I found a book on how to be invisible…
Kate Bush would probably be the ideal person to ask how to be invisible, at the time of this album’s release having spent pretty much fifteen years willfully under the radar after spending the eighties as a major star. Aerial made for a rather ostentatious return, all things considered – hook-filled and highly musically engaging, and a double album no less.
What characterizes Kate Bush’s songwriting is a sense of playfulness. Lead track (and single) “King of the Mountain” is an oddly pensive-sounding song about Elvis Presley, comparing him to Charles Foster Kane, Graceland as Xanadu, wondering if perhaps if he is still out there, he left it behind because of the artifice of it all rediscovering the joy of anonymity. This is something of a theme on the first disc of the album, titled A Sea of Honey. “Pi” presents a man obsessed with the number, losing himself in calculation of circles. “Mrs. Bartolozzi” finds sexuality in the washing machine’s entwining of clothing. “How to Be Invisible” (which features some lovely guitar work) recites Kate’s recipe for invisibility, the witchcraft of anonymity – ‘You take a pinch of keyhole and fold yourself up, you cut along the dotted lines and think inside out.’ “Joanni” is an unearthly appreciation of Joan of Arc that borders eroticism.
The second disc, A Sky of Honey is more of a linear statement, the nine songs tracing the afternoon through sunset into the night’s dreams. The sky is like a painting and the rain runs the colours of sea and sky into a honeyed haze of sundown and smears shadows across the ground as night falls. The songs are bright and gauzy for the sunlight hours and darker and more urgent after nightfall. It is a simple theme beautifully executed, and “Nocturn” is incredible. ‘We become panoramic,’ indeed. ‘All the dreamers awaken!’
However, most of all Kate Bush is an extraordinary vocalist. Her voice is beautiful when she mimics birdsong and it’s beautiful when she simply recites a hundred or so digits of pi. Her voice does a lot of unusual things, as when she imitates the sound of the washing in “Mrs. Bartolozzi” (’slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy’), or the strange tremble ending each line in the final verse of “How to Be Invisible” and the sighing deilvery of the bridge of “Joanni” (and the bizarre humming/grunting in the final minute). “Aerial Tal” finds her duetting with a bird and for the majority of A Sky of Honey she takes a birdsong approach to her vocals, and on the closing title track, she laughs in an echo of the birds.
From anonymity to shouting from the rooftops. A fascinating and unique performance overall, the second disc especially strong. Kate Bush is a singular talent who will hopefully not be away for so long before the next time around.
80% => **** —Currently # 25 on my best of 2005 list (God, what a year that was)—
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