but is the album, a tad whimsical at moments, but another gem in the crown of Kate’s great talent, and if only more ‘artists of talent’ would have a go at writing linked theme works, uh, oh, the dreaded ‘concept’ album rears its head again, well bring it back I say!
Disc one, yes still one or two great tracks here to visit, like Joanni, King Of The Mountain, and Pi, but its an uneven experience for me, and in truth I still don’t wish to go to some personal places she wants to take us, such as The Coral Room, or Mrs Bartolozzi. The whole of Aerial has a middle-aged sense of reality about it, no rocketships into the sky, or racing over mountaintops here, but over the last few years in my own life I’ve come to understand that reasons exist for this, and that events happen, and self progress or your enthusiasm for things can feel like its going to be forever prohibited to some degree, but its all normal, and one day it will all balance out again.
There I go, sounding all serious and introspective, well I’ve got Kate to thank for that, that’s just one of the jobs of a great artist, in the past she’s either lifted us up, or made us stop and think, here she’s content just to pause, and let us reflect with her on the passing of a peaceful day, and the beauty of the slowly changing sky above...
