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Inspired by Ganesh's namecheck in another thread.
The hugely-disappointing Red Shoes turned me off Kate's work for a while: recently, though, I dug out The Sensual World and found myself weeping with joy by the first chorus of "Love and Anger." Yeah, this one holds up...
Kate is undeniably an important figure, if only because of the way she has dealt with the industry: her insistence on producing her own stuff (production has been historically, and remains, a boys' club for boffins); her refusal to tour; and her control over the presentation and marketing of the Kate Bush brand. No meeting us half-way—if we approach Kate, we approach her on her terms.
Then there's the mystique. Like the Brontës or Jane Austen, Kate Bush moves in a tightly-constricted social circles composed largely of family and close friends—and, like the Brontës, makes art by imagining herself out of that circles: as Mrs. Houdini, as Wilhelm Reich's son, as a Viet Cong suicide bomber. And yet some of her most moving work takes the Jane Austen tack—forging something of resonance out of the very stuff of her tiny life.
Consider, also, the way that listeners have reacted. It's hard to be neutral about her—although much of the negative reaction to her stuff is implicitly a reaction against the zeal and single-mindedness of her fans—which can be off-putting. But, as with, say, Neil Gaiman (a comparable figure, in many ways), it is unfair to let the geekiness of the fanbase prevent a fair assessment of the work.
Your thoughts on Kate Bush, please. Yea or nay> Genius or whacko? Which albums? Which modes and constructs—the self-contained popsongs, or the radio-play-style suites? What does her image say about modern womanhood? Is there still a place for her in today's pop landscape? |
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). I mean, Rush has a similar problem where they're judged by their fanbase as well.