FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Albums Turning Fifty Next Year

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Songs from Albums Turning Fifty Next Year

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EVERY year…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

I put out a series of features that collect songs from albums with big anniversaries the following year. Ahead of us entering 2025, I am starting out with albums turning fifty. Those big releases from 1975. It was a pretty big and interesting year for music. Some classics came out that year. As I move towards more modern albums, it is worth heading back half a century to those gems that came out in 1975. Even if you were not alive at the time, you will be able to appreciate these important albums. It has been great spending some time travelling back…

TO 1975.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Bawo

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Bawo

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THIS time out for Spotlight…

I want to shine a light on an artist I recently saw NME raving about. I am going to bring in their interview with it. He is a new name to me though, when I first heard him, I was instantly gripped and invested. Bawo is an artist that you need to know about. Before coming to some more recent press, I want to head back to the start of last year and DJ Mag heralded a West London artist who was making waves beyond the capital. It is interesting learning about Bawo’s beginnings and the music he grew up listening to:

“Over the years, West London has given us some titans in the rap scene, from C Biz and K Koke to Nines and Knucks. Although some in that list are more active than others these days, there’s an exciting new generation of talent who are pushing rap into new territories, finding new connections between the different strains and sub-genres.

One of the latest in this new tidal wave is Bawo, a rising artist who’s been connecting the dots between grime, garage, rap and soul (plus a few other influences) in a way that feels both new and yet fundamentally West London. “I think there’s an appreciation of sound that unites us,” he explains, trying to pin down the ‘sound’ of West. “I think it’s a bit different, I don’t know if it’s a thread that the average listener would clock, but if you’re from West, you can hear it.”

He describes his own sound as “homely” and there’s certainly a warmth to it — this is music for the home, best enjoyed without the distraction of the outside world — but that’s not really what he means. What he’s actually referring to are the cues he takes from the artists he grew up with, the mercurial, intangible feeling he got from listening to 50 Cent, Michael Jackson or Akon in the family home. “They just have this sort of familiar tone about them, whether it’s the backing vocals or the chords that are used,” he says. It’s the high production value of those blockbuster records, but it’s also the intimate familial connection from a record shared between loved ones. “And I think that comes through,” he adds.

Away from his parents’ stereo, however, was the much-closer-to-home influence of Channel U. “Jme, Scorcher, and Chipmunk were huge influences," he says. "[Chip] had an album out when we were teenagers [‘I Am Chipmunk’] — that was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s living the dream!’ That was pretty big for me as well.”

Six years ago, Bawo uploaded his first track to SoundCloud, an ultra-‘90s, ultra-New York boom-bap tune called ‘It Don’t Stop’. Even though his sound has evolved immeasurably since that first drop, a nostalgic edge has been one of the few constants in his music. In the years that followed, he would play around with instrumentals from a mixture of unknown producers, alongside bigger names like Wiley, The Streets and Preditah. As he jumped between grime, garage and back to rap again, his punchy, commanding delivery remained. Though each track was wildly different, gradually, a pattern was beginning to emerge.

At some point during this period, a message hit his SoundCloud inbox from Oscar #Worldpeace. He’s still not entirely sure how Oscar heard him or what made him reach out, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I’ve been listening to him for years, before I ever had anything on streaming platforms in that way,” he explains. “He just literally shot me a message out of the blue. It was a cold moment for me, having listened to him for so long.

“To be honest, he’s one of the only people I could consider a friend in the whole game," he adds. "So it’s been a pleasure knowing him, and working with him so far has been really easy."

By 2019, Bawo had started to settle on the kind of rap that’s since become his calling card. A fluid, ever-shifting sound that draws, in varying combinations, from basically all the sounds that have led him to this point. The SoundCloud-only ‘Things’ EP, dropped just a few months before ‘Bag To Get’ (which for all intents and purposes was a breakout track for him), is perhaps the best distillation of this. The original ‘Things’ was grime through and through, but he followed it with a ‘2.0’ version which was much harder to pin down; it really felt like a watershed moment for Bawo. Before that, he was playing around with different sounds, but only ever one at a time. With ‘2.0’ it really felt like he’d hit his stride and cracked the formula for combining grime, garage and hip-hop into something he could call his own.

And that brings us neatly back to his “homely” comment. Because what he’s doing now is more than just grimey-garagey-hip-hop; you can hear the warmth of those records that played in his parents’ house, memories being made in real time. Just look at ‘Starts With A Text’, another landmark release for him and by far his most popular yet. The verses give probably the best example of his understated rhyming style and on the hook we get an even more understated singing performance — a talent honed in church choirs in his youth.

Another prime example is ‘Headtop Buss From Luss’ / ‘Mazzalean’, the double-drop release he gave us in 2022. The first half is a booming rap joint that takes more than a few cues from the sound system culture that’s been embedded in West London for the better part of a century, but the second veers away dramatically into more beautifully understated singing. There’s no polish, no theatrics, just a subtle vocal performance backed only by clicking fingers and a few guitar licks”.

I am going to move it forward. Last month, Bawo released his second album, It Means Hope Where I’m From. It is perhaps his greatest work yet. An album that will take him worldwide. Even if there are few reviews of the album and what is out there is pretty brief, the general feeling is that this is a big step from one of our finest young artists. Someone that everyone should know. I will end with that NME interview from last month. Prior to that, I want to come to this VERSUS chat. Even though a lot of the interview discussed trainers, football and style, there were some interesting observations and exchanges that I wanted to highlight:

“VERSUS: How did growing up in West London and your Nigerian heritage shape your status as an ‘Original’?

Bawo: The cultural contrast is all I've ever known. That being said, I found myself aware of wanting to balance Nigerian and British culture in my earlier years. It was the whole thing of going to Nigeria and feeling like it was home – but also feeling like an outsider at the same time. Then, in your class at school, you're the only kid who looks like you, and you've got a hairline that's clearly from Africa – you stand out. You're forced to stand out even if you don't want to. That's in both scenarios.

What does it mean to be an ‘Original’ in your eyes?

To be original is to be completely honest with yourself, which can make you seem like a weirdo because we don't know what normal is. Ultimately, originality is about being true to yourself in both words and deeds.

What does community mean to you?

We're all sharing the same space, right? It depends on where your parents are from; you get a mix of first, second, and third-generation kids. It’s all about the back-and-forth of support and, at times, not being so nice to each other, but we’re all growing together.

Your project, Legitimate Cause, is just over 18 months old. How do you feel about it now that it has had time to breathe?

I feel just as proud of it. It doesn’t feel like it’s been 18 months, which is crazy. My dream was for it to resonate with people. I didn’t plan for such a long gap before dropping another project, but I guess it was meant to be this way. A lot went into that music, and some of it, like “Figured Out”, was four years old when it came out”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Galloway

Despite the fact that it is not a particularly long interview – you hope that there will be a more in-depth interview out there soon -, it is an important highlighting of an artist adding something invaluable to music. Really making this, as NME write, “lo-fi rap for the masses”, because Bawo aims to put good vibes out into the world and really make a contribution is to be commended. This is someone who can act as a role model for young rappers coming through:

“You grew up in a Christian household, surrounded by different types of gospel. What pulled you towards rap music initially?

“Partly, the brainwashed side of me that had watched too much MTV Cribs wanted a humongous mansion… I wanted to be 50 Cent as a kid, so there’s a bit of that in there as well.

“But the more I did it, the more my actual motivations showed themselves. I don’t care about having a huge house or anything like that. I want to be financially comfortable, for sure. But I want to be a part of something that helps make people happy and add to the database of creativity that humans are constantly making, and be a positive contributor to that space.”

Tell us about the process of making ‘It Means Hope…’

“It’s been really fun and it’s been stressful at some points, because the nature of the tape has changed from ‘let me just put out a mixtape of 10 songs because I have quite a lot of songs that haven’t been released’. A whole identity started to form, visually and sonically, and then it became more and more serious. To be honest, I wouldn’t call it an album. It feels a bit unfair to call it a mixtape. But overall it was fun, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed feeling like I was actually levelling up in my skill.”

On the cover of ‘It Means Hope…’, you’re now revealing the superhero suit underneath your corporate suit you wore on your last project. Tell us about the thematic evolution between the two bodies of work.

“I’m now even more confident in vulnerability and unapologetically being myself. But it’s also another way of saying that that was a shell. Now you’re getting closer to the real me. So those are the parallel things. In terms of what the logo represents, it’s been really effective, even for me. There’s been times I wake up and not want to go gym, but I’ll see my t-shirt with that new SN [Say Nothing, Bawo’s independent label] logo on it, and think, ‘I have to live up to that’. So it’s supposed to represent purpose”

With It Means Hope Where I’m From out into the world, more people are discovering the wonder of the simply brilliant Bawo. I am new to him, though I am committed to keeping an eye where he heads next. Humble yet ambitious, it is only a matter of time before he goes worldwide and is standing on some huge stages. If you have not discovered the brilliance of Bawo, then you really must do…

WITHOUT delay.

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Follow Bawo

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Galloway

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/_bawo/

Twitter:

https://x.com/_bawo

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg_aBwzKa8qDjLFqe-f943g

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1nrJKGxkiSY6FjJRXcc9CB

FEATURE: Out from the Cold: Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Thirteen

FEATURE:

 

Out from the Cold

Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Thirteen

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I will publish two features…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in promotional shot for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

marking thirteen years of Kate Bush’s latest studio album, 50 Words for Snow. Until very recently, many people would have thought that was her last album. Very little sign that she was thinking of coming back. No real intent regarding doing anything new. The more time that passes, the more unlikely it was we would get anything. On Friday, 25th October, we heard an interview where Kate Bush spoke with Emma Barnett for BBC Radio 4’s Today. Bush was speaking about the animated video for Little Shrew (Snowflake). It was designed to raise money for War Child by brining to focus the atrocities of war affecting children. Bush particularly impacted by the violence in Ukraine. When she was being interviewed, Bush also revealed that she was keen to do something new. She had many ideas and there was this palpable sense that a new album was on her mind. Of course, as she announced she had ideas, it is more than likely she is already recording the album rather than thinking of ideas. You can get 50 Words for Snow (Polar Edition). A few lucky fans have received signed Snowflake cards from Kate Bush! That reissued album is out now. I hope that people who are fans of Kate Bush fans appreciate and listen to 50 Words for Snow. Not discussed as much as many of her studio albums. I really love Bush’s 2011 release. On 21st November, 2011, we were treated to the second album from Kate Bush that year – Director’s Cut was released in May. 50 Words for Snow received hugely positive reviews. In fact, it was rated as highly as 2005’s Aerial. Rather than having an album with ten, eleven or twelves tracks that last between three to five minutes, these were longer tracks. Allowing the music to unfold. In this first anniversary feature, I am going to get to an interview with Bush from 2011 and reviews for the album. Like with other albums I have marked recently, the second feature will explore the songs more.

It is interesting looking at 50 Words for Snow now realising that Bush will bless us with her eleventh studio album very soon - I reckon next year. If not next year than the year after. Though you feel next year will be the one. I think that 50 Words for Snow should be viewed more highly. When it comes to Kate Bush album rankings, I guess 50 Words for Snow ranks average. Bafflingly, Rough Trade placed the album tenth when they ranked her albums last year. This blog ranked it in seventh. NME placed the album sixth in 2019. SPIN placed the album eighth in 2022. In the same year, The Pink News put 50 Words for Snow eight too. So it averages in about eighth or ninth position out of ten. That is quite a shock to me! I am glad an album like The Red Shoes, often seen as her weakest album, does better. I think 50 Words for Snow is among her best and most important works. After some retrospection and revision for Director’s Cut, this was Bush’s first completely new album after Aerial. A totally different sound and direction, 50 Words for Snow has so many moods. You fall into songs. The recent Little Shrew (Snowflake) video offered a new take on that song. Originally written to showcase her son, Bertie, on vocals, it opens 50 Words for Snow. I think it would be wonderful if there were animations for all seven tracks on the album. It seems like this complete piece that could be made into a short film. Tantalising if Kate Bush performed the entire album live one day. She did perform Among Angels as part of 2014’s Before the Dawn residency. Thirteen years after its release, it is still amazing hearing songs like Misty and Lake Tahoe unfold. The brilliance of Bush’s compositions and productions. Songs that flow, expand and create their own worlds.

If some think the album has a few weaker songs – some highlight the title track and Snowed in at Wheeler Street -, I do think the entire album should be given another chance. In terms of streaming numbers, the seven tracks on 50 Words for Snow do not have huge figures. Over four million for Snowflake, though the remaining six tracks haven’t done as well. I want to bring in some reviews to show that critics did react positively to the album. I will start with extracts from an interview with Kate Bush from 2011. An interview I have sourced before, The Quietus chatted with Bush about her new album. John Doran was tasked with asking the questions. I would urge people to read the entire interview:

“Kate Bush’s abilities as a songwriter just get better and better with age. The keen eye that saw a couple’s sex life writ large in their entwining clothes drying on a line in the breeze on ‘Mrs. Bartolozzi’ (Aerial) is at evidently hard at work on every song here. She sees the erotic poetic potential in places other song writers wouldn’t dare look for it. ‘Misty’ is the story of a love affair or one night stand between a snowman and a girl and she has no problem taking this to its soggy but bittersweet conclusion. She inspires a powerful performance out of Elton John on ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’, as the pair play disembodied lovers, trying to be together for all time despite corporeal disaster constantly wrenching them apart.

Kate Bush: I’m sorry I’m late phoning but I’ve been caught up in another interview that went on for much longer than it should have.

That’s fine. That’s not a problem.

KB: How are you?

I’m great thanks, how are you?

KB: [indecisively] I’m good… [decisively] Yeah! I’m good thanks!

I’ve got a five-month-old boy, he’s my first child so sleep’s at something of a premium. I say this to everyone at the moment because I’m half asleep.

KB: Awwwww!

So obviously looking at the artwork, the track listing, the title, and the lead single ‘Wild Man’ from your new album 50 Words For Snow, it’s pretty clear what the theme is. Now culturally snow is really interesting stuff. It can symbolise birth, purity, old age, death, sterility… I was wondering what it means to you.

KB: [laughs derisively] Well, I’ve never heard of it in terms of old age or death… [laughs] That’s quite an opening line. Well, I think it’s really magical stuff. It’s a very unusual, evocative substance and I had really great fun making this record because I love snow.

What are your memories of snow like from childhood? Was playing in the snow something you really looked forward to?

KB: Well… yeah. Do you know any children who don’t look forward to playing in the snow?

I know what you’re saying but there are some who like it more than others…

KB: …

Er…

KB: … Are you knackered?

Yeah.

KB: Have you been up all night?

Yeah, I have.

KB: [laughs uproariously and good naturedly] Well John do you like snow? Don’t you think snow is a thing of wonder and beauty?

I think that if I lived outside of London, maybe in the countryside where it doesn’t turn to a mixture of slush and hazardous black ice, I might like it more. Also, I’m very tall and for whatever reason I just fall over when it’s icy, I always have done. It’s very dangerous I think.

KB: [laughs] Are you a kind of glass half empty kind of guy?

My glass used to be completely dry. Now it’s half empty but I’m working on making it half full… No, I’m joking, of course I like snow, it’s simply marvelous stuff. But obviously there’s been a great thematic shift between Aerial and this album.

KB: Yeah.

So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it – it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?

KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.

I’ve only heard the album today so I can’t say I’m completely aware of every nuance but I have picked out a few narrative strands. Would it be fair enough to say that it starts with a birth and ends with a death?

KB: No, not at all. Not to my mind anyway. It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in promotional shot for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

Fair play. Now some of your fans may have been dismayed to read that there were only seven songs on the album but they should be reassured at this point that the album is 65 minutes long, which makes for fairly long tracks. How long did it take you to write these songs and in the course of writing them did you discard a lot of material?

KB: This has been quite an easy record to make actually and it’s been quite a quick process. And it’s been a lot of fun to make because the process was uninterrupted. What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it I went straight into making this so I was very much still in that focussed space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch and the freedom that comes with that.

Had you always wanted to do 50 Words For Snow or were you just on a roll after Director’s Cut?

KB: No, they were both records that I’d wanted to do for some time. But obviously I had to get Director’s Cut done before I could start this one… Well, I guess I could have waited until next year but this record had to come out at this time of year, it isn’t the sort of thing I could have put it out in the summer obviously.

Did the snow theme come from an epiphany or a particular grain or idea? Was there one particular day when you happened to be in the snow…

KB: No. I don’t think there was much snow going on through the writing of this… it was more to do with my memories of snow I suppose and the exploration of the images that come with it.

Now the cover art features a snowman kissing a girl and I was worried that her lips might get stuck to his. Do you know like when you’re young and you get your lips stuck to a lolly ice straight out of the freezer?

KB: [giggles]

And what about the carrot getting stuck in her eye? It’s a health and safety issue.

KB: Well she doesn’t look too worried does she?

Yeah, she looks like she’s quite into it to be honest. Well, this leads me onto a serious question. Sometimes when I listen to your albums I think of Angela Carter. Sure there may well be a fantastical, almost fairy tale piece of story-telling going on here but just out of reach there is a quite torrid, sexual undercurrent. I mean, I’m right to read this sexuality into this album aren’t I? I’m not just being a pervert.

KB: Well, I think in that particular song obviously there is a sexual encounter going on… you are referring to that song aren’t you?

