FEATURE:
The Reviews Are In…
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX
Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Nine
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I will do another couple of features…
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX
about Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn, as the live album turn seven in November. There is a lot to discuss regarding this incredible album. As, nine years ago today (26th August) Kate Bush stepped onto the stage at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith to start the first of her twenty-two nights, it is worth looking at how people reacted to it. Obviously, the reception was positive. Rather than generally glowing and fawning over a live spectacle, it is interesting how various sources reacted to Before the Dawn. What worked for the critics. Stuff that maybe didn’t. Bush herself said that she didn’t read reviews; people did come up to her and say that they were all very positive. This might sound like me not doing a lot of work here – just copying and pasting reviews -, but it is a case of selecting relevant and standout paragraphs from the right sources. In trying to understand why Before the Dawn is so historic and important, one needs to read reviews and get a real feel of what went down there. It is a residency that amazed everyone was there, though the different impressions from critics is one I want to focus on. I have chosen three different reviews of Before the Dawn – two of the three are for the opening night of the twenty-two -, so that you can see what was being highlighted. The first, and one I have spotlighted a few times, was from Pete Paphides. He was there on the third night – 29th (she had 28th off) August, 2014 -, and noted his takeaways (please read the entire review, as it is one of the most detailed and beautiful I have seen about the experience of seeing Before the Dawn):
“In the foyer of the Hammersmith Odeon before the third of Kate Bush’s first shows in 35 years, it’s hard to make generalisations. But I’ll allow myself this one about the guy next to me who, despite never having met me, keeps passing his binoculars to me so I can see what he’s seeing. And the male twentysomething fan who will brave the tube home dressed in a white cotton tunic, black tights, face painted in white and silver, his hair wreathed by leaves and twigs. And the woman who has gone to the trouble of having a dress made just like the one festooned with clouds on the sleeve of Never For Ever. And the woman who rushes from her seat during the encore of Cloudbusting to hand a bouquet of lilies to Bush (who, in turn, receives it between bows). “Too much” is why we came. There’s nothing more antithetical to Kate Bush’s music than sensory temperance. For three hours, it’s like finding out there was a Dolby switch pressed on your consciousness. The moment that Bush, draped in black and barefoot, marches in a soft, shuffling procession, flanked by her five backing singers, you turn it off. You might need it for the journey to work on Monday, but it’s of no use to you now.
“A slowly moving sky descends to fill the space on the right. The palette-wielding McIntosh dabs at the canvas with a brush, attracting the curiosity of the wooden model. “Piss off! I’m trying to work here,” he exclaims, while his mum — dressed in an Indian-style black and gold outfit — moves around him in slow motion”.
She smiles beatifically throughout Lily — the invocation to guardian angels which originally appeared on The Red Shoes and, in 2011, The Director’s Cut — apart from when attacking the top notes, which she does with the phlegm-rattling zeal of a seasoned soul singer. The love in the room is unlike anything I’ve seen at a live show. Given free rein, it would surely result in an instant surge to the stage, but it’s tempered by a deference which extends to uniform acceptance of Bush’s stated no-cameras request. As a consequence, the first three songs are bookended by a total of six standing ovations. Hounds Of Love is exactly what it should be given the passage of three decades: drummer Omar Hakim and perma-grining percussion talisman Mino Cinelu hold back the rhythmic landslide, creating space for a vocal pitched closer to resignation than combativeness. Eighteen months ago, when Bush’s son Bertie McIntosh (then 15) finally persuaded her to return to live performance, the first two people she pencilled in for the project were the lighting designer Mark Henderson and Hakim. Within the opening section, it isn’t hard to see why Bush wanted to assemble her band around Hakim. Running Up That Hill is every bit as unyielding and startling as it was the very first time you heard it: doubly so for the incoming storm whipped up from the back of the stage. On King Of The Mountain, he reprises the freestyling pyrotechnics of his turn on Daft Punk’s Giorgio By Moroder. Everything about King Of The Mountain, in fact, is astonishing. Bush navigates her way around the song’s rising sense of portent with a mixture of fear and fascination that puts you in mind of professional storm chasers. When they’re not singing, her backing vocalists dance as if goading some unholy denouement into action, before finally Cinelu steps into a misty spotlight. On the end of a rope which he demonically twirls ever faster is some sort of primitive wooden cyclone simulator.
