FEATURE:
A Romantic Kiss of Domestic Bliss
Aerial at Fifteen: Kate Bush’s Mrs. Bartolozzi
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ON 7th November….
Kate Bush’s eighth studio album, Aerial, is fifteen - and it is an album that, I hope, will get a lot more airplay around the anniversary. For one, you do not really hear too many of its tracks on the radio. I remember when King of the Mountain was released in October 2005 and it was this much-heralded big return from Bush – her first single in eleven years. I can understand why people were so shocked and moved by King of the Mountain. It was not only Bush’s first musical offering in the twenty-first century, but it was a big song with lots of interesting lines and a great lead vocal – plus, the video was pretty awesome! I have covered that song before and, in the run-up to Aerial’s fifteenth birthday next month, I will feature a couple of other tracks from the album that I am especially interested in. Today, I will talk about, what I think is my favourite songs from Aerial: the enticing, beautiful and ultra-Kate Bush-esque Mrs. Bartolozzi. I say that because it has all the hallmarks of why we love her. On a double album, there are plenty of treasures to be found, but there is so much to love about Mrs. Bartolozzi. It is nicely positioned on the album, and it falls between Bertie, and How to Be Invisible. I think the first disc/side of Aerial starts with quite a propulsive song, and the energy level builds up nicely as we head towards the closer, A Coral Room.
Mrs. Bartolozzi has plenty of drama, wonderful images, and it boasts one of Kate Bush’s best vocals. When I saw it is very Bush-esque, I mean there is that wonderful way she seamlessly integrates the mundane with the fantastical. I guess it sort of mirrors her: the fact that she is very normal and nice, but there is this aura and sense of magic around her that one cannot help but be blown away by. It is a precious song to me, as I remember buying Aerial when it came out, and I think we had a snowy winter in 2005. I recall listening to Mrs. Bartolozzi through headphones and looking out to the family garden and seeing the family build snowmen. It was an odd contrast between the cold and wintery wonder of the outdoors, with the warm and indoors nature of Mrs Bartolozzi. One can listen to the song and see it purely about a woman (Mrs. Bartolozzi) grappling with a dirty floor, some intertwined clothing in the washing machine and some stubborn stains. Most other songwriters would not even approach housework and domestic chores as a lubricant for inspiration, but who else but Kate Bush could not only write about such things without batting an eyelid but do so with such relish and brilliance?! Some interviews conducted with Bush in 2005 (I shall drop a couple in the feature) speculate that Aerial is so-called because of washing detergent of the same name – albeit with the spelling ‘Ariel’. Is Mrs. Bartolozzi’s washing machine symphony the heart and core of Aerial?!
It is to my trusted and ultra-reliable source, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, for some guidance, as Bush talked about Mrs. Bartolozzi in a couple of interviews:
“Is it about a washing machine? I think it's a song about Mrs. Bartolozzi. She's this lady in the song who...does a lot of washing (laughs). It's not me, but I wouldn't have written the song if I didn't spend a lot of time doing washing. But, um, it's fictitious. I suppose, as soon as you have a child, the washing suddenly increases. And uh, what I like too is that a lot of people think it's funny. I think that's great, because I think that actually, it's one of the heaviest songs I've ever written! (laughs)
Clothes are...very interesting things, aren't they? Because they say such an enormous amount about the person that wears them. They have a little bit of that person all over them, little bits of skin cells and...what you wear says a lot about who you are, and who you think you are...
So I think clothes, in themselves are very interesting. And then it was the idea of this woman, who's kind of sitting there looking at all the washing going around, and she's got this new washing machine, and the idea of these clothes, sort of tumbling around in the water, and then the water becomes the sea and the clothes...and the sea...and the washing machine and the kitchen... I just thought it was an interesting idea to play with.
What I wanted to get was the sense of this journey, where you're sitting in front of this washing machine, and then almost as if in a daydream, you're suddenly standing in the sea. (Ken Bruce show, BBC Radio 2, 1 November 2005).
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton/National Portrait Gallery
Well, I do do a lot of washing [chuckles]. I'm sure I would never have written the song if I didn't... You know, just this woman, in her house, with her washing. And then the idea of taking the water in the washing machine with all the clothes, and the water then becoming the sea... and I also think there's something very interesting about clothes. They're kind of people without the people in them, if you know what I mean? [Kate laughs] They all have our scent, and pieces of us on them, somehow. (Front Row, BBC4, 4 November 2005)”.
It is only to be expected that the routine and rigour of housework should feed into Bush’s work and compel her imagination. She gave birth to her son, Beritie, in 1998, so he was still very small when the song was written. I can only imagine her watching him – perhaps whilst writing or just watching the day while away – or frowning when he accidentally spills something on the floor or covers himself in food, knowing that it was an extra trip to the washing machine and a long clean-up job! Sub-textually or directly, a lot of Aerial revolves around Bertie and Bush enjoying a new phase of her life. On paper, Mrs. Bartolozzi might sound like a song one might skip, but there is beauty, eroticism, and some of Bush’s most compelling images in the song.