Yeah, ‘Misty’, which has the reference to the girl’s affair with a snowman, the wet sheets, the idea of him melting in her hands and on her bed.

KB: Yeah. [massive pause] I’m sorry John, did you ask me a question? What was the question?”.

I will finish with a couple of reviews. For anyone who has a particular view of the album or has overlooked it, I think that it is necessary to reconsider. There are a lot of hugely glowing reviews. Drowned in Sound awarded 50 Words for Snow 9 out of 10:

“So yeah: maybe when Kate Bush said the 12 year gap between The Red Shoes and Aerial was down to her wanting to work on being a mum for a while – and not because she’d had a mental breakdown/become morbidly obese/was a dope fiend/sundy other conspiracy theories that flew around – she was, y’know, telling the truth. Here, six years after Aerial and just six months after Director’s Cut comes 50 Words for Snow. It’s Bush’s third album since 2005, which technically puts her up on The Strokes, The Shins or Modest Mouse.

And jolly spectacular it is too, which is never a guarantee: Aerial was a masterpiece; The Red Shoes, The Sensual World and the diversionary Director’s Cut were not. Bush has always been best at her most focussed, and here she delves monomaniacally into snow and the winter – its mythology, its romance, its darkness, its rhythmic frenzy and glacial creep. 50 Words for Snow is artic and hoare frost and robin red breast, sleepy snowscapes and death on the mountain, drifts in the Home Counties and gales through Alaska.

But it is mostly, I think, a record about how the fleeting elusiveness of snow mirrors that of love; and if I’m off the mark there, then certainly as a work of music one can view it as a sort of frozen negative to Aerial’s A Sky of Honey, the transcendent 42 minute suite about a summer’s day that took up the album’s second half. Whatever the case, 50 Words...demands to be listened to as a whole: the days of Bush as a singles-orientated artist are long gone on a long, sometimes difficult record on which the shortest track clocks in at a shade under seven minutes.

The first three songs clock in at over half an hour and comprise the starkest, most difficult and in some ways most beautiful passage of music in Bush’s career. Based on minimal, faltering piano and great yawning chasms of silence, these tracks mirror the eerie calm of soft, implacable snowfall and winter's dark. On the opening ‘Snowflake’ she shares vocal duties with her young son Albert, whose pure falsetto blends into her lower register. Vaguely suggestive of carol singing, his tones are also clear and elemental, without the shackles of adult emotion as he keens “I am ice and dust and light. I am sky and here.” over his mother’s spare, hard keys. ‘Lake Tahoe’ is the real challenge here: a crawling ghost story about a drowned woman, gilded with cold choral washes, its diamond keys crystallize into being a note at a time. Its 11 minutes are roughly as far away from ‘Babooshka’ as it’s possible to get. Yet as Steve Gadd’s soft, jazzy drums gather in pace and intricacy, life and movement enters this crepsular musical tundra, the album’s low key opening sequence swelling to a soft crescendo with final part ‘Misty’. A bleakly sensual love story that, er, appears to be about a doomed affair with a snowman, it’s somewhat reminiscent of Spirit of Eden-era Talk Talk as its 13-minute expanse periodically blooms into gorgeously tangled blossoms of bucolic guitar.

Single ‘Wild Man’ sees a shift in gear – springy, exotic electronics, a sprightlier pace and a sense of playfulness as a husky-voiced Bush trades the last song’s impossible man for another as she dreams about the possibility of a yeti. Describing a Kate Bush track without making it sound silly can be rather trying – this is a woman whose past triumphs include several songs featuring Rolf Harris – but I guess ‘Wild Man’ works as lush, sensual dream of the possibility of the things that might existing outside humdrum human experience. It’s not just about the yeti, but the impossibly exotic place names she mutters in her verbal quest for the creature – “Kangchenjunga… Metoh-Kangmi… Lhakpa-La… Dipu Marak… Darjeeling… Tengboche… Qinghai… Himachal Pradesh” – and the vertiginously thrilling change of gear as heavily distorted guest Andy Fairweather Low roars a near indecipherable chorus. It’s also about Bush’s formidable production skills, her precise, nagging synths and total mastery of studio as instrument.

Those synths imbue ‘Snowed in at Wheeler Street’ with a sense of frazzled foreboding that negates the potential cheesiness of Elton John’s throaty turn on a duet that casts him and Bush as a pair of lovers spread across time, doomed to separate at key points in history, wishing that could return to one mundane, snow bound day spent together. And a bed of electronics whip up a quietly hypnotic tumult on the astonishing title song. Here – and again Kate Bush songs can be a job to not make sound ridiculous – Bush counts to 50 in a hushed monotone as Stephen Fry (oh yes) recites a list of names for snow, real and imagined: “blackbird braille… stella tundra… vanilla swarm… avalanche”, occasionally punctured by an eerily muted chorus in which Bush frenzied urges him to continue the list. On the one hand, it continues ‘Wild Man’s revelry in the intoxicating power of human language. On the other, it’s the album’s least human track, its churning, chiming electronics and alien words mirroring the quiet chaos and leaden intensity of a snowstorm, its final minutes a headlong descent into oblivion and whiteout. It is astonishing, immense, bizarre and perfectly realized: only Kate Bush could conceive of this song, and nobody else will make anything like it again.

As the cooing over Director’s Cut demonstrated, even Bush on diversionary form is enough to tease gushy spurts of adjectives from the soberest of souls; hitting a true peak again, there is the temptation to drone on about how important she is, how she dwarfs most of her peers artistically, let alone the braying yahs and rahs of today who cite her as an influence. But let’s keep it in perspective: in the 26 years since Hounds of Love, Aerial and 50 Words for Snow have been her only truly fully realised albums. Kate Bush is more than fallible; but at peak she is incomparable”.

Before wrapping things up, DIY’s review saluted and celebrated a beautiful and brilliant album from one of music’s greatest songwriters and most original voices. The gulf between critical reaction in 2011 and the low position the album is usually afforded in various features is surprising. As the weather is starting to turn and the days seem shorter, 50 Words for Snow is a perfect accompaniment:

“While May’s ‘Directors Cut’ was a reworking of earlier material, ‘50 Words For Snow’ features seven all-new compositions. It is a concept album of sorts based around the theme of winter and snow, a theme Bush has wanted to cover for a long time, and there is definitely a pronounced wintry feeling to these subtle, delicate and at times desolate songs. For an artist who has a reputation for making theatrical, florid music ‘50 Words Of Snow’ features Bush showing her capacity for restraint and her supreme gift for making meticulously crafted beautiful music.

The album is very long, indeed at least two of the tracks are over ten minutes in length, but it never fails to captivate and is never dull. In much the same way as it is possible to stare enthralled at falling snow for hours the fragile songs here, despite their length, leave you engrossed.

Opening track ‘Snowflake’ sets the tone. A twinkling piano is the backing for a duet between Bush and her son Bertie which sees her playing the role of the mother protector shielding her son from the elements: “The world is so loud, keep falling, I’ll find you.” ‘Lake Tahoe’ sees Bush showing off her experimental side and features an operatic duet between Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood.

‘Misty’ is an incredibly sensual and heartfelt track featuring a powerfully soulful vocal. It seems to describe a passionate encounter with a snowman that has came to life before mysteriously departing, “I see his snowy white face but I’m not afraid / he lies down beside me / I can feel him melting in my hand.”

‘Wild Man’ is faster paced and is the only song here that could reasonably be considered a pop single, at least in Kate Bush’s fabulously strange definition of pop. The second half of the album takes a turn for the strange. Elton John pops up with a soulful stately vocal in ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ his powerful voice a lovely contrast with Bush’s soft hushed tones. The title track is the highlight and possibly the most baffling piece of music to be heard all year. Stephen Fry is an unusual choice of guest as he intones 50 different synonyms for snow over a dense tribal backing. These terms for snow are mostly made up, and go from the beautiful (‘blackbird braille’), to the ridiculous (‘Boomerangablanca’). A lot of thought has clearly gone into these linguistic creations and a read of the lyric sheet is strongly recommended. It is an utterly bonkers piece but it encapsulates everything that is so unique and fascinating about Bush.

The great thing about Kate Bush is that you cannot imagine anyone else ever possibly making the music she does, and ‘50 Words For Snow’ is another impossibly beautiful and individually brilliant album. A perfect accompaniment to those long and dark wintry nights”.

You can buy the 2018 Remastered edition of 50 Words for Snow if you do not want to invest in the new Polar Edition. In 2011, when we knew a second studio album of that year was coming from Kate Bush, there was a mix of surprise and anticipation. Bush having to juggle the two. It must have been quite strange reworking older tracks for Director’s Cut and working on new and totally different songs for 50 Words for Snow. In interviews for Director’s Cut, Bush had to keep her cards close to her chest when asked about new music. She did reveal in one or two that a new album was coming but did not give much away in terms of what it would entail. After 2011, Bush engaged in various projects. Her lyrics book, reissuing her albums, the 2014 residency, and various other bits. Lots of looking back, but very little glimmer that any new album would come. We were very fortunate that Bush shocked everyone by dropping the tantalising possibility of a new album very soon. Will it sound like 50 Words for Snow? Bush told Emma Barnett that she wants to make something different. That all of her albums are different. Perhaps a return to an album that has more tracks that are shorter than those on 50 Words for Snow. The use of Snowflake for a new video recontextualises the lyrics. One of the most stirring and touching songs on 50 Words for Snow, it is wonderful that she revisited it. It makes me also appreciate the original more. For the second anniversary feature, I am going to go more into some of the songs and take a different approach. Ahead of its thirteenth anniversary on 21st November, do spend some time with Kate Bush’s 2011 album. 50 Words for Snow is a stunning, immersive and brilliant…

ALBUM everyone should hear.

FEATURE: No Scraps Left on the Table: Why The Last Dinner Party’s Gig Cancellations Due to Burnout Will Impact Other Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

No Scraps Left on the Table

IN THIS PHOTO: The Last Dinner Party

Why The Last Dinner Party’s Gig Cancellations Due to Burnout Will Impact Other Artists

_________

I am returning my thoughts…

PHOTO CREDIT: Vishnu R Nair/Pexels

to Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual. It is indispensable and essential reading. Not least because many people do not realise the psychological toll that being a touring artist can take. From the outside, we may look at artists on the stage and feel like they have a perfect life and are living the dream. Drawing energy from the crowds each night. Maybe huge touring artists like Taylor Swift can make that lifestyle look easy. She is someone who has a lot of people around her. Even so, Swift cannot do as many shows as she does and not feel the effects. Think about artists coming through who are doing so many dates. They are also promoting their music, working on new material and really pushing themselves. Trying to give their fans everything but then getting to a point where they need to step back. This is what has happened with The Last Dinner Party. The Mercury Prize-nominated group released their phenomenal debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, earlier this year to huge reviews. The group have had to cancel some gigs due to burnout. Stereogum reported the news:

“Last month, the Last Dinner Party canceled a show last-minute citing illness, then cancelled a handful of dates. Today, the rising indie rock band cancelled five more due to burnout.

“As we came to the end of the UK/Ireland tour, we put some time aside to discuss how to approach the upcoming European tour,” they wrote in a statement on social media, continuing:

The burnout we’re experiencing emotionally, mentally, and physically — is something we’re taking very seriously. After much consideration we have come to the difficult decision to finish the tour with the last show in Prague. This means that we are sadly cancelling our November headline shows in Vienna, Zurich, Parma, Luxembourg and Tilburg. We wanted to give fans with tickets to these particular dates as much advance notice as possible to adjust their plans. We sincerely apologise to our fans who were looking forward to seeing us, and we are truly saddened to not be seeing you this time. Refunds will be issued by your point of purchase to the original method of payment.

This year has been incredible for us but undeniably exhausting and we have found that we need to take responsibility over the amount of shows that we can do. Pushing ourselves past breaking point is not a fair or wise decision for anyone. We hope that you can understand that our reason for cancelling these shows is to protect our well-being and give the very best performances you all deserve.

Moving forward and armed with the knowledge of our limits, we are working with our team to make sure we only book tours that we are capable of fulfilling at the highest potential. We never want to find ourselves in this situation again.

Thank you so much, from the bottom of our hearts, for being the most supportive, generous, and wonderful fans — it means so much to us.

It’s a tough time for touring indie musicians. Earlier this week, Clairo canceled three gigs due to exhaustion; last month, Bright Eyes canceled the rest of their 2024 tour dates and in August the Armed canceled their tour before it even began”.

I think we will find many other artists step back from dates because of exhaustion and burnout. I can see how artists are suffering. They want to see as many people as possible and travel to all sorts of places. That can be physically draining. The emotional effect of being on the road. The adulation from the stage and some comedown and stress when it comes to everything connected to touring. The business side of things. Promotion. It can all combine in a really severe way. I have seen some on social media criticise The Last Dinner Party because they feel like they have cancelled dates and not really done enough to warrant that. Lacking stamina. It is insulting to consider people taking shots at a group who have faced their fair share of challenges since they started. Sexism and those saying they are industry plants. The truth is that The Last Dinner Party have crammed so much in this year. To deliver brilliant shows in different towns and cities requires so much. What is involved in promoting albums and touring in general is a hell of a lot tougher and more demanding than most people realise. It is no surprise that other artists have also cited burnout and exhaustion. It is not a new thing, though I do feel there is this expectation that artists can tour relentlessly and do everything else without it causing any damage. There is a real danger going beyond a point where you can’t really carry on to please fans.

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan attend the Guts World Tour premiere/PHOTO CREDIT:: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images

It is disappointing that some will miss out but it is paramount artists think of themselves and can ensure they are able to continue and perform after a short break. In the case of The Last Dinner Party, they will be back on the road soon enough. I do think that the industry needs to look at some of the pressure and expectation put on artists. I am not sure whether there are ways in which touring can be made easier. Perhaps artists having to shorten their tours. It is hard to make that call as they want to reach as many people as they can. Think about the music industry in general and how rising popularity and fan adulation/obsession can impact mental health negatively. Artists such as Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo have shared their advice on dealing with fame and the pressures that come with succeeding and being very visible in the entertainment industry. It is really challenging for every artist. So much to navigate online and in the real world. The amount of energy it takes to tour and everything else required to build their name and keep their fans happy. Let alone everything that comes from being online. I do hope that The Last Dinner Party are given enough space and time to refresh and rest for a bit and people will give them earned patience and respect. I have seen some criticism but, when you look at other artists who are also pulling out of dates, it is becoming more widespread. If an artist is experiencing burnout then they need to be given time and respect. If they are pushed or expected to go on then that can lead to…

SOMETHING far more serious.

FEATURE: Exploitation, Sexism and Racism Within New Jill Swing: Why the Incredible Women of a Brilliant Genre Deserve More

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploitation, Sexism and Racism Within New Jill Swing

Why the Incredible Women of a Brilliant Genre Deserve More

_________

THIS is inspired…

PHOTO CREDIT: DeMonica Santiago, Shireen Crutchfield and Joyce Tolbert (The Good Girls) in 1990 PHOTO CREDIT: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

by a recent article from The Guardian. I do lean on them a bit when it comes to features but, as a new album has come out that is definitely worth getting, I wanted to explore the idea more. The genre of New Jill Swing. How it was an incredible genre where amazing female artists ruled. However, for all the brilliant music they put out, there was exploitation, racism and sexism behind the scenes. The compilation, New Jill Swing: 1988-94 is out now on Ace Recorda:

“New jill swing was a cheeky response to the very male, late 80s world of new jack swing, and it was the dawn of a golden age for female R&B in the 90s.

The original source of new jack swing - or swingbeat - could be found in key records such as Janet Jackson’s “Control”, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, which mixed hard beats with soul, real R&B with 808s and a tough shuffle. Producer Teddy Riley took these sounds a step further at the end of the 80s, blending them with hip- hop because - strange as it now seems – hip-hop in the 80s was barely integrated into R&B.

Solo acts like Karyn White (‘The Way You Love Me’) and Jasmine Guy (‘Try Me’) followed in Janet Jackson’s future-perfect footsteps, inspiring a bunch of female groups who followed in the early 90s. The initial ground-breakers were a Motown act called the Good Girls who were set up to be a swingbeat Supremes, with the wonderful ‘Your Sweetness’ in 1989. 1990 saw the emergence of R&B superstars En Vogue whose confidence and style proved that swingbeat wasn’t just a genre for boy bands. Xscape (‘Love On My Mind’) followed in 1991 while SWV (‘I’m So Into You’) and Jade (‘Don’t Walk Away’) both had their first UK hits in the spring of 1993. These hits were also pop classicist in their melodies and lyrics, harking back to 60s girl groups as much as they looked forward to the 21st century.

“New Jill Swing” has been compiled by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and is historically significant as the first ever compilation of the genre. New jill swing may have borrowed from hip-hop but it was more smartly stylized and consciously retro-modern in its look, whether that was in En Vogue’s Old Hollywood references, the Good Girls’ plaid skirts or Jade’s baseball caps and braids. It would also unwittingly lay down the groundwork for the ultra-modern sounds to come later in the decade from the likes of TLC and Missy Elliot”.