Up on stage, it’s left to Bush’s son — playing the part of the painter, a role assumed on the album recording by Rolf Harris) — to be that observer. But before all of that, it’s just Bush at the piano for the first time, encircled on the left hand of the stage by her band, with the right side left empty for the ensuing action. Controlled by its puppeteer, a black-clad Ben Thompson, a wooden artist’s model — perhaps the size of a ten year-old child — walks inquisitively around the stage during Prologue until finally it alights upon the singer. As Bush sings “What a lovely afternoon” and the drums come in, it appears startled. All the time, the backdrop shows birds in slow-motion, while the backing singers (increasingly, given what they have to do, “backing singers” doesn’t begin to cover what they have to do, but “chorus” is unhelpfully ambiguous) move gingerly around each other in painters’ garb. A slowly moving sky descends to fill the space on the right. The palette-wielding McIntosh dabs at the canvas with a brush, attracting the curiosity of the wooden model. “Piss off! I’m trying to work here,” he exclaims, while his mum — dressed in an Indian-style black and gold outfit — moves around him in slow motion.
“No less a highlight than it is on the record, “Somewhere In Betweenn” sees its creator transported by the power of her own song and, in doing so, transports you to the fleeting magic-hour reverie it celebrates”.
If it’s surprising to see McIntosh rise to the challenges set before him so fearlessly — “A kind of ‘Pan’ figure” — it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s already the same age that his mum was when she started recording her first album. In a voice at least two octaves deeper than the one he used for Snowflake on 50 Words For Snow, Bush’s son bemoans his rain-splattered work on The Painter’s Link (“It’s raining/What has become of my painting?/All the colours are running”). But here, as on the record, there are no mistakes, just serendipity. The colours run and dusk magically materialises; the redemptive downpour brings all the musicians to the front for almost Balearic, flamenco-flecked stampede of Sunset. As a succession of joyous falsetto “Prrrrrraaah!!”s attest, the moments that see Bush at her most unguarded are the ones where she gets to commune with the twenty-odd players around her.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX
Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.
Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go”.
To be fair, as many (bar Paphides) were reviewing the first night, they wert in the position of witnessing the excitement and unparalleled energy in that space - for a live event many thought would not happen. Maybe the performances became tighter as the run went on. Bush less nervous and more used to the grandeur and scale. Pete Paphides saw Bush when she was a bit more comfortable delivering Before the Dawn to passionate and ecstatic fans. That opening night is her debut performance for a massive audience. Because of that, I find it fascinating that, alongside celebrities from various walks of life, journalists were all trying to give their take on something almost impossible to put into words! That said, DIY were among the surprisingly few who reviewed the residency. Many more reviewed the live album – so I wonder why there aren’t a heap of reviews for the 2014 residency:
“The whole night feels unreal and unravels in a dreamlike fashion – even attempting to put it into words here it seems to dissolve on the screen. That’s not just because of the feverish speculation that came before the show or the fact that Bush hasn’t performed in concert since 1979, but also because whatever your hopes or anticipations for this show – one of the most eagerly awaited pop performances in history – Bush turns them on their head and pours them away in an avalanche of artistic contrariness and outlandish theatre which sees the stage filled with a wooden mannequin, fish skeletons, sheets billowing like waves, a preacher, a giant machine that hovers above the audience pounding like a helicopter as well as lighthouses and living rooms, axes and chainsaws.
Yet through all the theatrics and artistry one thing remains constant, and it’s the thing that shines through the most: the rush of humanity that ties all the ideas together; the one thing that takes Bush to that other place. It’s the innate heart that pulses through all this theatre and all these ideas: the simple truths of love, hope and family life that hold all her ideas together.
‘I feel your warmth,’ she says appreciatively as the crowd passionately cheer and clap her every move and gesture. And it’s her shy but generous smile at the response from the crowd which shows exactly what this means to her.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the shooting of the video for And Dream of Sheep, a song that is part of her suite, The Ninth Wave/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton
It’s now time for the drama of ‘The Ninth Wave’, the second half of ‘Hounds of Love’. Here we see a story of resignation and resurrection played out in the most theatrical of ways. We see Bush in a lifejacket floating in water, looking up at the camera as if waiting to be rescued (she’s reported to have spent three days in a flotation tank at Pinewood Studios to create the special effects). At one point fish skeletons dance across the waves, at another a helicopter searches the crowd, before a living room (yes, a living room) floats across the stage in which a son and his father – played by Bertie and Bush’s husband Danny McIntosh – talk at length about sausages.
It’s hard to comprehend exactly what’s happening but the band skilfully navigate the pastoral prog and Celtic rock. Even when the music isn’t captivating, the sheer sense of spectacle means you can’t avert your eyes for a second. As the ‘The Morning Fog’ brings the performance to a close with another standing ovation.
“Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human”.
After a twenty minute interval – during which time the bars buzz with delirium – the third act sees her play out ‘Sky of Honey’, the entire second half of ‘Aerial’. It’s so intricately detailed that you get the feeling Bush had always planned to perform these two scenes live.
