I feel I want to be up on the roof
Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.
20/11/05 : Aerial - Kate Bush
I listened to this back then and remember quite liking it, but not liking it enough to revisit it.
Hmmm. There is a lot to like here (it's Kate after all!) but it somehow feels all a bit artfully constructed in its ethereality (is that a word?). I was left feeling like I wanted something with a bit more meat on the bone - maybe if I listened to it multiple times I'd get to appreciate the nuance, but I just don't feel that's going to happen. There's nothing wrong with it all - it's just that you can't help but feel that, for a lot of it, there might actually be nothing to it.
I did like "A Coral Room" though with its lovely piano work on it and "Sunset" had a bit more to it than most. You do have to laugh at "Pi" though where she sings it to X decimal places (it feels a bit like reading out the telephone book as your art school final project) and "Mrs Bartolozzi" does get a bit twee when she's singing about her washing machine - I definitely did an eye-roll at that point.
We're at #8 in the charts this week on her second week of a sixteen week run, with it peaking at #3 in its debut week - which didn't feel like a long run, but was pretty much what The Red Shoes and Sensual World did for her in the 90s. The top five this week were Madonna (a new entry), Take That (ditto), Westlife, Robbie Williams and Il Divo and the next highest new entry was Green Day (#6) - and I'm going to spend a bit more time talking about this.
It's Bullet In A Bible, their live album (recorded in, all of all places, Milton Keynes) - which I didn't know when I started listening to it because I thought it was the record for the week. Live albums are obviously completely unacceptable for consideration, but I'd have to say this was immensely enjoyable with really good sound and crowd participation on it - and a lot more substance than Kate later provided. Wikipedia tells me there were 130,000 people there and it was 32 degrees, so it must have been quite the experience - if you've not heard it and you like a bit of Green Day then check it out. We also have one more new entry in the top ten which is Babyshambles (#10) and I'm pretty certain this will be absolutely atrocious.
Back to Kate, Wikipedia tells me it's her eighth album released after a twelve year hiatus and generally people love it (it's only heathens like me that can't appreciate the nuance). Something I completely missed out on is that the second half is supposed to be one continuous track - I relistened to some of the "gaps" and they still feel like separate songs to me. It also tells me that on "Pi" she sings it to 78 decimal places, and then sings it from 101-137, which sounds like a VERY Kate kinda thing to do. And in another nice Kate touch, the album cover is the waveform of a blackbird's song.
Apparently the album originally featured Rolf Harris, but he was removed and I imagine the album was markedly improved as a result. The only single released from the album was "King Of The Mountain" which had a cover of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" as the B side which I listened to because I was intrigued as to what she'd done with it and it's a surprisingly straightforward cover! The critics were rapturous about the album - even before it was released and it did pretty well across Europe but didn't get to #1 anywhere, with #2 in Finland being as good as things got (and the few Finns I've met have been quite enigmatic types, so I can quite imagine them liking Kate).
"Customers also listened to" Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega and Morrissey. Huh - what is HE doing on that list?!? I've a lot of time for Kate and the way she forges her own path, but this album has yet to convince me - I prefer the challenge of her earlier work to the general lack of challenge that this offers.
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