I think that there should be a book about the genre. The compilation will showcase the brilliant groups that were around through the 1990s and in the late-1980s. This opposition or alternative to the more celebrated New Jack Swing. Unlike the large swathes of male artists in that scene, life was much harder for their female counterparts. If the album puts out there the amazing music made by New Jill Swing acts, a lot of that success came at the expense of the artists. In terms of the contracts many signed and how there was discrimination and sexism. There is a lot more to discuss when it comes to New Jill Swing. If survivors such as SWV proved that they could sustain and overcome hurdles and challenges, a lot of other women were not so fortunate. Exploitation quite common. It is shocking that you can look through the new compilation and many of these acts are either short-lived or experienced so much abuse. Not taken seriously or made to sign bad contracts to get a label a quick hit:

“A flash of Technicolor fills the screen, as four women spin and glide in perfect unison. The bouncy crunch of drum machines collides with slick, soaring vocals, as the women then jump over one another’s heads. “I broke my ankle doing some of this stuff,” says Stacy Francis of the lively music video for You (You’re the One for Me) by her group Ex Girlfriend. “Some of what we were doing was unheard of at the time. There wasn’t anything like that before we came along.”

Populated by the likes of En Vogue, SWV, Pebbles, Karyn White, Jade, Xscape and others, this was new jill swing, the female counterpart to new jack swing, which exploded in the late 1980s and early 90s by fusing US hip-hop with pop and R&B. It would go on to shape R&B as we know it but came at a cost for many of the women involved. “It was an exciting road,” says Francis. “But it was also rough and heartbreaking. There was a lot of exploitation.”

“Hip-hop was still not completely respected at that point as an art form,” explains Tara Kemp, whose 1991 US Top 10 hit Piece of My Heart features on the compilation. Pop radio stations demanded a version with its rap removed. “A lot of people still didn’t think hip-hop was music,” Kemp says.

IN THIS PHOTO: Tara Kemp in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin/WireImage 

“It was like when rock’n’roll came around and your grandparents would be like: ‘It’s not gonna last!’” recalls Shireen Crutchfield, who was the lead singer of the Good Girls, a group who were marketed as the Supremes of the new movement. “New jack swing was definitely a generational thing – a distinct departure from what was before. Our manager wanted us to stay away from it because he was a lot older than us.”

The person who changed that mindset was producer Teddy Riley. “There was a snobbery around rap,” recalls Joyce Irby, one of the more experienced artists on the scene. In the early 80s she released her own rap track, A Wild and Crazzy Song, and joined pop-R&B group Klymaxx before becoming a solo artist on Motown Records. “But Teddy’s stuff was so musical. He really could incorporate and blend hip-hop with traditional R&B so that there were elements the old-school musicians could respect. His stuff was exquisitely done.”

Riley is the unquestionably the godfather of new jack swing: he was the force behind boybands Guy and Blackstreet, and produced early scene hits by Bobby Brown and the Get Fresh Crew. “At the time, nobody was coming with the authentic, eclectic, offbeat fusion styles,” he said in 1987. “We gave R&B a new lifeline.”

However, while Riley’s contributions to the genre have long been celebrated, along with producers such as Full Force, LA Reid, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Babyface and Bernard Belle, Stanley wanted to showcase the women from the era. “These groups were definitely treated as second class by the record companies and producers because they were women,” he says. “But they really laid the groundwork for a lot of the female R&B acts of the late 90s and early 00s and productions by the likes of Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Rodney Jerkins – basically, some of the most incredibly extreme music to become commercially successful in history.”

New jack swing was also known as swingbeat and on Irby’s track on the compilation, She’s Not My Lover, you can hear why. “I loved big band swing,” she says. “You can hear the influence in the horn lines on that song.” She worked as a co-writer and co-producer with another scene mainstay, Dallas Austin, and cites Motownphilly by Boyz II Men, “a track that he cut and then I edited. I was like: ‘You’ve got to put the real swing in from back in the day and merge that.’”

As the industry latched on, a lot of the women featured on Stanley’s compilation were spotted and signed up while they were young. Crutchfield, who was in high school and dancing on the TV show Soul Train, was signing a deal to Motown by the time of her 18th birthday. Francis was in a Broadway show at 16, then signed and in Ex Girlfriend by 18. Irby was spotted years earlier, aged 16, by George Clinton, while hanging around on the loading bay outside gigs, playing her bass guitar. However, while Clinton was supportive and nurturing, many of the others faced much more difficult situations.

“The whole industry is very toxic,” says Kemp. She was signed to Giant, a label run by Irving Azoff, who was best known for managing the Eagles. “He had wanted it to be a rock label but he hadn’t had any hits,” she recalls. “They didn’t really sign me to be an artist because he didn’t care about this type of music. He just needed a hit.” (When contacted via his publicist, Azoff did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Her 1991 debut single, Hold You Tight, duly reached No 3 and was certified gold, but she faced hapless label ideas as they tried to rebrand her. “Their vision was for me to be wearing a black lace teddy carrying an Uzi and acting like a Black girl from the ghetto,” she says. “As someone who came up legitimately in R&B music, I was never about pretending to be something I’m not. It was really cringeworthy and horrible. When I heard that, I was like: ‘I’m out of here. This is not gonna fly.’”

Meanwhile, despite Motown’s girl group pedigree, the label were struggling with the Good Girls. “I don’t think they knew what to do with us,” says Crutchfield. “We weren’t appreciated as artists; we could have done so much more.” The group split in 1993.

Francis says Ex Girlfriend “were four young women from the ghetto who were taken full advantage of. If you look at any group on that compilation album and you go: ‘Hey, what happened to that person? Where are they?’ Most likely, they signed the most horrific record contract. Which is what we did. We didn’t have anybody that cared enough about us to say: ‘Wait for a lawyer.’” (Warner Music could not make anyone available for comment.)

However, despite the bruises from their experiences – Kemp alleges she ended up blacklisted from the industry, couldn’t get a deal, and was “literally not allowed to play” because of egotistical interference from her label after she negotiated an exit from it – there’s a huge pride in the music they presciently created. “We need those phenomenal songs from these talented women out there,” says Francis. “In many ways this is very bittersweet for me but to have our fingerprints on that new jack swing era and be pioneers of that – come on, it’s just epic. There has been a lot of hurt and healing to go through but no matter what you experience in life, no matter how many people come along and take advantage, that music still lives on. Art always wins”.

It is a shame that there has not been more discussion about New Jill Swing. Of course, this new curated compilation celebrates the music. Whilst we know of New Jack Swing and the best of that genre, maybe not as much focus is on the women of New Jill Swing. I wonder whether a modern-day revival and evolution could occur. I can hear the influence of New Jill Swing in modern artists, though it is not as prevalent and defined as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It would be great to see a wave of new groups emerging that revive the brilliance and phenomenal sound of New Jill Swing. Whether keeping pure to the roots or adding in something fresh to give it a twist, there is that room for a revival. Both honouring the women who came before and carrying on the legacy. As brilliant as the music was that came from New Jill Swing, there are these stories of exploitation. More prevalent than many people are aware of. Quite a big problem for many. Such a discredit to these women. So many of these amazing acts that could have gone a long way only enjoyed brief careers. The women who were trailblazers and laid foundations for women of Pop and R&B that followed. Their stories need to be told. It would be good if there was a documentary or book where we could hear from many of the artists from New Jill Swing and their experiences. At the end, maybe a real celebration of how influential and important New Jill Swing was. The new compilation from Bob Stanley showcases a wealth of talent. Phenomenal cuts from queens of New Jill Swing. It is an album I would recommend…

EVERYONE picks up.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Metacritic’s Highest-Rated Albums of the Year So Far

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Beyoncé

Metacritic’s Highest-Rated Albums of the Year So Far

_________

I have touched on this before…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fontaines D.C.

but I want to return to the best albums of the year so far. I will run a feature in the next month or two regarding the best albums of this year. There is still competition. Before then, I am taking from Metacritic and the albums they deemed to be the most acclaimed of the year. A site that collates and averages critics reviews to determine which are the highest-rated. In this twenty-song mixtape, we will hear songs from those albums that have won rave reviews more or less across the board. Including tracks from Charli XCX (twice), Laura Marling and English Teacher, this is a playlist of sheer excellence. It may also guide you to albums that you have not heard before. We still might get some potential year-best albums between now and the end of the year – though most of the best have been released. This is a gold standard mixtape with cuts from the…

MOST acclaimed albums of 2024.

FEATURE: Don't Let the Mystery Go, Now: Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again at Forty-Four

FEATURE:

 

Don't Let the Mystery Go, Now

Kate Bush’s December Will Be Magic Again at Forty-Four

_________

THE Christmas song is something…

that a lot of artists tackle. With mixed results. In the case of Kate Bush, she released two. The lesser-known one is Home for Christmas. It originally appeared in the BBC’s The Comic Strip Presents… film, Wild Turkey, screened on 24th December, 1992. A bit of a lost gem, Home For Christmas was released as the B-side to the U.K .single, Moments of Pleasure, and as the B-side to the U.S. single, Rubberband Girl. It is a bit niche I guess. Christmas songs can only really be played at a particular time of year, so fewer people hear them and they can be buried amidst the classics. The second (and first-released) Christmas song, and best-known is December Will Be Magic Again. It was released as a single on 17th November, 1980. I want to write about it as it gets a lot of stick:

“Critical response

Released in November, critics in the UK were quick to reach their verdict in the various music papers.

Looks like we’ll have to endure that fairy Kate Bush… over the cash-register season… Kate is “cute”… and no doubt you’ll be force fed, as you will with turkey.

Andy Gill, NME, 29 November 1980

Sounding like she’s just been rutted from the rear with a particularly rampant reindeer, Kate reminds us of the joys of the season at considerable length and expense. Lush, sentimental, extravagantly produced… destined to become a Christmas irritation; and airwave itch you won’t be able to scratch.

Allan Jones, Melody Maker, 6 December 1980”.

There is something about a Christmas song that is very subjective. Judged on different merits and metrics compared to an ordinary song. Compared against a narrow number of songs rather than anything else. If December Will Be Magic Again was wintery or something that was about the season or month and not Christmas, it would not have been seen as lesser or judged as harshly as it was by some. I think it is a great song and one that is always heartwarming to hear this time of the year. As we are in November, it is only a matter of time before this song is on the airwaves!

It is a shame that there is no music video for this single. I sort of thought Bush might put an animation to it recently. A song I think she likes, it would be great to have a new video for it. However, the track was premiered during the Christmas Snowtime Special in December 1979, though it was not a single release until 17th November, 1980. It was the follow-up single to Army Dreamers. Quite a musical shift! Though it only reached twenty-nine in the U.K., it has taken on a life of its own since 1980. Now more regarded and played more, I would rank December Will Be Magic Again alongside the best Christmas tracks. The Christmas imagery and classic visions are present right from the off: “December will be magic again/Take a husky to the ice/While Bing Crosby sings White Christmas. He makes you feel nice/December will be magic again/Old Saint Nicholas up the chimney/Just a-popping up in my memory”. I will mention December Will Be Magic Again when I talk about her Christmas special, Kate, that was broadcast on 28th December, 1979. Rare that the Christmas single was officially released so long after it was performed on T.V. There is not much written about a wonderful jewel that is sprinkled with snow and lovers. The imagery Bush weaves through the song. How her voice dances and glistens through the track! I want to highlight part of this Dreams of Orgonon feature about December Will Be Magic Again:

“With “December Will Be Magic Again,” we’re in considerably less serious territory. A one-off Christmas single with no attachment to an album, it dallies in its own winter wonderland, cordoning itself off from Kate Bush’s more serious contemporary work. When pop singers do Christmas songs, they’re usually partaking in a tradition of cheerful odes to Yuletide (with some notable exceptions). “December Will Be Magic Again” is one of these songs, abdicating its status as a contemporary of Never for Ever in favor of filling the Christmas single slot. Yet Bush couldn’t settle for even her Christmas fluff being drab traditionalism, and fucked around with it a bit.

You see, a lot of Christmas standards hail from the 70s and 80s and are created by artists such as Paul McCartney and Wham! These songs are often little more than lists of Christmas activities and odes to sitting around trees with your family. It’s a saccharine tradition that buys into capitalist notions of Christmas and giving corporations lots of money. To be sure, Christmas activities are often fun — no form of leisure is free of capitalist maleficence. But at its core, modern Christmas is as much a commercial enterprise as it is a global family tradition.

Bush doesn’t completely break from this pattern, as “December” is straightforwardly nostalgic. From the longing for the past implied by its title to its dwelling on childhood images, the song spends it runtime on a reconstruction of Christmas childhood memories. Bush settles into the falsetto end of her vocal range, singing lots of high notes with a wonder usually only prepubescents can manage. Bush has exactly the sort of voice which makes lyrics like “take a husky to the ice/while Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas”/he makes you feel nice” sound cutely intuitive in a way we’re not prone to seeing in things like “Wonderful Christmastime.”

Yet for its exercise in nostalgia, it separates itself from the mainstream of Christmas music by being a little too eccentric to be quite marketable (the song did pretty well in the charts, but was far from one of Bush’s bestselling singles). Bush’s own East Wickham childhood makes its way into the song. She has a refreshing tendency to lean on her own interests in her songwriting, which liberates “December” from feeling too commercial. There are the obvious references to staples of Christmastime like “old Saint Nicholas) (who is grossly maligned by the entire UK as “Father Christmas”) and romantic traditions (“kiss under mistletoe”), but they’re balanced by images of Oscar Wilde showing up: “light the candle lights/to conjure Mr. Wilde/ooh, it’s quiet inside/here in Oscar’s mind.” The reference is clunky, with two uses of “light” in a single clause accompanied by some strange stuff about dwelling in Wilde’s head (“it’s quiet in here/inside Oscar’s mind”). Yet it’s an oddly poignant choice of creative minds to dive into: Wilde’s idiosyncratic wit often responded to darkness in his personal life. As a queer man in Victorian England, Wilde’s status as popular author was diminished by his demotion to subhumanity for his sexual orientation. In some ways, true recognition for him came later when millions of people read his work and celebrated him as both a great creator of the fantastical and a queer icon, including a little The Happy Prince fan called Catherine Bush

Recorded at London AIR Studios in 1979. Performed on 22 December for BBC Snowtime Special and 28 December for “Kate” special. Single version recorded in November 1980. Released as a single on 17 November 1980”.

I do like how Bush decided to record this Christmas song. Many artists avoid it because they don’t like to or feel it is perhaps a waste of time. If it is not tied to an album and there is no real benefit in scoring a high chart position for a Christmas song then they sit it out. I love the T.V. performances of the song but don’t think they quite do the song justice. I have written about December Will Be Magic Again a few times now and I always sort of have to defend it as people take against it. Again, it is that thing about Christmas songs only compared to other Christmas songs. It is hard to measure up to Mariah Carey or Wham! However, December Will Be Magic Again is a lost Kate Bush treasure! An overlooked song that is given a heavier pounding because it is competing with other Christmas songs. I love her writing. It is simple yet distinctively her: “Oh, I’m coming to cover the lovers/Ooh, and I’m coming to sparkle the dark up/Ooh, and I’m coming to cover the muck up”. I have seen December Will Be Magic Again included in listings of her best songs, though it is quite rare. I hope that this year is one where the song is given no light and appreciation. It would be good maybe to see a fan-made animation for the song. A young Kate Bush maybe watching over a town being blanketed in snow as we see inside houses as Christmas Eve unfolds. In 2023, Prog included December Will Be Magic Again in their top forty Kate Bush songs feature:

“This seasonal tune made its debut in December 1979 when Bush performed it on Kate, the BBC’s Kate Bush Christmas special.

That Joe Payne: “Like much of Kate’s stuff from that era, it’s a real fusion of classical and contemporary and I just adore the lyrics [to this single]: ‘Jumping down in my parachute; the white city, she is so beautiful/Upon the black-soot icicled roofs, see how I fall, like the snow…’

“Wow, what imagery! She was already a huge influence on me way before hearing this song, but I have to say that it’s the theatrical sensibilities that always draw me in. She sets a great example to anyone who wonders where the line is between art and entertainment and reminds me that there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to both”.

The Guardian placed December Will Be Magic Again twenty-fifth in their ranking of every Kate Bush single. There are twenty-nine to choose from. However, as they placed The Man I Love at twenty-six and called it “very nice, but inessential”, you can’t really trust anything they say! Insanity on their part! I still hold a soft spot for December Will Be Magic Again. So do many fans. When we hear the song played, we know we are getting near Christmas. I think it is one of the first tracks played, as its title does not mention Christmas, so we can’t get away with it! The Guardian wrote how 2011’s 50 Words for Snow – not a Christmas album but winter-themed – was stronger and had potential Christmas singles. They wrote “…but her first attempt at a Christmas single 31 years earlier fell oddly flat, never quite sounding as magical as its title suggests”. I would argue that the twinkling and brilliant December Will Be Magic Again possesses…

PLENTY of magic.