The first verse is Bush, as the narrator or heroine, going about her business and attending to the washing and cleaning. Even though there is exposition and Bush setting up the song’s centrepiece of the swirling and intoxicating washing machine, there is something hypnotic and important in her voice. Few could sing “All over the hall carpet/I took my mop and my bucket/And I cleaned and I cleaned/The kitchen floor/Until it sparkled” and make it shine (no pun intended!) and imbed, but one immerses themselves in the song and stands beside Bush/the protagonist as she labours with a mixture of ardour and pride. For those who wondered what Bush had been up to after 1993’s The Red Shoes, I guess we get a sort of glimpse into her world, in the sense that the demands and importance of home was more important than recording or the promotional duties associated with releasing an album. There is no real chorus as such to the song, but the mantra, “Washing machine/Washing machine” is spellbinding. I love how the first verse changes and moves as the lyrics are delivered. The piano drives the song, and Bush’s voice flows, rises and elongates. The mood changes when we get to the chorus/washing machine lines, as she delivers the line…then there is a pause…then there is a longer pause…then her voice rises gorgeously as ‘washing machine’s is sung in this angelic tone.
PHOTO CREDIT: @anniespratt/Unsplash
It is a beautiful passage of the song, and it is made all the more unusual because of what she is singing about and whether the emotion being displayed is one of admiration, curiosity, or something else. Since Kate Bush’s career began, I think the media have sexualised her and they always pick apart her songs and sort of fixate on that side of things. I remember when 50 Words for Snow came out in 2011, and there is a song on the album, Misty, where there is a sexual encounter between a woman and a snowman. A lot of interviewers highlighted that song and probably misinterpreted it in a way – it is not quite as unusual and lurid as many might out, and it is not Bush in the song but a protagonist. I love that track, and it is a really imaginative and original one where there is this unorthodox bond. The same could be said, to a degree, of Mrs. Bartolozzi. Consider the lines in the second verse: “I watched them going round and round/My blouse wrapping itself around your trousers/Oh the waves are going out/My skirt floating up around my waist/As I wade out into the surf”. There is an element of charge and purr to Bush’s vocal, and it is evident that she is letting her mind wander as she washes the clothes dance. As the piano charges forward and Bush’s voice grows ever-dreamier and engrossing, the images that come forth provoke the imagination. “Little fish swim between my legs”, again, could be seen as quite sexual, but I think it is someone finding strange wonder and fascination in the ordinary.
One could see the song as Mrs. Bartolozzi transfixed by the motion of the washing machine as she allows her some escape from the day’s labour, but there does seem to be this sense of loss and pining. The lines “I think I see you standing outside/But it’s just your shirt/Hanging on the washing line/Waving it’s arm as the wind blows by/And it looks so alive/Nice and white”, to me, suggests that there is someone in her life who is either departed or a lost love. With no other musicians on the track, we just have the sublime vocal (and backing vocals) of Kate Bush and her piano. Recorded at her home studio, there is a different sound to previous albums. I feel greater intimacy and nuance through Aerial than a lot of her earlier albums, and Bush sounds relaxed and really in her element. I think that she needed the time after The Red Shoes to step away and decompress, as there was a lot of stress in her life. That album did not get overly-great reviews, and there was a lot of loss in her life around 1992/1993. Her life and work changed significantly in the years after The Red Shoes, and Aerial was the first album (apart from maybe Hounds of Love) where Bush is both in control and seems free of demands and stress – even though there would have been bad days and EMI at her door asking when an album is coming out!
PHOTO CREDIT: @sanasaidi/Unsplash
Maybe some would consider the final lines, “Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy/Get that dirty shirty clean/Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy/Make those cuffs and collars gleam/Everything clean and shiny” as a little on the nose and self-parodying, but there is a child-like wonder and playfulness to the lines that is hard to resist! Then, we get the final ‘washing machine’ calls, and the song comes to an end. I almost think that Mrs. Bartolozzi should have closed the first disc of Aerial – not to question Bush’s sequencing and decision-making -, as it packs so much in and it ends with quite a quiver of emotion. That said, A Coral Room, is the longest song on that disc/side, and it is quite an emotional number, so I think it was actually the right call to end the first disc, A Sea of Honey, with that song. I am interested by the titles of both discs: A Sea of Honey for the first, and A Sky of Honey for the second disc. The second disc is a conceptual suite documenting the lifespan and activities of an English day, and each of the nine tracks are best enjoyed as a single experience. I wonder where Bush got the idea of a sky and sea of honey and what meaning that has to her. That is a detour, but it is interesting comparing the sounds of the first and second discs/albums and the themes of the songs.
PHOTO CREDIT: @jsnbrsc/Unsplash
Mrs. Bartolozzi will mean something slightly different to everyone, but I love it because it builds and builds, and Bush elevates the seeming banality of cleaning and the laundry and turns it into this mini-symphony. I sort of wonder what it would be like if she had released Mrs. Bartolizzi as a single. King of the Mountain was the only single, but I feel Mrs. Bartolozzi, and A Coral Room would have made great singles! Perhaps she wasn’t keen to promote singles and wanted people to enjoy the album as a whole, but one can only wonder about the visuals of Mrs. Bartolozzi and how the song would have been treated through a video. If, at the start of Mrs. Bartolozzi, the heroine laments the state of the house – “I remember it was that Wednesday/Oh when it rained and it rained/They traipsed mud all over the house/It took hours and hours to scrub it out/All over the hall carpet” -, soon the emotional dynamic and direction of the song changes. Before Aerial turns fifteen, I am looking back on particular songs and going deep. I don’t think many reviewers at the time spent a lot of time with individual songs – as Aerial is a double album, I guess one can only skim the surface -, so it is good to listen to them now and hear them expand and unfurl. Although Aerial is busy with wonderfully-written and amazing songs, I do think that Mrs. Bartolozzi is…
AMONG the absolute best.