26th...An album of stories

Never for Ever. Four and a half stars.

This has to be the most feminine CD I've ever heard. My first Kate Bush record, and note it does not delve deepest into the female psyche (Katell Keineg wins that prize), but it has a uniquely feminine flair to it that I've never heard elsewhere...the pseudo-operatic range, the delicate arrangements....

Anyway, 1980 saw Kate Bush as a successful artist, idiosyncratic, challenging and wildly ambitious. Ambition creates magic on some of the tracks, and absolute failure elsewhere.

Babooshka leads off, a hit single and it reminds me of Joni Mitchell in its forcing the melody to adhere to the lyrics intricacies, rather than the usual way round. The chorus is surprisingly ferocious, the story fascinates and the music makes various creative accents.

It makes a bracing intro, segueing perfectly into Delius (Song of Summer), featuring bass for contrast. Referencing classical music, though Kate's imagistic lyric is hardly audible. A delicate atmosphere is crafted with her voice at an exquisite, faraway high pitch, and it is one of my favorites.

Blow Away is a failure, though I'm not sure why. Personal preference says the melody clunks and her delivery is prissy beyond endurance.

All We Ever Look For gets back on the right course. This one is magic, pure and simple. Intricate melodic interplays, her voice breathtaking and the whistling riff infectiously catchy.

The delicate structures continue on Egypt, a love letter to the same. At the two and a half minute mark it makes an exhilarating shift from whimsical to gothic. The magic is most definitely at work on this cut!

The Wedding List (lyric based on The Bride Wore Black, a film) deals with the gruesome scenario of the groom shot at his wedding and the bride out for revenge. Kate clearly doesn't mean a word of it; she sings like a teenager with an attitude problem over an upbeat melody. Take it seriously, already! Don't make pop songs out of that stuff.

Violin is much better. Nothing fancy, just a manic rock track featuring violin heavily (duh!). It's fun in a silly way. Lyric says nothing, but Kate must have had a blast. Get into it and it carries you along.

The Infant Kiss (another film reference, this time The Innocents) returns to seriousness. A governess is frightened and disconcerted by her attraction to her young male charge. The guilt, fear and confusion is plainly depicted, and Kate's spin on this story is far more subtle.

Night Scented Stock exists merely as a choral bridge between The Infant Kiss and Army Dreamers. Brilliant for that, as a song it doesn't stand on its own.

Army Dreamers is in waltz time, catching instant attention. An indirect, strangely moving account of a dead soldier's family. Told with constant slang and in a sweeter-than-thou voice, backed with male vocalists (as on Babooshka/Delius), it is another moment where ambition pays off.

It's actually only a warm-up for Breathing, Never for Ever's masterpiece. Narrated by a child in the womb breathing in nuclear fallout, it is so harrowing I can hardly stand it. A miniature song suite, including a broadcast describing the sight of an explosion. I do not know if it is a famous broadcast or not. Then there's Roy Harper in the background at the climax whilst Kate loses all coherency and the child dies (or why else would her voice cut out so abruptly?). The crowning achievement.

So despite a preoccupation with the weird and macabre, which could easily have turned more than The Wedding List into a gimmick, this album succeeds on most fronts. Kate is first and foremost a storyteller, and this set of stories is nearly first rate.