FEATURE: Strings, Please: The Crossover Between the Mainstream and Classical

FEATURE:

 

 

Strings, Please

The Crossover Between the Mainstream and Classical

_________

THEY still seem like different worlds…

IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 17th October, 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Lloyd Wakefield

I am referring to genres like Pop and Rock and Classical. Maybe it is quite hard to mesh and combine the two naturally. I do think that there has always been a relationship between these worlds. Classical music is still seen as quite niche and specialist. We have a wave of incredible young composers and fantastic players that are making the genre fresh and contemporary. That perception the genre is dusty and elitist. Once seen as a novelty, the meeting of musical worlds like Electronic and Dance together with strings and the Classical is becoming more common. D.J. sets or classic albums being scored by orchestras. Pete Tong, Jules Buckley and The Heritage Orchestra performed Ibiza Classics a few years ago. They performed a big show at the O2. The Ibiza Proms is an intriguing mash-up that is actually quite natural rather than awkward. More and more, Classical music and orchestration is being paired and integrated with a range of different sounds. It always heightens them and adds something classy and dramatic. That may sound stereotypical or lazy. Going back to the elitist tag. However, it is true that strings, brass and woodwind offers a magic and emotional resonance that is hard to deny. I am writing this feature because there have been recent examples of popular contemporary artists with huge followings being backed by orchestras. Dua Lipa recently performed with the Heritage Orchestra. In a one-off (debut) show at the Royal Albert Hall, this was a Pop artist defined by energy, bombast and these huge anthems reimagined. The beautiful melding of the orchestra and Lipa. Rolling Stone provided their take:

“The last time Dua Lipa played in the UK, it was to headline Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, and her next performances in her home country will be two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium next June. Sandwiched in between these two career-defining moments is tonight’s show at the Royal Albert Hall, which is being filmed for a TV special and sees her joined by a full orchestra, promising a transformation of her discography.

The entire pit of the venue is turned into one huge stage, with a snaking walkway cutting between a 53-person Heritage Orchestra, 14-person choir and Lipa’s seven-person band. In between songs, Lipa tells the audience how new album Radical Optimism was about searching for something tangible, and how the idea of this special show allowed her to “go into the bare bones” of her songs and reimagine them.

IN THIS PHOTO: Elton John joins Dua Lipa on stage at the Royal Albert Hall/PHOTO CREDIT: Ben Gibson

The idea is an interesting one, but in reality not much changes here from her studio material, and it’s probably for the better. Hers are some of the best pop songs of the decade so far, and to radically transform their shape and structure could serve to dilute their power. Instead, the sweeping string section and stirring horns add a new layer of paint while not being transformative. It adds an extra dramatic heft to Radical Optimism highlights ‘Houdini’ and ‘Training Season’, while the brilliant groove that drives both tracks is still firmly in tact.

The idea of an orchestral reimagining of an artist’s catalogue – especially one as fun and danceable as Lipa’s – can end up feeling like code for making it a little more boring, but it’s the changes of energy and tone that make the show succeed. There are beautifully tender moments when she covers Cleo Sol’s ‘Sunshine’ and sings at the piano for a devastating rendition of ‘Anything For Love’, but moments later she’s thrashing about on top of that very piano during a raucous performance of breakout hit ‘Be the One’.

For the encore, it’s truly heartwarming when the troupe of singers part like the red sea to reveal a beaming Elton John, who reveals a genuine chemistry with Lipa as the pair tear through a jubilant version of ‘Cold Heart’. The gap between this show and her soon-to-be-stadium tour is then cut by the introduction of her dancers, who add a much-needed dynamism to a live debut of Barbie track ‘Dance the Night’ and the closing ‘Don’t Start Now’.

This was a show that hinted at revolution for Lipa’s catalogue, and though it stops short of delivering that, it doesn’t diminish the power of these potent pop songs and confirms her as a true entertainer”.

Offering a new dynamic to her music, I don’t think it should be treated as a novelty. It is not the first occasion of a massive Pop artist taking things down and being accompanied by an orchestra. It does open the door for future possibilities. Artists such as Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé would sound wonderful with orchestral support! The way we think about particular songs and albums. An Evening with Dua Lipa will air on ITV later this year. Recently, Florence + The Machine performed their phenomenal debut album, Lungs, in a dramatic reimagining for the BBC Proms. It is available on iPlayer to watch now:

“Huge hits Dog Days Are Over and You've Got the Love feature in this dramatic reimagining of the international star’s groundbreaking first album. Fans flocked from all over the world to this unique concert titled Symphony of Lungs, celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Florence + The Machine's Brit award-winning debut.

Captivating everyone in her path, Florence teams up with conductor and arranger Jules Buckley, the London Contemporary Voices choir and an 80-plus-piece orchestra complete with lute, flute and harpsichord to create a remarkable new soundscape in her only concert of the year”.

It seems like more and more artists will be reframing and remoulding their albums by pairing with orchestras. The fact that Dua Lipa and Florence + The Machine garnered such huge reviews shows that there is this alchemy that should be mined more. I am excited to see how that notion evolves. This is what The Guardian wrote when reviewing Florence + The Machine: Symphony of Lungs:

“Will it surprise you to learn that Florence Welch’s orchestra features not one, but two harps? That there is a lute and a rainstick, and a violin solo so furious that it feels like a devil is being conjured? As the grand high witch of maximalism, the Proms is the ideal way for Welch to revisit the pained howl of Lungs, her 2009 debut album that wears its heartbreak like a scar. “When I first heard Jules’s orchestration, I cried,” she tells the audience in her whisper-soft speaking voice. “This album is about feeling and I never thought anyone could add more feeling. But Jules did.”

She walks out in a red Rodarte gown that is 90% sleeve, evoking the bruised and bloody heart of 15 years ago. Each of Jules Buckley’s orchestral reworkings teases something new from the occasionally patchy collection of songs. Girl With One Eye becomes a campy musical theatre number as Welch vamps around the stage and the bassoon channels You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch; the fluttering woodland flutes heighten the emotional warfare of My Boy Builds Coffins; the tidal wave of feeling crashing around during Rabbit Heart ratchets the crowd to their feet.

And anchoring it all is that voice, wide-mouthed and guttural but not gravelly, dredging up long-buried emotions and recasting them with tenderness and a kind of joy. Welch claims that her range has shrunk in the intervening years but you can rarely tell; the huge notes hit like a cannon firing, her head voice peaking with all the softness of a flurry of snow.

“Everything’s a big crescendo,” she said of her songwriting in 2011 – and so it is here, heightened by the power of tens of musicians. The breaking waves engulf the audience every time: by the time we reach Dog Days Are Over (with an operatic verse chucked in, because why not), the atmosphere hits a kind of ecstasy that you rarely get to feel without chemical intervention. Spirits are channelled and danced with, as Buckley and Welch give an unforgettable performance”.

I don’t think it is an easy go-to for artists to perform with orchestras to give their albums this new sense of grandeur and brilliance. It is a way of helping break down barriers. I still think we undervalue orchestra and Classic music. How many wonderful conductors there are coming through. There is still a long way to go. There is still sexism and misogyny in this world. Very little diversity, especially when it comes to conductors. However, things are improving. I think that one cannot fault the quality and psychological, emotional impact orchestras have. Dua Lipa and Florence + The Machine are a couple of examples of what happens when mainstream artists collaborate with orchestras. It is not a new thing, as I say, but it is getting more attention. I do hope that we see more artists reimagine their work. Maybe Kylie Minogue. Anyway. It is exciting and fascinating how we perceive and consider certain albums when they are stripped back and rebuilt. It is a celebrated artist and an orchestra working together…

IN perfect harmony.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Becky Sikasa

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Becky Sikasa

_________

THERE are not many interviews…

out there with Becky Sikasa. That is a shame, as she is a major talent that people need to know about. I will come to an interview with her from last year. In terms of biography on her Bandcamp page, you do get a sense of why this incredible artist has been turning heads: “From the very start soul artist Becky Sikasa captivated tastemakers and music lovers in UK and Germany. Working with award-winning producers and directors, Becky shapes her artistic vision, and is on her way to becoming one of the new voices of UK-Neo-Soul”. She pays The Lexington in London on 28th November. I am tempted to go and see her play as her music is phenomenal. Recently nominated for a second time running for the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) for The Writings and the Pictures and the Song. Sikasa was nominated last year for Twelve Wooden Boxes. Even though  rEDOLENT won for Dinny Greet, the fact she has been nominated two years running proves what a consistent and important talent she is. I want to pull together the various bits of reviews and interviews there are. I want to start with this feature from CLASH. Last year, they highlighted seven acts who were playing at the Wide Days showcase in Edinburgh:

“Playing the smallest Wide Days venue, the authenticity of Sneaky Pete’s makes for an off-kilter match to Becky Sikasa’s set. The intimacy greatly showcases her emotive soul pop. Playing on the Friday, the space is packed to bursting point, most punters have clearly planned to watch this set. Laying her soul bare, or at least that’s how it seems, the Glasgow based singer ensures an arresting performance. The proficiency of Becky Sikasa’s voice is impossible to shake off”.

You can hear her long-E.P. on Bandcamp and also Spotify. I think it is a wonderful work. I will end with a review of that work from April. With a new single, I have no words, out and getting a lot of positive reaction, this is a perfect time to discover Becky Sikasa. I will hop back and forth regarding timeline and chronology. I want to come to Record Jet and their feature from February, where they named Becky Sikasa their artist of that month. Since then, she has had quite a big and important year:

“Between neo soul and indie pop

February is going to be a musical one: our Artist of the Month is Beck Sikasa, singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. And boy, is there a lot of music with Becky! Vocals, keyboard, guitar, violin – it seems that Becky owns it all and makes it all her own. That’s why she is considered an up-and-coming star in the world of neo soul. But Becky can do more than just neo soul. She is constantly growing her international fanbase with her colourful genre cocktail of neo soul, a pinch of RnB and indie pop. In other words, she has generated a lot of attention outside of Germany. Her lively and colourful music has a certain appeal. She considers James Blake, Sylvan Esso and Bruno Major, among others, to be her musical idols and sources of songwriting inspiration.

Next stop: Pop Academy Edinburgh

Her interest in music started  at the young age of 4, when she played the keyboard with her mother. She also took the opportunity to learn to write her own lyrics. Becky includes many of her own experiences and emotions in her music. Her lyrics talk of lovesickness and how she deals with pain. She pours all of her creativity and emotions into her music. This is perhaps also the reason why Becky Sikasa has generated well over 32,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Her next few concerts have been announced and are partly sold out.

Becky has a feel for emotions

Becky Sikasa moved away from home to Scotland, specifically Edinburgh, to Napier University. There she studied pop music and first appeared in 2016 as one half of the German-Scottish duo “Lunir”. The band’s first appearances were in pubs, small cafes, on the radio, as a feature at 1Live, and appearances at international festivals and showcases. During the pandemic, Becky concentrated on her solo career and composing her own and new music. She eventually released her debut singles “Lullaby” and “Keeper” in 2022. Her tracks capture a light, airy mood with Becky questioning her identity, sense of belonging and connection. And as Becky’s Instagram posts demonstrate, her rehearsals are funny and spontaneous.

The new single “Crashing and Fall” was released on 19th January and along with three sold-out headline shows in three countries (England, Scotland und Germany), is really driving her rise. The latest single was picked up by BBC 1Xtra, BBC Introducing and BBC R1’s Chillest Show and the first three tracks of the EP have already been streamed more than half a million times – a fantastic achievement when you consider that they were released by Becky herself on her own label. With so many festival appearances and solo gigs coming up this year, 2024 will be a big year for Becky”.

Prior to ending with a review of her new E.P. (at six songs, it is technically that rather than an album), I want to feature an interview from last year. Interculture Youth Scotland spoke with the stunning Becky Sikasa about he progress and what she was looking ahead to. I am new to her work, though I have been looking back and seeing where she came from:

“What first got you into music and who were your early musical inspirations; anyone you listened to while growing up or were there any artists throughout your life that you heard and felt, ‘I want to make music like them!’?

For sure! Definitely too many to list them all but big childhood heroes for me were Lauryn Hill, Regina Spektor, Mariah Carey, D’Angelo, Stacie Orrico, Corinne Bailey Rae, Feist but then also Lianne La Havas, Bon Iver, Hiatus Kaiyote, Solange, KT Tunstall, Justin Timberlake, Kimbra...ha-ha! The list goes on, but I’ll stop for now.

What has been the most amazing experience for you in music and what are you most looking forward to in 2024?

Think one of my favourite moments recently has been performing my song ‘Wait Up’ live for the first time with my band at our Edinburgh headline. That feeling of something you made up in your mind coming to life like that is just unreal.

What were the most challenging things you encountered at the beginning of your career and what would you count as the important breaks?

I think one of the most challenging things when you first start a project is trusting that your art is already enough even though no one’s heard it yet and it doesn’t yet have any outside stamps of approval that you may be looking for to sort of make it a ‘real thing’.

Can you describe how you compose your songs, and explain a bit about your process?

There isn’t really one way but usually the first bit, the first line, the first phrase, the first melody just sorta jumps out at me randomly. Might be in the middle of the night, actually quite frequently is in the middle of the night ha-ha! (my poor neighbours). I don’t usually have an idea to write about a topic and then go at it, it’s more of a fluid process, not that much planning or structure to it. Once the bones of the track are clear, I usually take it to David Scobie whose part of my band and has been a close creative partner for the longest time and we just experiment and have fun with production and arrangement until it feels right. Those long-term creative relationships are so important to me. That level of communication and understanding doesn’t just happen overnight”

Who would you most like to collaborate with?

I’ve actually already started working on some collabs with a couple of incredible artists! I feel like I can’t give it away just yet but am truly buzzing...keep your eyes peeled for that in 2024!

You’re playing First Footin’ on New Year’s Day in Edinburgh with other acts like Bemz and Grace &The Flat Boys, what’s your New Year resolutions or goals for 2024?

Ooh I never really do New Year’s resolutions but to be honest I’m super lucky to call my band and my visual and creative team my best pals and we’ve sort of just been having the best time working away together. So ,I kinda just hope we get to do even more of it next year?!

Buzzing to start the year off with a wee solo gig as part of this amazing line up! Hopefully get some people excited to come along to my Celtic Connections show which will be my biggest headline yet, at St Luke’s.

Your music speaks such truth and comes from a place that allows people to feel okay with vulnerability, tell us about your EP ‘Twelve Wooden Boxes’, and how your tour has been so far?

That EP is probably always going to hold a special place in my heart; not just because it’s my debut but also because of what it’s about. Twelve Wooden Boxes is the house I grew up in as a kid. One of my earliest and most vivid memories is picking dozens of flowers in in the big meadow behind the house, my mum tying them into cute arrangements, and me and my siblings sitting on these tiny plastic chairs, selling them to people passing by. We were so proud of our wee business! There was something magical about that home and it burnt down a few years later. Twelve Wooden Boxes is about feeling a bit lost in the world, searching for belonging and identity, the first earth shattering heart break, and ultimately, love.

What would you tell young people who are building towards songwriting, and what advice would you give to them on finding their identity as an artist?

Don’t feel disheartened too easily, keep at it.

Don’t be afraid to ask other artists you like for help, maybe co-write with friends.

And most importantly try not to take it and yourself too seriously and remember to enjoy yourself in the process”.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Becky Sikasa (@beckysikasa)

To round things off, there is this review for The Writings and the Pictures and the Song. It is a wonderful E.P. that I would urge people to check out. I think that it is Becky Sikasa’s best collection to date. She is going to keep on growing and become this massive artist. Someone that should definitely be on your radar:

“Scotland’s rising R&B and neo-soul star Becky Sikasa released her EP ‘The Writings And The Pictures And The Song’. This is her second EP after her 2022 debut ‘Twelve Wooden Boxes’, for which she received a nomination for the Scottish Album of the Year award.

‘Twelve Wooden Boxes’ was praised for Sikasa’s soaring vocal range as she searched for belonging, identity and love. ‘The Writings And The Pictures And The Song’ shows Sikasa’s disillusion with unbelieving ideas about love following her first heartbreak.

The new EP features singles ‘Hard To Love,’ Wait Up,’ Work Of Love,’ and ‘Crashing And Falling’. Sikasa wears her heart on her sleeve in ‘The Writings And The Pictures And The Song’, as her angelic vocals interweave in the unworldly production. She opens up to her listeners through her unguarded lyrics, from feeling hard to love to her anxiety about making mistakes.

The EP opens with her 2023 single ‘Hard To Love’. Relating to her experience with ADHD, Sikasa states on her social media that a lot of qualities associated with ADHD are often categorised as annoying and disruptive, leaving a tear in her self-esteem. Backed by soft piano chords, Sikasa’s heavenly voice and pure songwriting convey her vulnerability from start to finish as she translates the thoughts in her head into this single. ‘Wait Up’ is the second track of the new EP. This resounding single featuring Sikasa’s soulful vocals reminds her listeners they still have time, as everything will come together at the right moment.

‘Nothing To It’ is the third track in the EP about escaping the cyclical nature of life and making the same choice. Sikasa fears losing herself and voices that making the same choices feels like watching herself from the outside, walking into a trap. With the support from her celestial vocals and the delicate arrangement of the piano chords, Sikasa wonders whether learning is ever linear. ‘Nothing To It’ reveals that Sikasa is still a work in progress, as she constantly enters the same cycle of making the same choices and learning from them.

‘Work of Love’ ties the EP together, as ‘The Writing And The Pictures And The Song’ is a line from the widely praised 2023 single. Sikasa enunciates with her supernal vocals and her pure lyricism that the work of love is not for the weak and is not an easy process. The song stemmed from Sikasa’s first heartbreak, a heartbreak that was not only broken from the love but love in general. Sikasa opens a new path from this feeling towards a new perspective with the backing of heartfelt music arrangements.