‘Honey’ is a grandiose daydream moving through a summer’s day. Again the scope of her vision is immense – even when the songs don’t enthral the enormous paper planes and human birds do, as we see a wooden mannequin finding himself lost and alone. Bertie plays a major part throughout dressed as a 19th-century artist – and at one point telling the mannequin to “piss off”. It ends, as only it could, with Bush gaining wings and flying.
She returns to earth to perform a solo version of ‘Among Angels’ on the piano, before the band return to help close the show with a joyful ‘Cloudbusting’. “I just know that something good is going to happen”, she sings as a now even more euphoric crowd jump to their feet.
Then she’s gone. You’re left with the image of a singer who has managed to retain her mystery and surprise. An enigma, the mythic artist who is intensely human. It’s overblown and preposterous and brilliant. All its startling achievements, magical highs and am dram faults – its relentless ambition and human imperfections – make it the only document you could possibly have asked for from such a unique artist. Before the Dawn is everything you would expect but couldn’t imagine”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/REX
It is interesting that most of the reviews of the residency (or the first night) were from male journalists. It would have been nice to have highlighted takes from female journalists. The age range is slightly different in the reviews I am focusing on. Paphides, now in his fifties, would have heard Kate Bush’s music before Danny Wright. Their expectations differ. Their experiences with Bush’s music different. The Skinny’s David Kerr gave the show a five-star review. Again, with a slightly induvial route and relationship with the music of Kate Bush, here are three different reviews – but all very impressed and positive – that takes us inside an exhilarating, epic and dreamlike night:
“What Kate Bush has presented across her 22-night London residency is a rock opera from the old world – an immersive bombardment that could compete with any staged realisation of Tommy or The Wall. The scarcity of pictures from the production – some 18 months in planning – combined with a tabloid preoccupation with a certain lack of ‘hits’ leaves punters free to idly speculate over its specific content in the Apollo’s substantial queue.
With the mystique surrounding these concerts, one might expect our eccentric heroine to arrive on stage by wolfback. The reality is perhaps more of a surprise; the shy retirer mythologised by the press shimmies onstage barefoot in a conga chain with her seven-piece band, gleefully pirouetting like Stevie Nicks. Arriving a full 35 years after Bush’s last full-blown live outing ended on the very same stage, there’s a sense that the voice and muse have been left protected by her refusal to engage with the rock’n’roll treadmill.
Back then, the critics called 1979’s Tour of Life ‘a theatrical feast of mime and magic.’ 2014’s Before the Dawn puts similar crafts to work – extravagant set pieces set in the sea and sky are coloured by gothic costumes that wouldn’t look out of place at a pagan ritual, with wooden marionette puppetry and sleight of hand stage manoeuvres which would have the crowd believe she’s about to take flight.
"I feel I gotta get up on the roof,” she bellows during Aerial’s mantra-like chorus”.
Business up front, the first set serves as a primer – introducing a musical troupe reassuringly deft at handling the sacred source material and a quintet of actors and backing singers who multitask throughout the night. Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God) makes an early entrance, duelling drummers kick the shit out of tom-toms to recreate its rolling thunder. King of the Mountain steadies the pace before the room is plunged into a lighting storm that heralds the beginning of a different kind of concert altogether, drawing on the folk traditions of her youth while pointing to moments of her catalogue that still sound like the future.
Two albums 20 years apart lend their narratives to the pair of distinct acts that follow. 1985’s Hounds of Love provides the base for The Ninth Wave – a seaborne tragedy about a mother lost at sea, while Sky of Honey has 2005 album Aerial to define its dawn setting, with Bush’s son Bertie playing the eponymous frustrated Artist at the heart of the story.
Many of the original skits and effects from both are brought vividly to life; the glaring lights of a search helicopter roam overhead and a demented preacher rants to the tune of Waking the Witch. "I feel I gotta get up on the roof,” she bellows during Aerial’s mantra-like chorus. One final, full band encore of Cloudbusting takes us there, underlining a surreal, astonishing live comeback from a determined visionary. Now, how do we bring her back to The Usher Hall?”.
I wanted to show you some reviews of the opening night of Kate Bush’s (and the K Fellowship) 2014 residency in Hammersmith. I think it did not get the media coverage – in review terms – that it deserved. What is interesting about the reviews above is the different angles and observations. It sort of takes me there (even though, of course, I was not!). Nine years ago today, people were making their way to the Eventim Apollo to see Kate Bush perform. Nobody was sure quite what would happen and what they were in store for. I have heard from people who were there. It seems the word that links all the responses is ‘life-changing’. A magical and truly wonderful experience that…
THEY will never forget.