New Kate Bush album released November 21st - 7 songs, 65 minutes!

Just found out about this today, and I'm very excited and not a little intrigued. I've been a huge fan of Kate Bush since I was a kid. The track list is - for Kate Bush - extremely unusual:
 
Album Title: 50 Words For Snow
 
1."Snowflake"  9:55
2."Lake Tahoe"  11:26
3."Misty"  13:49
4."Wildman"  7:03
5."Snowed in at Wheeler Street"  8:11
6."50 Words for Snow"  8:10
7."Among Angels"  6:55
 
Difficult to imagine what a Kate Bush track lasting almost quarter of an hour will sound like, given her usual staple of beautifully crafted 4-5 minute pop songs. 
 
Given the theme (snow/winter), I'm hoping this will be a very sparse album, just her unearthly voice, the piano, and perhaps some strings and occasional guitar flourishes.
 
2011 is shaping up to be an uncommonly great year for new music from legendary artists. Dream Theater, Lindsey Buckingham, Opeth, Kate Bush, Neal Morse. All I now need is for Peter Gabriel to magically spring a new album of fresh material on the world in the next 3 months and I'll be set.   

I read an article about her a few months back.  I just didn't know where to start.  Any good songs/albums to check out?

silentman1994

I read an article about her a few months back.  I just didn't know where to start.  Any good songs/albums to check out?

 
Hounds of Love.
 
Buy. Now.

Kate fell off of my radar screen after "Sensual World". My favorite song was from her greatest hits, "running up that Hill"

amazing voice.
amazing talent. 
 
want.

Schroedhelm

silentman1994

I read an article about her a few months back.  I just didn't know where to start.  Any good songs/albums to check out?

Hounds of Love.

Buy. Now.

+1

This has me very intrigued indeed......
Kate Bush is an absolute favorite ever since I discovered her around the release of Hounds of Love. Good place to start....
 

Hmmm...love the idea of a more "stretched out" album...
 
 

I loved Kate since The Dreaming came out. But I think the worst thing she ever did was
put a studio in her home after Hounds of Love. Ever since The Sensual World. Her albums have sounded 
godawful.  Aerial was a bit of an improvement. So, I do have some hope and I'm looking forward to the new album.

I have to check some more by this gal. I only have The Dreaming and I think some of the songs are a bit silly for my liking, but I really like her vocals most of the time. (The hee-haws at the end of Get Out Of My House are a bit much, though.)

I just picked up 50 Words for Snow. I think it's a great album if you're in the right mood. Given the length of the tracks and the extremely sparse nature of the music, it's kind of a musical painting of a vast snowy field. The track that got me hooked was the title track... what a creative use of lyrics. An NPR reporter mused that the song might be about Kate's creative process. Like she sets out a task for herself (thinking of 50 words for snow), and then meticulously chisels away at it.
 
And you drummers should check out this album because Steve Gadd's playing here is wonderful. Understated, minimal, but providing just the right amount of groove and support.

By now Kate has completely turned into the female version of David Sylvian. And 50 Words for Snow is just a lovely album. Definitely one of her very best.

It's been a week or so now since I got this album, and a day hasn't gone by when I haven't turned down the lights, poured a glass of red, and listened to it from first note to last. The first 3 pieces (seems wrong somehow to call them 'songs', given their composition) are sublime. This is exactly the kind of music I've been waiting for from her - very sparse, lots of spaces, it breathes. Lyrically, she's on wonderful form. That image - "turn off the lights, turn on a starry sky" - is just plain cool :) Not Dostoevsky, sure, but still such a wonderful image. I'd never thought of it that way before, but yeah, that's often what I do here when we have 24 hours of darkness for 4 months - switch off the lights in my apartment and thus illuminate the world outside. Anyway, I digress. 
 
The track 'Misty' is like Kate herself - very beautiful, and not a little disturbing (a 14-minute song about a woman having a sexual relationship with a snowman...but again, such a neat image of watching the one you love and need fade away from you piece by piece). 
 
In short, this album will be played on many, many winter evenings to come. 

I thought it was boring as hell, but then again I never really liked Kate Bush in the first place.
Funny thing is that most (modern) female artists who sound like her I actually DO like.
I have the same with Simon&Garfunkel: don't like them that much but some newer clones (fleet foxes anyone?) I really dig.

king_pin


I thought it was boring as hell, but then again I never really liked Kate Bush in the first place.
Funny thing is that most (modern) female artists who sound like her I actually DO like.
I have the same with Simon&Garfunkel: don't like them that much but some newer clones (fleet foxes anyone?) I really dig.

It's certainly an album for a certain mood, I'll grant you. I mean it's hardly driving music, or something to put on at a party. This kind of music suits (for me at least) the same kind of mood I always have when I listen to Godspeed You Black Emperor. Let's call it 'melancholia', something like that. 
 
I dunno...as I write this, it's half 3 in the morning in north-west Russia. The album is playing. From my window I'm looking at a dark forest which stretches on for a thousand kilometres, until it hits the Arctic Circle, not a single town along the way to disturb the emptiness and silence. It's a frightening but beautiful scene. This music fits it perfectly, I think. 
 
 

I can absolutely understand why you have to be in a certain mood for this kinda music, I can't listen to GYBE or any post rockband or chamber music ensemble fot that matter just any time of the week.
It's just that this album doesn't grab me in any sort of way.
 
Btw the landscape you described inspired me to put up Sigur Rós () :)
Thats the ultimate winter album!

king_pin

Funny thing is that most (modern) female artists who sound like her I actually DO like.

Actually, i don't think anyone sounds like Kate. It's just that Kate set a trend for individualistic offbeat, but at the same commercially successful female singer/songwriters in the late 70s and 80s, and so everyone from Björk to Tori Amos to Bat for Lashes to Florence and the Machine is compared to her. It's more a similarity in ideals than in actual sound.

So I never listened to Kate Bush before....not sure why she's consistently missed my radar over the years.  Thanks to this thread I'm enjoying going through her discography on spotify.  
 
 

I just checked out some videos on YouTube. What was said above is true. Perfect music to listen to on a snowy night with a bottle of red wine. The video with the snow man was kind of warped. I turned it off because my son was in the room. I doubt that it would get too graphic, but just a bit tainted none the less. Kate is a true artist!

*BUMP*

Picked up my copy today. Wonderful album. After one listen...I think one needs to be in a "Sigur Ros/ Devin Townsend Project - Ghost" mood to fully appreciate it.