‘Of Lightness And Nicotine’ is the penultimate track in the EP of her finding the balance between ‘lightness’ and ‘nicotine’ through her unearthly vocals and intangible production. The EP closes with ‘Crashing and Falling,’ Sikasa’s heart-rending single about her fear of making mistakes and “doing things wrong.” Sikasa embraces love and tenderness to pull her out of her fear, as her seraphic harmonies intertwined with the vivid music arrangements support the beautiful message that love can rescue you from your fears.

Through unlearning ideas and embracing love, Sikasa is a work in progress. Siksasa demonstrates her work of progress by moving through her fears instead of living in them and finding new perspectives of love whilst also exhibiting that love itself, from loving others to loving yourself, is also a work in progress. Most known for writing emotive songs about belonging, identity and connection from scenes from life, art and literature, she dived deep within herself and her experiences to compose grounded lyrics harmonised with her empyrean vocals and backed by the dainty composition. She invites her listeners to experience her process and inner thoughts whilst reminding them that they are also a work in progress.

Following the release of the EP, Sikasa received a nomination from BBC Introducing for Scottish Act of the Year. She also announced a tour in Scotland, due to begin in Autumn. With this soulful EP, her gift of lyricism and heavenly, warm vocals, Becky Sikasa is the next effulgent star of neo-soul and R&B”.

If you are looking around for a new artist or someone for next year that is worth watching then I would suggest that you connect with Becky Sikasa. This incredible artist is also helping to shine a light on Scottish music and its importance. It often gets overlooked in favour of artists coming out of London. The award-nominated and hugely tipped artist is someone to watch closely as I feel her career will…

TAKE her far and wide.

____________

Follow Becky Sikasa

Official:

https://beckysikasa.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/beckysikasa/

Bandcamp:

https://beckysikasa.bandcamp.com/music

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@beckysikasa

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3UqXMAMPI53itEWm6SMaBZ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/beckysikasa

FEATURE: In One in Seven British Households… The Beautiful South’s Carry on Up the Charts at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

In One in Seven British Households…

The Beautiful South’s Carry on Up the Charts at Thirty

_________

IT is claimed that…

The Beautiful South’s Carry on Up the Charts is in one in seven British households. So popular is their greatest hits collection, you can find it in so many homes around the country! Released on 7th November, 1994, I wanted to mark thirty years of one of the all-time best greatest hits collections. The band - Paul Heaton – vocals, Dave Hemingway – vocals, Jacqui Abbott – vocals, Dave Rotheray – guitar, Sean Welch – bass and Dave Stead – drums – released their fourth studio album, Miaow, earlier in 1994. Whilst not their best-received, it did contain great songs like Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud). It was no surprise that Carry on Up the Charts did so well. Think about the songs on it. From their debut single, Song for Whoever to A Little Time, there are recognisable and instantly warming songs. The songwriting brilliance of Paul Heaton and Dave Rotherray. It is amazing that  this album really exploded. It was a major commercial success, reaching number one in the U.K. Albums Chart and going on to become the second-biggest-selling album of 1994. In a year where so many genius albums were released, The Beautiful South were up there with the very best. I think that many assumed a greatest hits collection would not be a success. Their 1989 debut album, Welcome to the Beautiful South, was a success. By the time Miaow arrived, the band’s stock was slightly waning. The chart positions were lower by then. It took many by surprise that a greatest hits album did so well. Listen to it now and it is not such a shock. So many classics and instantly recognisable tracks. Such exceptional songwriting. I must admit I don’t love every song on Carry on Up the Charts. I have always felt uncomfortable with 36D. It is a song that you could not get away with now. Judging Page 3 models and those that were perceived to be all about their bodies and looks and were shallow women, it does come off as really sexist and misogynistic. I guess Paul Heaton would not write a song like that now and has moved on, though The Beautiful South were reacting to the tabloidisation of the media and the sort of glamour models that appeared in newspapers like The Sun.

It is an uncomfortable song and one that contributed to former vocalist Briana Corrigan leaving the band – objecting to the way women were perceived in some of the band’s songs. Regardless, it is the only black mark on otherwise stunning album. This is what Sputnikmusic said in their review of Carry on Up the Charts:

“Released 1994.
Go! Discs Records.
Paul Heaton - Vocals
David Hemmingway - Vocals, Drums
David Rotheray - Guitars
Sean Welch - Bass
David Stead - Drums
Jacqueline Abbott - Vocals
Briana Corrigan - Vocals
Damon Butcher - Keys

If you live in the US, you will likely have no idea who The Beautiful South are. If you live in the UK, there is a 1 in 4 chance that this album is in your house somewhere. Such is life.
The Beautiful South were formed from the ashes of The Housemartins in 1989. Paul Heaton and David Hemmingway decided, in the wake of the break-up of their previous group, to form a new group almost immediately, choosing their new name as a sarcastic riposte to the reputation of the housemartins as boring, downbeat Northerners (the same reputation that had blighted their most clear influence, The Smiths). The assembled a line-up and released their first single within a year.
This compilation was released in 1994, following four full-lengths. Although they'd always been a successful group (A Little Time was a #1 single), the success of this album was a total shock. It became the 3rd fastest selling album ever in this country, and stayed at #1 in the charts for months, eventually going 7 times platinum. Approximate estimates place it as the 50th biggest selling album ever in the UK.

Song For Whoever

Originally on Welcome To The Beautiful South. 5/5

Their first ever hit, and easily one of their best songs. You know how every other rock star has written a song about being a rock star? Well, this is the best song ever written about being a rock star, ever. It's essentially a power ballad, but it perverts the form and exposes its cynical, hollow underbelly. 'Oh Shirley, oh Deborah, oh Julie, oh Jane....I wrote so many songs about you, I forgot your name.' And the wake of that lyric, every cynical attempt to dedicate a song to a vague 'lost love' falls flat. Heaton then goes one step further, painting himself as an abusive womanizer always in search of the subject for his next hit. 'Deep, so deep, the number 1 I hope to reap, depends on the tears you weep, so cry, lover cry.....'

You Keep It All In

Originally on Welcome To The Beautiful South. 5/5

This time, a duet between Heaton and Corrigan, with a few vocals from Hemmingway, too. This is the first clear showcase of Heaton's not-so-secret weapon - welding dark, cynical lyrics to upbeat, melodic, easygoing pop (here, replete with fingersnaps). After Corrigan accuses Heaton of keeping it all in, he responds 'That's right. The conversation we had last night? All I wanted was to knife you in the heart....' The lyrics later hint at a teenage girl forced to keep quiet as her father abuses her mother - revealing the song as treatize on the British stiff upper lip. Which, of course, amkes the irony of the upbeat melody cut even deeper. Americans may not understand the power of this song. I think it's a fucking masterpiece.

I'll Sail This Ship Alone

Originally on Welcome To The Beautiful South. 4.5/5

A beautiful piano intro leads into another finger-snapping rhythm with a stunning melody. Tenacious D fans may recognize the story here - 'Well they said if I wrote the perfect love song, you would take me back. Well I wrote it, but I lost it....' Later in the song, Heaton soars into an unabashed falsetoo over pizicatto strings, and the ghost of Morrissey bleeds through the track. Brilliant stuff.

A Little Time

Originally on Choke. 5/5

Man, this was MASSIVE when I was just getting into music. It's one of my earliest - and fondest - musical memories. Generally piano-led, but with a full brass section and pan pipes too (!!), it features one of the many Beautiful South bitter duets. Here, Heaton asks for a little time, space, and freedom, only to be shot down by Corrigan. 'The freedom that you wanted back? it's yours for good....I hope your glad.' Her sections use the anti-chorus technique, famously used by Radiohead on Fake Plastic Trees - instead of everything building up, it all backs off leaving the vocal to dominate the listener's attention completely. To close the song, she reprises Heaton. 'I've had a little time to think it over....I found a little courage, to call it off.' It's her best vocal performance, and it's heartbreaking.

My Book

Originally on Choke. 5/5

The most upbeat song yet. I've seen this song thrown down at weddings, and amazingly, it got EVERYONE up. Another measure of just how ingrained into the British consciousness this album is. The lyrics switch from diary entries in the verses (these lyrics are the most Morrissey-esque on the whole album, and accordingly, the funniest) to male-female vocal trade-offs in the chorus, before referencing Soul II Soul by closing with a chant of 'Back to bed, back to reality'.

Let Love Speak Up Itself

Originally on Choke. 5/5
A total change of tact from My Book, this is a slow ballad featuring only piano for the most part (a rarity for these guys). While there is the trademark cynicism here (references to funerals, meat cleavers, and 'pathetic little vodkas' are included), it's pushed onto a far grander scale here - the AMG track review quite rightly describes this as 'cinematic'. The pay-off line - 'To the world's greatest mum, from the oldest swinger in town' - is absolutely sublime, and is delivered perfectly by Heaton.

Old Red Eyes Is Back

Originally on 0898. 5/5

Their best song ever, and Heaton's best lyric. A tale of a old drunken waster looking back on his life, battling to overcome his alcohol dependancy. Every time he falls off the wagon and succumbs to drink again....well, old red eyes is back. Our protagonist palms people off weakly - 'When you look into these eyes, I hope you realize, they could never be blue.' The song builds and builds, before crashing again, and picking up for one final chorus. 'Old Red he died, and every single landlord in the district cried/An empty bottle of whiskey lying by his side...

We Are Each Other

Originally on 0898. 4/5

More guitar-led than most of their output, this deals with a couple so close that their relationship can no longer function properly. The structure of the song is brilliant (this sort of attention to detail is just one of the many things that elevate The Beautiful South far beyond the vast majority of pop bands) - observe how the chorus is split into 2 halves, effectively making 2 brilliant hooks for the price of one.

Bell Bottomed Tear

Originally on 0898. 4.5/5

Vocal duties here are handled mainly by Briana Corrigan, though Heaton does appear at points. The strengths of her voice is exploited very well here - sugary, with a slight hiccup, but always fragile and vaguely damaged. Her character here is never made explicitly clear - she's adressing a man who has got her pregnant, though whether she and the man are still together isn't made clear. Either way, he's ruined her life. Quietly devastating.

36D

Originally on 0898. 4.5/5

A distant relative of Little Baby Nothing by the Manic Street Preachers, though far more upbeat than that song. This features Heaton addressing a woman who's got by on looks and sex alone, telling her to 'Close your legs, open your mind' (and that's just the opening line!). The chorus packs a sonic punch you wouldn't expect from the band, as Heaton and Hemmingway ask '36D, so what? Is that all that you got?'

Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)

Originally on Miaow. 4.5/5

Also known as 'Carry On Regardless', this is the track that gave its name to the album (it's also, in both instances, a reference to the Carry On movies). It also contains the lyric 'Bronze is for the sick and old' - another ironic, witty twist from Heaton when you consider that their later cash-in compilation was called Solid Bronze. Practically a showtune musically, it could quite easily have shown up in a musical. It's also possibly their most relentlessly catchy moment.

Everybody's Talkin'

Originally on Miaow. 4.5/5

Cover version time! To be totally honest, this is a pretty average version of this song. The band play it straight, although there's some strange slap bass in the second verse. But you know what? I've never heard a bad version of this tune. It's just a plain great song all the same.

Prettiest Eyes

Previously unreleased. 4.5/5

Opens with a fingerpicked acoustic guitar passage that almost threatens to take attention away from the vocal. The fact that this is a fairly simple love song is almost a disappointment after what precedes it, but it's saved by Heaton's lovely observation of love surviving throughout old age. 'Take a look at those crow's feet, sitting on the prettiest eyes.' The couple even offer up some advice to the younger generation - 'You can't have too many good times, children'.

One Last Love Song

Stand-alone single. 4/5

A continuation of Song For Whoever. This is more subtle in its cynicism towards popular music, but it shows in the second verse. 'Those bloody great ballads we hated at first? Well I bought them all, now I'm writing worse.' But this is different, because it is - hark! - a fairly straight love song. Which makes you wonder whether the quoted lyric is self-hatred, or just a backhander aimed at either his reputation or the rest of the charts. In any case, there's subversion of the pop song structure here, just as there is in Song For Whoever, even if it's not quite as effective.

Dream A Little Dream

Originally on French Kiss OST. 4/5
Only included on some reissues. Another cover, again of a simple, great pop song that surely everybody in the Western world is familiar with. Again, the band play it straight. A good song, but nobody will call this out as a highlight.

I'll be honest here - my original intention was to review the later Beautiful South hits collection, Solid Bronze. However, halfway through the track-by-track, I realised the only reason I was even listening to it was for the songs that featured on here. Thing is, when these guys are off form, they're boring and too intelligent for their own good, which comes through all too clear in the second half of Solid Bronze. Here, though, EVERY track is brilliant. I was wary of giving another compilation such a high rating so soon after reviewing Legend, but screw it. Anybody who appreciates intelligent, melodic music NEEDS the Beautiful South in their collection, and this is THE starting point.

Within The Genre - 5/5

Outside The Genre - 4.5/5”.

I am going to end with another review for this magnificent greatest hits collection. This blog dug deep with a greatest hits collection whose full title is Carry on Up the Charts: The Best of The Beautiful South. I am surprised they did not release a second volume of it. Regardless, the 1994 album still sounds so amazing and full of treats thirty years later. Songs that instantly come back to mind and make you sing along:

“The People’s Music, as Cornelius Cardew would have recognised and condemned it. Six times platinum, and I read somewhere that one in four households owns a copy of the Beautiful South’s greatest hits, although Wikipedia indicates that it is one in seven. Given the band’s hitherto largely indifferent commercial appeal, the early big hits notwithstanding, this triumph was unexpected – the compilation was put together to combat shrinking album sales, and nobody involved in its making expected it to do much business.

Perhaps, as with Queen’s Greatest Hits, the public proved surprisingly receptive of a string of medium-sized hits which sounded really good and instantly familiar when run together. But one might prefer to think of Carry On Up The Charts as the ultimate triumph of that petrified eighties doxa, New Pop.

If the mission of New Pop was to smuggle radical ideas into the musical mainstream, then it must be argued that nobody in pop smuggled them better or more sneakily than Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray, the band’s writers. They had three voices with which to work – Heaton, Dave Hemingway and Briana Corrigan (succeeded in 1994 by Jacqueline Abbott) – but this was no Fleetwood Mac; rather, it allowed Heaton and Rotheray to construct little dramas, schematic dialogues (Alan Bennett might be a pertinent reference point here, but Alan Ayckbourn would be more so) or doleful soliloquies.

The music is immaculate in construction and proved instantly attractive, possibly so much so that mothers named their daughters after the women referred to in “Song For Whoever,” and solvent types deployed their music as genteel background to dinner parties, both parties generally missing the point altogether.

The affable smoothness of the music is as much a red herring as the band’s name – sardonic, anti-Thatcherite, unavoidably Northern. For this is generally very savage stuff. They did not play at all in North America, since there is rarely the revealed subtext with which American audiences could identify when listening to, say, Randy Newman or Stephen Merritt. Sure, “Good As Gold” sounds, musically, like Ben Folds, but who in the States knew about the Carry On films or could empathise with Heaton’s hilarious growl of “re-GARD-less”?

Yet “Song For Whoever” is a coruscating demolition of allegedly sensitive songwriting males who seemingly and actively seek out women to abuse and betray purely to advance their own “art” and make them richer. Its sentiments are worthy of Crass. “I’ll Sail This Ship Alone” relies on Heaton’s warble of a Freddie Garrity voice, slowly and systematically upping the trope of lyrical options available to the deserted lover before arriving at a gruesome conclusion. The fruity flute bounce of “You Keep It All In” masks a brutal scenario of domestic violence – the daughter in her bedroom with the light on, hearing everything that’s going on downstairs, might be the girl to whom the Tracey Thorn of “Protection” sings.

“A Little Time” subverts the “gotta find myself” trope so nicely that it got to number one as a single, even though its gentle balladic sway is regularly intercepted by plutonium-filled fields of low electronic drones, all the better to soundtrack Corrigan’s angrily sardonic response to Hemingway’s platitudes.

All of these four songs get played on Radio 2 to this day, and its audiences largely remain mercifully ignorant of their underlying messages. Does this imply the final failure of any pop to “matter,” or might it be the case that music fans charmed by soppy sentiment also have a parallel taste for the sordid (how else can one possibly explicate the continuing success of EastEnders, that least beautiful of Souths?)?

The remaining songs get far less airplay today, but still mostly remain acidly familiar. “My Book” is probably the nearest that the record gets to “rock” in a 1987 Smiths or, dare I say it, Housemartins sense. “Old Red Eyes Is Back,” concerning the slow suicide of an incurable alcoholic, balanced against the subject’s own Faustian cries against the many alternative futures which had once been available to him, is one of the most final of deconstructions of the “mad for it” Loaded/Oasis leitmotif. “Bell Bottomed Tear,” detailing a one-night stand which doesn’t quite vacate itself from the minds of either protagonist (Corrigan, Hemingway), is a wonderful ballad, slightly reminiscent of mid-eighties Style Council, and rather more reminiscent of the melancholy side of Mike Batt (“Railway Hotel”), which seems to serve as the flipside, or possibly the prequel, to “A Little Time” (except there is, somewhere in this song’s diplomatic wreckage, a child, whereas “A Little Time” makes no mention of children – yet who is to say that this isn’t the same couple spoken about in “You Keep It All In”?

(are you following all of this, by the way?)

Homer Heaton nods at times, however. Corrigan was unhappy with “36D,” which seems more intent on having a go at glamour models than the men who facilitate them, and other lyrically dubious songs, hence left the band. She was replaced by Jacqueline Abbott – and the only cover version to appear here, of an American song, serves to introduce Abbott to the band’s landscape (even though she seems at times to be trolling Tracey Thorn while singing the Fred Neil standard).

Nonetheless, we do sense a distinct maturation of the band’s aesthetic palate. “Good As Gold (Stupid As Mud)” jauntily (in the Gilbert O’Sullivan style, really) chronicles what might be the young Red Eyes, not giving a damn but wanting something more, as though Ingrid Bergman would ever have remotely heard of him.

But the most remarkable song here is “Prettiest Eyes,” one of the most generous of popular songs to celebrate old people (and yes, there is a Kevin Rowland subtext here too; see “Old” on Too-Rye-Ay). Whereas the earlier “Let Love Speak Up Itself” was a typically vinegary analysis of an old couple – though does carry an extraordinary coda wherein Heaton suddenly begins crying and yelling, as though attempting to scrabble his way out of the coffin designed for him – “Prettiest Eyes” is a more grown-up study of growing old yet remaining capable of love and much else. Its coda of “But you'll never hear the crack of a frown when you are here” is quite moving, and “crack” is the key word – it is as though the violence which has bubbled up throughout the rest of the record has been defeated and resolved.

All that remains is “One Last Love Song,” the bookend to “Song For Whoever” which examines over-melismatic emotional yuppie soul types and their videos and mannerisms in the manner of an eighteenth-century sea shanty. At its end, Heaton cries, repeatedly, “Let it die.” Rebuilding the true social(ist) contract.

Oh, and that cover art? Painted by Camberwell School of Art graduate Matthew Radford, it depicts a group of blurred, indistinct citizens crossing London Bridge – and it is the old London Bridge that they are crossing. The art suggests that the South might one day become beautiful once again”.

On 7th November, Carry on Up the Charts: The Best of The Beautiful South turns thirty. I was eleven when it came out. I was a fan of the band already, but I don’t think there is a copy of the album in my family’s home. One in seven homes own it apparently. That is no overstatement. A major success for the band, they experienced mixed fortunes with their studio albums after 1994. However, like Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud), they would…

CARRY on regardless.

FEATURE: "Keep Falling, I’ll Find You": 25th October, 2024: A Date to Remember

FEATURE:

 

 

"Keep Falling, I’ll Find You"

IN THIS ILLUSTRATION: ‘Little Shrew’

25th October, 2024: A Date to Remember

_________

THIS is a feature split into two parts…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

and there is a lot to get through! Like so many Kate Bush fans, my head and heart exploded when I woke up yesterday (25th October). We suspected something was coming, as the Kate Bush News social media channels posted a screenshot from Kate Bush’s official website. They posted this tweet which set people’s minds on fire. Why was Snowflake being reissued as a four-minute radio edit? I was going to write a Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts feature on Snowflake. It is a song from Bush’s most recent studio album, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. I think the fact the song has been trumped and sort of buried by the news and excitement around it and what it is being used for means that the original is perhaps not interesting in that sense. In any way, I shall get to Snowflake and some words from Kate Bush about the song. This is a useful archive that has gathered new relevance and layers:

“When I wrote the song it was something that I wrote specifically for him and for his voice, and I guess there was a very strong parallel in my mind between the idea of this transient little snowflake and the fact that Bertie at this point… still has a really beautiful high, pure voice which soon he will lose… there seems to be this sort of link between the brief time that his voice will be like this and the brevity of the snowflake.
I think his performance on this is really powerful, and obviously I’m quite biased because I’m his mother. But it’s interesting how many people have reacted so powerfully to his performance, it’s, you know, I think it’s really something.

“Joe Tiller, ”50 Words For Snow’: How Kate Bush Made A Wintry Wonder Of An Album. Dig! website, 11 December 2022”.

Many of us had our own thoughts when all we knew was Snowflake was available digitally and was this four-minute edit. A radio edit. Would it be used as a Christmas ad? Some supermarket using it? The fact we got this illustration of a shrew, paired with the tone of Snowflake, suggested something Christmas-like. Many felt it was sort of going to be Kate Bush making money or heading towards the commercial. That would be okay, as anything from her is great. However, the reality of the relevance of Snowflake was highlighted. I am going to end the first half of this feature with a review of an animated film that Bush has wrote and directed. Another article that wax lyrical about Bush’s ability to make children of us all. There was so much chatter and excitement when it became apparent what Bush had released into the world! I spent most of yesterday trying to take it all in. Whilst not an announcement of  a new album – though, as the second part of this feature makes clear, that is something that has firmly been put on the table! -, this is a really exciting and noble thing. Bush not merely using her music for an album reissue or an advert. To raise awareness and money for War Child.

The brilliant and authoritative Kate Bush News put into words everything that happened yesterday. The reason so many people are joyful and really blown away. Nobody expected any of what was announced and has been released into the world. Kate Bush giving us this wonderful film, doing something incredible for charity and, in the process, making us cry and smile at the same time! If that were not enough, she seems to have cleared some space to consider plotting her eleventh studio album. More on that in the second half:

“Wonderful, wonderful news this morning! Kate has given an interview to Emma Barnett on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (listen back to it here) to announce the launch of a new short film she has written and directed to raise money for children affected by war. She also talks about her plans to make a new album. The black-and-white, four-minute animation, called Little Shrew, is set to her 2011 track Snowflake and aims to raise money and awareness for the charity War Child. (be sure to read the story of Little Shrew on Kate’s official site)

Little Shrew is released on Kate’s official website today. It is free to watch, but Kate encourages viewers to support organisations helping children in conflict. Kate says: “I would like to ask that if you watch the animation, please make a donation to War Child, or to another charity that aids children in war.” War Child are accepting donations at their site here. The short film, which Kate worked with illustrator Jim Kay to create, was partly inspired by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “I started working on it a couple of years ago, it was not long after the Ukrainian war broke out, and I think it was such a shock for all of us,” Kate explained.

“It’s been such a long period of peace we’d all been living through. And I just felt I wanted to make a little animation that would feature, originally, a little girl. It was really the idea of children caught up in war. I wanted to draw attention to how horrific it is for children.

IN THIS IMAGE: Little Shrew early concept sketch by artist Jim Kay

“And so I came up with this idea for a storyboard and felt that, actually, people would be more empathetic towards a creature rather than a human. So I came up with the idea of it being a little shrew.” Reflecting on the impact of conflict on children, Kate said: “I think war is horrific for everyone, particularly civilians, because they’re so vulnerable in these situations. But for a child, it’s unimaginable how frightening it must be for them.”

The radio edit of Snowflake is now out as a digital single.

Kate added: “I think we’ve all been through very difficult times. These are dark times that we’re living in and I think, to a certain extent, everyone is just worn out….We went through the pandemic, that was a huge shock, and I think we felt that, once that was over, that we would be able to get on with some kind of normal life…But in fact it just seems to be going from one situation to another, and more wars seem to be breaking out all the time.”

Thank you so much to @KateBushMusic and the team for making this moving short film to draw attention to children affected by conflict.

Please do consider donating if you can.

🔗 Watch the full film at: https://t.co/O2NzOonZnd pic.twitter.com/nDrc9cuBzw

— War Child UK (@WarChildUK) October 25, 2024

War Child are accepting donations at their site here

About her next music, Kate adds that she is “very keen” to start working on new music. She said there are “lots of ideas” she wants to pursue, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space, it’s been a long time.” BBC report.

Splash page from Kate’s site teasing the short film last nightArm tattoo belonging to our fan friend Thomas Dunning – his mother’s handwritten lyric! He’s obviously very excited by the news!

In 2022, with war breaking out in Ukraine, I decided I wanted to make an anti-war animation. In particular, I hoped to draw attention to the children caught up in war.

I based the storyboard around the song, Snowflake, which was sung by my son when he was a child. I think his performance is extremely moving and although I‘d originally written the song to capture his beautiful descant voice before he entered adolescence, it has taken on a haunting new meaning within the context of this animation.

I knew I wanted the featured character to be a child caught up in war, so I made a very rough, off the cuff story board.

Although I’d initially thought to make the character a human child – a little girl – I settled on the idea of a Caucasian pygmy shrew (Ukrainian shrew): a tiny, fragile little creature. I felt that people might have more empathy for a vulnerable little animal than a human…

This little shrew would take a journey on a moonlit, winter’s night through a war-torn city, initially unaware of what was going on around her in this land of the giants. She can sense that she’s being called by a kind of spiritual presence… HOPE.

She starts to search for HOPE. Sometimes hope is all there is to hang on to.

War Child are accepting donations at their site here (and be sure to read the story of Little Shrew and all the talented people involved on Kate’s official site)”.

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50 Words for Snow was released in November 2011. Almost thirteen years since we have heard new work from Kate Bush. Of course, she has not been idle all this time. Between a residency (2014), its live album (2016), releasing a lyrics book. How to Be Invisible, reissuing that and also reissuing her studio albums more than once, there has been a lot of work. Much design, fine-tuning, hard work and dedication. Although this clip/video is not new music, it is new work. That is important to understand. This is like Bush filming a video for And Dream of Sheep for 2014’s Before the Dawn. Proving a visual to something that previously did not have one. Not in the form of an official single that got its own spotlight. Rather than this being tied to any creative project or album introduction, this is a reaction to the atrocities she and all of us have witnessed around the world. Especially the warfare affecting children in Ukraine. The unimaginable and biblical suffering children have bene subjected to elsewhere. It is a quintessential Kate Bush gesture! Rather than post about how upsetting it all is, she has reacted with something beautiful, sobering and inspiring. Helping to raise money to help people affected by violence. Unsurprisingly, social media has been frantic with words of adoration, surprise and positivity! Of course, Snowflake has turned into an avalanche. The idea to use a song with one particular vision and distinction and reimagine it in this new context is hugely moving. The tale of Little Shrew (its animation by Nicolette Van Gendt) and landscape of rubble, loss and war has reduced so many people to tears. Not least Ben Beaumont-Thomas in his review for The Guardian:

“All of Kate Bush’s sense of wonder, and how she tempers it with not just melancholy but outright sorrow, is threaded through her devastatingly moving new animated short film, Little Shrew.

Bush hasn’t performed live in a decade, or released new music since 2011 – and there’s an initial twinge of disappointment on discovering that this film isn’t built around a piece of new music. (In a BBC Radio 4 interview promoting it, she hinted that she will begin writing new material again soon.) Instead, it’s soundtracked by an edit of Snowflake, the opening song from that 2011 album 50 Words for Snow – a duet between Bush and her son Bertie.

Bush has long wrung stunning material out of family dynamics. Cloudbusting is full of the boyish admiration sons have for their fathers long after we become men; This Woman’s Work, about a crisis amid childbirth, is so stricken with awe at new life; Aerial was full of this material, from the maternal study of A Coral Room to a wonderfully guileless song about Bertie himself.

Snowflake continues that tradition, as Bertie takes the form of a snowflake, whirling in the night, and Bush hopes to catch him: “The world is so loud / Keep falling / I’ll find you.” Once again it gets to the heart of parenthood: its bewilderment, and how desperate it makes us to shelter our children in the world’s blizzard, snowblinded by love. There is perhaps a hidden wisdom, too, unspoken in the song – if we grip our children too hard, they could melt away from us.

It always felt bigger than Kate and Bertie, but Bush adds a terrifically powerful new dimension by making it, in Little Shrew, a lament for children affected by war, particularly in Ukraine (the film was made in collaboration with the charity War Child). As Bush says of Bertie in an accompanying essay: “I think his performance is extremely moving and although I’d originally written the song to capture his beautiful descant voice before he entered adolescence, it has taken on a haunting new meaning within the context of this animation.”

Bush writes and directs the film, storyboarded from her own sketches. These were drawn up by Jim Kay, the illustrator best known for Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (which inspired Bush) and pictorial editions of the Harry Potter series, and then animated with the studio Inkubus.

Little Shrew follows a Ukrainian pygmy shrew, captivated by a ball of cosmic light emanating from deep in the solar system. The creature scurries out of its cosy spot in the top pocket of a coat – and the animation coolly pans back to show that this is the corpse of a soldier sitting against a tree. The shrew makes its way through a war-torn landscape, and into the melee of Russian strikes, fired from under the chillingly blank face of an unmanned drone. Bush dwells on the gaping maw of a bombed building, animated from a photo by Maksim Levin, a Ukrainian photographer killed in the conflict.

Bush writes that she originally considered a child as the protagonist, and some might find this exquisitely adorable mammal, nose twitching with worry, to be a sentimental and even nauseatingly cutesy choice. But for me it allows Bush to actually intensify the horror. Watching its sinewy little body, twisting in fear and rent by the force of an exploding bomb, is close to unbearable; a similar sequence of a child could have felt exploitative or overdone.

And as a symbol for children caught in the conflict, the shrew has such potency: children move through wars with the confusion and vulnerability of animals, often without even having language to give shape to the trauma of hearing explosions or seeing corpses. They are as innocent as shrews, too – and, as both Ukraine and Gaza have shown, as unheeded by the aggressors.

Bush undermines the sentimentality all the more by writing an ambiguous ending. She herself is perhaps that orb of light, asserting once more: “The world is so loud / Keep falling / I’ll find you” – a moving reminder to the children of Ukraine that they are not forgotten, intensified by this song suffused with such ardent, active love for her own son. But the shrew is seen tumbling through blackening space, never landing. Bush underlines there is no end in sight for children affected by war, except for an ending forced on them. This film made me weep for every one”.

The second half of this feature will be a lot shorter than this one, don’t worry! Helen Brown, writing for The Telegraph, reacted to the Kate Bush activity. How, even though the tone is quite serious regarding her mission and new work, it is impossible not to be captivated and feel child-like with wonder and joy. With tease that, finally, Bush is open to starting work on her first new album in well over a decade, it makes you stand still and gasp:

“Her eccentric, genre-busting vision has been embraced by Gen Z – inspiring younger artists such as Chappell Roan and The Last Dinner Party. This trend accelerated when Running Up That Hill was featured in Netflix’s Stranger Things causing it to reach a billion Spotify streams in 2023. It also provided Bush with her first number one single in 45 years. Today, the news of Bush’s possible comeback has knocked reviews of Lady Gaga’s cool gothic new actual single way down music news feeds.

Unlike her pop peers who put on a show of acting more sexy and sophisticated than they were, Bush never pretended she was doing anything other than play-acting. The videos and photoshoots she insisted on devising herself have always been deliciously am-dram affairs that allowed her to rummage through her dressing up box and kit herself out as a lion, a bat, a knight, a princess, a Russian sexpot and a clown.

She was a great comic and there was always something endearingly homespun in her style that tapped into a very English tradition of Kenneth Grahame and AA Milne breathing a rich emotional life into their tatty old toys. Bush was the brilliant, powerful, sexy incarnation of every child wearing a tea towel in a primary school nativity play, proving that it just took one more leap of the imagination to really feel it.

I write as a Gen Xer who grew up feeling creatively expanded by the possibilities of her music. I’d lie on the roundabout of our local suburban park with my Walkman and let the exhilaration of her Fairlight synths combine with the centrifugal force to whip me into the alternate universes she created on The Dreaming (1982) – an album on which she sang from the perspectives of a cockney bank robber, an aboriginal experiencing dreamtime, Houdini’s wife and an Irish smuggler pilot.

That last – Night of the Swallow – was my favourite. Loaded with melodrama, the song accelerated by a skirling squall of Irish pipes, fiddle, bouzouki with an effect that sounded like a rope being swung in wide circles as she sang of taking off “in a hired plane, with no names mentioned… There’s no risk/ I’ll whisk them up in the moonlight…” I can still recall the act of fierce will I felt, pushing my school shoe into the concrete beside that roundabout to make the sky spin above me until the fantasy took flight and I was at the controls of that plane skimming the waves and evading the law.

Notably for girls of my generation, Bush sang about love and sex in a new way. Comedians of the 1980s who mocked her for dancing around in skimpy clothes weren’t listening to lyrics in which she celebrated female pleasure and made space for men to be adored for their beauty and vulnerability. She did this throughout her career, but you can hear the best examples of it on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). “Not only women bleed,” she sang on Eat The Music.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush attends a champagne reception at the 60th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the London Palladium on 30th November, 2014 in London/PHOTO CREDIT: David M. Benett/Getty Images

On Aerial she’d breathe magic into the domestic drudgery of motherhood, celebrating her son Bertie with a harpsichord melody named after him and even finding transcendent romance in watching the soggy rotation of laundry on a song called Washing Machine. Just like the younger woman who’d seen adventure in the glow-in-the-dark yoyo she celebrated on Cloudbusting, now she found eroticism in the swill of dirty clothes: “My blouse wrapping itself in your trousers/Oh the waves are going out/ My skirt floating up around my waist…Oh and you’re standing right behind me.”

As the dates of those albums reveal, Bush is no recluse. She’s been putting art into the world fairly steadily since she was 17. She just prefers doing her work to playing the celebrity game. She took a break to raise her son and appears to have lived a refreshingly regular life as a wife and mother on this side of the wardrobe door.

Sensibly, she doesn’t think her fans should have any access to or interest in that. But when she has time and space to visit her Narnia then she sends us postcards that can still reignite our imagination-connection and make us smile, laugh, cry and gasp. Maybe it’s not Bush being elusive, but our own childhood energy. We yearn for the intensity she gave us and her return promises a rekindling of that.

I watched her Little Shrew video in my pyjamas first thing this morning while my own children were still asleep. I’d read it was inspired by children affected by the war in Ukraine and when that war broke out I’d helped a British friend travel to Poland to rescue children whose parents (as police officers) had to stay and fight.

Bush told Barnett she felt that audiences might, alas, have more empathy for an animal than a child and so picked a Caucasian pygmy shrew (native to Ukraine) as her heroine. I watched the little rodent make its way through the rubble of a housing estate, crawling out of a soldier’s pocket and over his lifeless hand. His corpse nods back to her 1980 single ‘Army Dreamers’ which lamented the “waste” of military-mad young boys to the percussive click of a gun loading.

The new film’s soundtrack is a shortened version of the song Snowflake from her last album, 50 Words for Snow (2011) – a song that captured her son’s voice before it broke. The black and white artwork is all by Jim Kay whose work Bush had first seen in the YA book A Monster Calls. It’s tender. A little childlike in its very basic premise that vulnerability must cling to hope. Watch it with your adult mind and you can shoot a million holes through its sappiness.

But watch it with your child heart and you can also feel its truth. As a long term Bush fan, as I watched the shrew curl its soft back against the blast of a bomb I felt echoes of the video for Breathing in which she sang from the perspective of a foetus in utero, fighting for life in the wake of an atomic detonation. In the hammy video for that single, Bush curled into a plastic ball. I laughed when I first saw it and yet the image is lodged. So maybe she wins the last, hollow laugh there.

Little Shrew doesn’t pack a punch on that bonkers level. It is more cutely muted. But the film’s tenderness does snag the heartstrings if you let it. I was more moved after learning that the sketch of the bombed out city is copied from a genuine photograph taken in Ukraine from a drone flown by Maksim Levin.

Levin was killed two months after capturing the image. On her website, Bush writes that “He was a brave man. I wanted to use his powerful photograph as part of a sequence that would step outside of the drawn animation, to open a door into reality for just that brief moment, before returning to the world of animation.” A rare reversal in the work of a woman more used to opening doors in reality to show us fantasy. I love the reassurance that Bush has kept her child-flame burning through her 60s. Like Barnett, I’m excited to know she’s preparing to wave her wand again”.

IN THIS PHOTO: BBC Radio 6 Music’s Matt Everitt

I will keep this second half to fewer than a thousand words, promise! One half of this historic day (yesterday) concerns Snowflake, this Little Shrew and War Child. How the combination is helping to raise vital funds to help those in dire need. To also look at the atrocities and genocide in a new way. If fans of Kate Bush have an early Christmas, those who are in a perilous state and are being bombarded by war are very much pulling into focus the realities and relative struggles in our lives. How things have been put into perspective. I have now donated to War Child and have watched and rewatched Little Shrew (Snowflake). How inspired the visuals and story is. Hearing Kate Bush discuss it with Emma Barnett. Bush mentioning how she is keen to release a new album. It brings to mind two names: Matt Everitt and Mark Radcliffe. Radcliffe interviewed Bush extensively when she released Aerial in 2005. This ‘return’ – Kate Bush can never disappear! – was twelve years after The Red Shoes. The excitement from Radcliffe as he introduced the extensive chat. In many ways, whether a new album comes next year or several – Bush is fast to write but slower to record, so who knows -, it will have the same sense of anticipation. In a future feature, I will write and speculate about what direction a new album might take in terms of themes, sounds and possible concepts. I would imagine Mark Radcliffe will get an interview with Bush when she does release a new album. Matt Everitt spoke with Kate Bush in 2016 when she released the live album for Before the Dawn. That is the most recent properly in-depth audio conversation since 2011. I would also hope Matt Everitt gets to chat with Bush if she does indeed follow through with a new album.

Rather selfishly, the unbearably tantalising potential for a new Kate Bush album has sparked something in me. Many of us felt an eleventh studio album would be so far-fetched. Earlier this year, her long-time friend, musician, former sweetheart and engineer Del Palmer died. He engineered 50 Words for Snow. Many felt his death would mean Bush’s days in the studio were done. Someone she trusted more than anyone with her music and whom she had a wonderful bond with. Would she even want to continue?! I think the fact she has been reissued and revising her work and has done a lot of retrospection has cleared a path. Made her hungry to do something new. Similar to how 2014’s Before the Dawn was a new project after two albums in 2011 – Director’s Cut came out May of that year -, she has now got to a point where she wants to indulge and fulfil some creative ideas that could make their way onto a new L.P. Imagine that! The chances of me interviewing or meeting Bush are astronomically long though, with possible promotional opportunities coming in the future, I have been wondering whether there is a chance, however slim, of at least contacting her. Whether it is somehow getting a letter to Murray Chalmers PR to pass to her – which is probably something they would not do – or some other way. Regardless of my own dreams and ambitions, Kate Bush talking about new material and wanting to move into this territory is a big deal!

IN THIS PHOTO: A Palestinian telecommunications company destroyed by Israel in October 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Mohammed Taletene/picture alliance via Getty

Whether you like the fact she has spent so much time in retrospective and reissue mode or not, many people have been crying out for new music. Even if an album might not materialise for a couple of years, we at least know that Bush has it on her list. We all look forward another huge day when the eleventh album is announced and we get the first (and probably only) single from it! Yesterday was a massive day that saw a new visual from Kate Bush. With 50 Words for Snow’s Snowflake at the centre and War Child being spotlighted, it is a hugely impressive (and typically generous) move from Kate Bush. How she is putting those less fortunate first! Not just people less fortunate. Children who have been caught up in some horrific violence. Let’s hope that Little Shrew (Snowflake) helps to raise thousands of pounds for War Child. Hearing her talk to Emma Barnett about the future and discussing her work, it has stirred so many emotions in fans. We ended the week with a treat we never thought we’d get. What a magnificent surprise from someone who you can never predict! As we head towards the end of the year, we have a lot to digest and be thankful for. A music icon who has given us so much. Who is promising so much to come. Fans around the world are reflecting and celebrating at the same time. We owe a huge amount of love and respect to…

THE divine Kate Bush.

FEATURE: Isn’t That a Great Saying? Kate Bush’s Moments of Pleasure at Thirty-One

FEATURE:

 

 

Isn’t That a Great Saying?

Kate Bush’s Moments of Pleasure at Thirty-One

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THERE might be some repetition…

in this feature, as I have written about Moments of Pleasure a few times now. Let’s get some stats and facts down and done first. Released as the second U.K. single (as the first single, Rubberband Girl, was released in the U.K. and other countries; Eat the Music in the U.S.), it reached number twenty-six. Released on 15th November, 1993, it arrived two weeks after The Red Shoes (released on 1st November, 1993). I am not sure whether that timing was relevant regarding a fairly low chart position. Maybe people had got the album and did not have huge appetite for the single. I think one of the issues is that the single is quite emotional and slower. In terms of it not being as bouncy and upbeat as the singles that came before from the album. There are some fascinating lines to pick over in the lyrics. The title of this feature is a response to something Kate Bush’s mother, Hannah, wonderfully said: “Every old sock meets an old”. I think that Moments of Pleasure is the most intriguing set of lyrics. I mean more so than perhaps even anything on Hounds of Love. That is quite a big claim! In terms of how arresting and personal the song is. There is a mix of fantasy and the personal. The fact Bush talks about something her mother said. How her mum laughed when Bush told her about that lyric. I am going to come straight back to the lyrics. Before I do, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia collates words from Kate Bush regarding the magnificent Moments of Pleasure:

“I think the problem is that during [the recording of] that album there were a lot of unhappy things going on in my life, but when the songs were written none of that had really happened yet. I think a lot of people presume that particularly that song was written after my mother had died for instance, which wasn’t so at all. There’s a line in there that mentions a phrase that she used to say, ‘every old sock meets an old shoe’, and when I recorded it and played it to her she just thought it was hilarious! She couldn’t stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song. So I don’t see it as a sad song. I think there’s a sort of reflective quality, but I guess I think of it more as a celebration of life.

Interview with Ken Bruce, BBC Radio 2, 9 May 2011

I wasn’t really quite sure how “Moments of Pleasure” was going to come together, so I just sat down and tried to play it again– I hadn’t played it for about 20 years. I immediately wanted to get a sense of the fact that it was more of a narrative now than the original version; getting rid of the chorus sections somehow made it more of a narrative than a straightforward song.

Ryan Dombai, ‘Kate Bush: The elusive art-rock originator on her time-travelling new LP, Director’s Cut’. Pitchfork, May 16, 2011”.

This verse really leaves a lump in the throat: “Just being alive/It can really hurt/And these moments given/Are a gift from time/Just let us try/To give these moments back/To those we love/To those who will survive”. That thing about being alive can really hurt. Bush never sounding so rare and exposed. You could feel her reacting to a sense of dislocation and upcoming loss. Her mother died on 14th February, 1992. “To those we love/to those who will survive” seems to relate to Bush and her mother. So heartbreaking. I am not surprised that Bush re-recorded Moments of Pleasure for 2011’s Director’s Cut. Not because she was dissatisfied with the oriignal. Maybe keen to put an older voice on the song. I love the mentions of New York in Moments of Pleasure. That connection to snow. She returned to that coloration and chemistry for Snowed in at Wheeler Street where she sang with Elton John. Her mentioning taking a photo in New York (“9/11 in New York, I took your photograph”). The lines “On a balcony in New York/It’s just started to snow/He meets us at the lift/Like Douglas Fairbanks/Waving his walking stick/But he isn’t well at all”. That was a reference to when Bush met Michael Powell in New York in 1989. That was around the end of that year. Michael Powell co-wrote and co-directed the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, with Emeric Pressburger. The inspiration for Bush’s album title. Powell died on 19th February, 1990. I think there were plans that they would meet again or do something together. A song with loss hanging in the air. Powell dying in 1990. Hannah Bush in 1992. However, there is a lot of love and romance. Scenic visions and strength to be found. I love all the little lines and details. Characters coming in. A reference to the “case of George the Wipe”. George the Wipe was a tape op (a person who performs menial operations in a recording studio in a similar manner to a tea boy or gopher) at Townhouse Studios, where Bush previously recorded.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993

Moments of Pleasure seems to be Kate Bush in a snow globe. This scenic and passionate setting. However, there are flashbacks and these visions of the past. When she sings “Hey there Teddy/Spinning in the chair at Abbey Road”. I know Bush and her crew used to play a game at Abbey Road where they would spin in the chairs to see who could survive it. Who would keep their balance and stomach content! Bush usually won as she could focus on a spot in the distance or keep her composure. The line in Moments of Pleasure seems to be more about Andrew Powell I feel. He produced Bush’s first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart. I believe ‘Teddy’ comes from the nicknames Andrew Powell, Kate Bush and Jon Powell (who co-produced Never for Ever (1980) together) gave themselves at the time (Andy Pandy, Loopy Lou and Teddy, from Andy Pandy). Bush once again mentioning sadly-departed Bill Duffield in lyrics. She did for Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever. “Hey there Bill/Could you turn the lights up?”. A nice nod again to Duffield on Moments of Pleasure. You get the feeling of ghosts from the past, professional or personal. The music video was also used in the short movie the Line, the Cross and the Curve and features Bush rotating around in the snow, lip-synching the song and meeting various actors near the end of the song.

I will wrap up in a minute. There is not much written about Moments of Pleasure. I want to bring in a feature that was published back in the summer. An examination of the brilliance and interesting details that you get from one of Bush’s finest songs. Far Out Magazine went deep inside a song that I feel deserved a much higher chart position:

“Kate Bush is best known as a weaver of narratives. Her albums are rich with stories borrowed from folklore, mythology and Bush’s own vibrant imagination. But for ‘Moments Of Pleasure’, the singer brought her music back to the world of fact, dedicating one lyrical ode to the act of remembrance amidst a period of grief.

There are glimmers of this throughout her discography. In rare instances, Bush seems to suddenly peel back the veil and allow her listeners in. As a famously private musician, and now an utterly and infamously-impossible-to-reach one as she’s retreated out of the public sphere, these momentary glimpses of her life feel like a tender touch and a total privilege for her fans. Hearing about her family life on ‘Bertie’ or her dedication to her dance teacher on ‘Moving‘ are the moments fans get to connect with their audience.

Backstage at Joni Mitchell's show at the Hollywood Bowl

But even if her life doesn’t find its way into her lyricism, her music has always been a deeply personal affair when it comes to her collaborators and team. From her debut album to her last, Bush’s music is crafted by her and a tight-knit circle, including her brother, Paddy Bush, her guitarist and old boyfriend, Del Palmer and her husband, Danny McIntosh. Even when her albums feature big names, they’re always friends first, such as David Gilmour who was a family friend before he agreed to help her out with her first record.

This means that the behind-the-scenes world of her music is a deeply sentimental realm, with her albums not only holding her talent but capturing moments in the lives of her, her family, her friends and her relationships. Some of her most beloved memories are attached to her music, bringing together all of her favourite people in service to her craft.

On ‘Moments Of Pleasure’, Bush flicks through these memories like a kind of sonic photo album. “Some moments that I’ve had / Some moments of pleasure,” she begins as if it stands as a title ahead of a bullet point list of images that have stuck in her mind.

However, specifically, ‘Moments Of Pleasure’ exists as a kind of memory box for Bush’s grief. In the final moments of the song, she calls out into the beyond, recounting lost friends by name as a beautiful dedication. “Hey there, Bubba / Dancing down the aisle of a plane,” she sings, remembering Gary ‘Bubba’ Hurst, a dancer on her 1979 tour. She recalls her frequent guitar player “S Murph, playing his guitar refrain,” after his passing in 1989. She thinks about her Never For Ever sound engineer John Barrett, referring to him tenderly through his nickname as she thinks of “Teddy, Spinning in the chair at Abbey Road.” Another member of her collaborative team remembered is Bill Duffield, who inspired the track ‘Blow Away’ after dying in a tragic accident during Bush’ 1979 tour, singing “Hey there, Bill / Could you turn the lights up?”

There’s also a call out to Michael Powell, the influential British director who co-created the film The Red Shoes, which inspired the record. Powell was a fan of Bush’s and had stated that he wanted her to create the music for one of his films before his death in 1990. As if calling out to her inspiration for approval, she sings, “Hey there, Michael / Do you really love me?”

There’s also another person who now presides over the song’s dedicated remembrance. Bush’s mother passed a year before the album’s release. However, the singer said that she’d already recorded the track and played it to her. “There’s a line in there that mentions a phrase that she used to say, ‘every old sock meets an old shoe,’ and when I recorded it and played it to her, she just thought it was hilarious! She couldn’t stop laughing. She just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song,” she explained.

But even after her mother had passed, adding another element of grief to the track, it remained a beloved number to Bush, who saw it as a perfect way to remember these lives and moments that moved her. “I don’t see it as a sad song,” she said, “I think there’s a sort of reflective quality, but I guess I think of it more as a celebration of life”.

On 15th November, it will be thirty-one years since Moments of Pleasure was released. You hear it played on radio now and then, though it is not heard as much as other Bush tracks. It warrants more respect. I mentioned the song when discussing The Red Shoes for recent anniversary features. I wanted to return to the song as it is such a great example of Bush’s gifts and distinctions as a writer. How she can drop in these lines that provoke imagination and beautiful visions. Heartache alongside celebration. Such a touching and rich song that sounds so relevant and poignant to this day! It is one of the sparsest songs on The Red Shoes. In the sense if is Bush at her piano (with lush orchestral arrangements by Michael Kamen). Not cluttered or with that many layers. The Director’s Cut version had a challenge to improve on the original, as Bush did not need strip too much away. Instead, I think the biggest change is her vocal. That new depth and age that somehow adds extra wisdom and potency to things. Giving the song new perspective rather than correcting any production issues or overcrowding. Moments of Pleasure is simply…

A beautiful song.

FEATURE: Life from the Other Side: Inside Kate Bush’s B-Sides

FEATURE:

 

 

Life from the Other Side

Inside Kate Bush’s B-Sides

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EVEN if I have written about this before…

I wanted to reinvestigate Kate Bush’s B-sides. Not all of them. I am omitting her very best B-side, Under the Ivy, as I am reserving that for a special feature down the tracks. There is some relevance and timing behind the feature. On 30th November, it will be six years since Bush’s B-sides were released as part of her definitive remastering project in 2018. The full set arrived on 8th March, 2019. I am going to focus on five standout B-sides that showcase new sides to Kate Bush. I think the trouble is people focus too much on A-sides. The singles that we all know and hear. People rarely dig to the albums tracks or songs that we do not hear that often. It is a big problem. So many people not aware of Kate Bush’s B-side! So many interesting cuts that are worthy of investigation. I would suggest anyone who does not have the album to check it out. One of the issues is that The Other Sides is largely out of stock. You can find copies through Discogs, but it can come at quite a price. As Kate Bush has reissued her studio albums and they have had recent revision, how about something like The Other Sides?! You can check out the tracklisting here.  I think this is as close as we have come to Kate Bush opening up the archives. I think there are rarities and demos that are recorded that we have never heard. In terms of retrospection, she has been pretty dogged about the studio albums. No extras. I do wonder one day whether we can get the studio albums reissued with B-sides and some unheard takes. That may be a long shot. In the meantime, we do have The Other Sides. It is a shame that Selections from ‘The Other Sides’ on Spotify only has a couple of tracks available. There are some golden B-sides and covers that I think people need to hear.

I will talk about her B-sides and why they are so intriguing. I want to spotlight five particularly strong B-sides. The cover versions are great too. Maybe I will leave that for another feature. Her interpretative gift. It is a shame that there is not more written about The Other Sides. The B-sides did get a mention in this review of Bush’s Remastered Part II boxset:

“Sadly The Other Sides does not catch all of the non-album tracks – The Empty Bullring, Ken and the Live On Stage EP in particular are noticeable by their absence, but we do get one previously unreleased track, Humming.

Humming was recorded in 1975 and was produced by Andrew Powell, who also worked on The Kick Inside & Lionheart. It sounds very much of its time, with a mid-70s country lilt to the guitar work, but the song is missing the playful and adventurous arrangements of the songs that followed three years later. Recorded when Kate was 17, its a strong vocal performance and whilst it is good to hear music from Kate’s formative years, I feel that Humming would have sounded out of place on The Kick Inside.

A highlight of The Other Sides is Lyra, Kate’s contribution to The Golden Compass soundtrack. This is the first time the song has been released on a Kate Bush compilation. Its an understated but emotional track, and Lyra reminds me a little of the early recordings from the sadly now inactive Clannad.

Similar to the first collection of remasters, this Part II collection is a must-have if you don’t already own the albums. If you already own them, you will appreciate hearing the albums in these best sounding versions. The album’s are also available as individual releases, apart from The Other Sides, which remain exclusive to the CD and vinyl box-sets”.

B-sides are fascinating. For Bush’s first two albums, 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart, we had B-sides that were albums tracks. The first single from her third studio album (1980’s Never for Ever), Breathing, featured a B-side of The Empty Bullring. Originals and cover versions featured more as B-sides from this point on. Some really interesting cover versions. Cloudbusting, the second single from 1985’s Hounds of Love, featured Burning Bridge and My Lagan Love among its B-sides. Burning Bridge concerns a woman desperately pleading with her lover to step up his level of commitment to her. The 12” edition of the single also included My Lagan Love. A cover of a traditional Irish song. From 1980 onwards, Bush’s B-sides were a mix of originals that were not album tracks, some album tracks and some eclectic covers. I love This Woman’s Work from The Sensual World. The album’s second single, we were treated to Be Kind to My Mistakes. That was on the U.K. 7” single. I’m Still Waiting was also on the 12” and single release. I love how a rare and elusive song like Show a Little Devotion was a B-side on Moments of Pleasure. From The Red Shoes, the single was released on 15th November, 1993. It is a whole world of its own the B-side. Often dismissed as an inferior song or something that was lying around, I think some of Bush’s most revealing or interesting songs were B-sides. We definitely got a more rounded impression of her as an artist. Everyone has their favourite Kate Bush B-side. As I say, I will reserve a special place for Under the Ivy in a later feature. That was the B-side for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God).

It is really hard to select only five great B-sides. Very little is written about her B-sides. Most people, when they concentrate on Bush’s songs, go for singles or album tracks. Very little consideration of those B-sides. I am leaning on the always brilliant Kate Bush Encylopedia for their information and authority when it comes to providing more details regarding Bush’s work. The first B-side that comes to mind when recommending a deeper dive is Be Kind to My Mistakes. Appropriate for This Woman’s Work, it was originally written for a film. This Woman’s Work was written for She’s Having a Baby and was first heard in 1988. It would then appear on The Sensual World the following year. Be Kind to My Mistake, given to the film, Castaway (Bush was approached to appear but dodged a bullet and didn’t have to film with Oliver Reed!), is a great track:

‘Be Kind To My Mistakes’ is a song written by Kate Bush, originally written for the soundtrack of the movie ‘Castaway’ (1987) and released on the soundtrack album. The line “Be kind to my mistakes” is spoken by Oliver Reed’s character at the end of the film, as he anticipates the future publication of Irving’s memoirs about the year she had just completed alone with him on a desert island.

Versions

There are three versions of ‘Be Kind To My Mistakes’: the original version, released on the soundtrack of ‘Castaway’ (1987), a version of that one which was released on a promotional 7″ single, and a remix version, released on the B-side of the single This Woman’s Work in 1989. The original version of ‘Be Kind To My Mistakes’ has a longer intro than the 1989 remix and also has a slightly different ending, with more echo on percussion. The version on the promotional 7″ single fades out, where the album version on the soundtrack crossfades into track 2 of the album.

Formats

‘Be Kind To My Mistakes’ was originally released on the soundtrack album ‘Castaway’ (1987). A promotional 7″ single, featuring Kate’s track plus ‘Chemistry’ by Brian Eno, was released in Germany only. Two years later, a remix of the track appeared on the B-side of the single This Woman’s Work and on the American mini album Aspects Of The Sensual World”.

Burning Bridge is a gem of a song. I doubt most Kate Bush fans are aware of the song. I do hope that we get all these songs back on C.D. and vinyl and readily available, as they do need to be treasured. Whilst one can get the studio albums, The Other Sides has sort of fallen out of favour. Not as much attention paid to it. Even if Kate Bush feels the song is a throwaway, I think it is a great B-side that should get more praise. I would love to see a video or visualisation of the song. It is interesting learning a bit more about Burning Bridge:

“Burning Bridge’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released as the B-side of the single Cloudbusting in 1985. According to Kate, it’s just a positive and trivial song, with superficial lyrics.

The track was first released on CD as part of the This Woman’s Work Anthology 1978-1990 box set. It was also included in the 1997 ‘EMI Centenary’ re-release of Hounds Of Love.

Kate about ‘Burning Bridge’

Again it was a song that was totally created for a b-side, and I knew that it was going on the other side of ‘Cloudbusting’. ‘Cloudbusting’ is not necessarily an up-tempo song and I feel that flips of records should be something that counterbalances the energy of the other side. So, I wanted something that was relatively up-tempo, and just a fun song. I don’t think the lyrics are by any means profound, but it was something that I felt was fun to do and was a very different energy from the a-side of the record. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)”.

Because of its importance, Warm and Soothing needs to be mentioned. In terms of its importance and how it links to Bush’s experiences with Abbey Road Studios. It is quite rare as it was a B-side to a single that was not included on an album. It means it is more obscure than many of her B-sides. I can picture Bush and her team recording Warm and Soothing. It is quite evocative to think of her in Abbey Road Studios and performing this song! It is one of my favourite lesser-known Kate Bush songs. One that more people need to know about. One of her very best B-sides:

“Warm And Soothing’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released as the B-side of December Will Be Magic Again in 1980.

The lyric starts out with a description of the warmth of a family home, but ends up describing a fear of growing old, trapped in a relationship that doesn’t seem to be very warm nor soothing.

Kate about ‘Warm And Soothing’

‘Warm And Soothing’ was a demo-tape which we did basically just to see what Abbey Road sounded like. We wanted to work there, and we went into Studio Two, and really the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a piano vocal. So I did, and it sounded great. (Peter Swales, ‘Kate Bush’. Musician, Fall 1985)”.

I am going back up the tracklisting for the penultimate B-side recommendation. In addition to the fact it is Kate Bush singing in French – which is among the most beautiful things you could hear! -, it is a B-side that featured on lesser, relatively unsuccessful singles. One fears the B-side was not heard that much when it originally came out. The song is Ne T’enfuis Pas. Most people would not have heard it. This is a song that really needs to be experienced on vinyl. I do hope that there are future plans to reapproach The Other Sides. Here is some more information about a sublime song:

“Ne T’enfuis Pas’ is a song written by Kate Bush with French lyrics by Patrick Jeaneau and Vivienne Chandler.

‘Ne T’enfuis Pas’ (‘Don’t Run Away’) tells the story of a woman, worried that her lover is about to leave, wrestling with her conscience over her plans to make him stay.

Versions

There are two versions of ‘Ne T’enfuis Pas’: the original release on There Goes A Tenner and Suspended in Gaffa and the remix version (featuring ‘cleaner’ sounding vocals) appears on the 1983 single release and on the This Woman’s Work Anthology 1978-1990 box set, released in 1990.

Formats

The song was originally released as the B-side of the singles There Goes A Tenner (in the UK) and Suspended In Gaffa (in Europe). The title was misspelled as Ne T’en Fuis Pas in both instances, which means nothing in French. In July 1983, the song was released as a single in France and Canada, featuring Un Baiser D’enfant on the B-side.

In September 2019, a limited edition 12″ single, featuring the remastered versions of ‘Ne T’enfuis pas’ and ‘Un baiser d’enfant’ was released in France. Copies were sold out within days, but more copies were pressed later in the year.

Critical reception

Although ‘Ne T’enfuis Pas’ was not released in the UK, some copies were imported by Conifer, a record import/export firm. The song was played on BBC Radio 1 a few times and there was even a review in the UK press:

It begins with an earth shattering Linn drum pattern, with Del Palmer adding a rich fretless bass. Kate plays fairlight and breathes sensuously over the top…

Electronics and Music Maker, September 1983”.

Perhaps one of Kate Bush’s most explicit and direct B-sides, it is appropriate that the song appeared as  B-side of Babooshka. That song is about a wife that suspects her husband is unfaithful and tests that infidelity. The wife uses the pseudonym of Babooshka and sends notes to her husband in the guise of a younger woman. The B-side, Ran Tan Waltz, also is about fidelity and trust, though far saucier and perhaps not as clever or cryptic. One of the best combinations of songs. Kate Bush perhaps knowingly wanting to keep on a similar theme but do something more humorous with the B-side. I also love how it was wonderfully and eccentrically staged and performed during Bush’s 1979 Christmas special. A visualisation that was more T.V.-friendly but quite odd. I love it! Most people would not have known about Ran Tan Waltz. I think it is much more worthy than being this oddity. A great song that is among my favourite Kate Bush B-sides. If you have not heard the song or know anything about it, then here is a bit more detail:

“Ran Tan Waltz’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was released as the B-side of the single Babooshka in June 1980.

The tone of the song is rather comic, while switching traditional gender roles. A young husband is left home holding the baby while the wife is out drinking and philandering.

Performances

The song was actually premiered during the Christmas Special Kate in December 1979. It was the only performance of the song ever”.

If you want a deeper dive into her B-sides and demos, this website is exceptional. So much detail! I am not the only one who is shining a light on some of Kate Bush’s B-sides. The very best. Others have had their say. This feature from 2023 mentions two honourable mentions: Home for Christmas and Passing Through Air. The latter is especially important (“Recorded soon after her 15th birthday in 1973, this is the earliest Kate Bush track to be officially released. The song, recorded at David Gilmour’s studio (and featuring Gilmour on guitar), was meant as a demo and shows how very different Bush’s career could’ve been. It’s the kind of light pop one could imagine a more middle-of-the-road female singer performing, though there are some surreal asides in the lyrics (“You mix the stars with your arms”). As Bush has issued so few previously unreleased tracks, this is a rare peek inside her vault”). Something I did not think about but might explore for another feature is which single and B-side combination is the strongest. For me it is Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Under the Ivy. I don’t think any artist ever has released a better A and B-side. Two perfect songs that perfectly go side by side! This feature ran a poll and presented the results. It shows that other people share my view! However, it is a shame that December Will Be Magic Again/Warm and Soothing did not get more love. We need The Other Sides reissued and more widely available. A more affordable Kate Bush: Remastered in Vinyl IV. Many people are missing out on some wonderful B-sides and covers. I wanted to spend time on some golden B-sides. There are many more that we can explore and discuss. As I say, I am spotlighting Under the Ivy soon. Without a doubt, it is one of the best B-sides…

EVER released.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential November Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

 IN THIS PHOTO: Michael Kiwanuka

Essential November Releases

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THERE are quite a few…

IN THIS PHOTO: Du Blonde

great albums out next month that you’ll want to add to your record collection. I will recommend those worth pre-ordering. Perhaps fewer than previous months, there is still a lot of great music coming. I will out with albums due out on 1st November. There are two I am going to recommend. The first is Du Blonde’s Sniff More Gritty. If you need more information about this tremendous album from one of our best young artists, then you can pre-order it here:

“Sniff More Gritty is an album of many faces, some belonging to Du Blonde, others belonging to a host of characters from past loves, to record industry executives, each played with humour and heartbreak in a one-man pantomime of glam-rock, punk, and a single, acrylic nail adorned middle finger. The glimmers of pop teased on 2021’s acclaimed Homecoming LP become firework displays that illuminate stories of missed connections, anxiety, controlling relationships and hard earned peace. In spite of darkness, Du Blonde is choosing fun.

Having self-produced her third album, after years of working relationships with record labels and industry producers, Du Blonde found herself able to finally express herself musically in a way that her previous situation would not allow. The freedom that came with her move to production and engineering opened up a new sonic world for Du Blonde, one that is arguably catchier, more colourful and more exciting than anything she had been allowed to bring forth previously. Sniff More Gritty is entirely performed (drums aside!), engineered and produced by Du Blonde, and also features unique collaborations with Skunk Anansie’s Skin, Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace, Maximo Park’s Paul Smith and The Futureheads’ Ross Millard, with additional mixing by Sam Grant of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs”.

One of the biggest and most anticipated albums of the year comes from The Cure. It is going to be exciting having their new album out in the world and seeing how it is perceived. Songs of a Lost World is going to be one of the biggest and most acclaimed albums of the year. The music they have released from the album so far has received so much love. Perhaps among their finest work ever. Here is where you can pre-order their upcoming album:

“Songs Of A Lost World is the long-awaited new album from The Cure, their 14th studio release and their first in 16 years.

Songs Of A Lost World was written and arranged by Robert Smith, produced and mixed by Robert Smith and Paul Corkett and performed by The Cure - Robert Smith: Voice / guitar / 6string bass / keyboard, Simon Gallup: Bass, Jason Cooper: Drums / percussion, Roger O'Donnell: Keyboard, Reeves Gabrels: Guitar. The album was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales.

Robert Smith created the sleeve concept, and Andy Vella, a long-time Cure collaborator, handled the album's art and design. The cover art features 'Bagatelle', a 1975 sculpture by Janez Pirnat”.

Even though the release date is listed as 1st November and it is available on Bandcamp that date, Rough Trade list it as 8th November. I am not sure whether 1st November is the U.S. release date. Even so, I would recommend people go and pre-order Mount Eerie’s Night Palace. It sounds like it is going to be a terrific album:

“Night Palace appears as a culmination of eras, arrived at after tumbling through decades of a tumultuous life and building from scratch in the settled dust. The 26 track album is a palace of many rooms, all welcoming, all varied. The songs stand vivid in their diamond sharp eloquence and distorted feedback, but only after traveling the album as a whole do we find the door. The palace is dilapidated with moss dripping through, airy, bright and open.

This is a return to the beloved deep analog fuzz world of the Microphones' the Glow pt. 2 (2001) and the many thickly embroidered Mount Eerie universes that have followed. Smashed tape, breathing air organs, crackling tube amps and a welcome living reality just outside the open window all entwine to push the definition of what's "home" and what's "studio", of what's a "song" and what's at the heart of the unmediated idea itself.

Phil Elverum has slowly acquired an underground cult status since the late 1990's for exactly this kind of work; building recorded atmospheric worlds that are distinctly bottomless with a fuzzed out mystery, while the songs themselves speak with a raw intimacy that can be shocking to hear. These are recordings of an individual mind and heart going deeper within while turning over each stone along the way.

Mount Eerie released another ambitious world of an album called Sauna in 2014. Immediately after, Elverum became a father and then his partner fell ill with a fatal cancer and died a year later. These and other brutal waves of change kept pounding for years and it was all documented in the white knuckle songwriting on the albums A Crow Looked At Me (2017), Now Only (2018) and Lost Wisdom pt. 2 (2019).

After a natural disaster, things do grow back. A person catching their breath after a traumatic experience has a kind of reoriented clarity. Art that is made without urgency or expectation has a chance to reach beyond the usual. It was in this patient clarity that Night Palace came to be written and recorded from 2022 to 2024. Elverum's life settled back down and he reassembled the old analog reel to reel studio at his quiet deep woods home and began experimenting again.

"I saw lighting last night, but heard nothing", the first song's first words announce. Mystery is back! Over the next 80 minutes the songs weave our concrete reality together with the charged and rippling world beyond. Birds squawk and we speak back. These are songs of re-surrendering to a state of wonder and abandoning the wrung-dry skepticism that this hard world can impose. And here is the hard world too, in songs of decolonization and backwoods protest. "Some zen, some Zinn" Elverum has joked. With two feet on the ground, he writes with a sharp eye trained toward the quiet flashes in the blue distance. The ground shifts”.

Before moving onto 15th November, there is one more from 8th that I want to spotlight. Primal Scream’s Come Ahead is another album you will definitely want to pre-order. If you need more information about the upcoming album from the legendary band, then there should be enough to tempt you below. I am definitely going to check out their new album. It sounds like a slight change of direction from Primal Scream:

“Come Ahead is Primal Scream’s 12th full length record. 11 new songs that find Bobby Gillespie preparing to release some of the most personal songwriting of the band’s career.

The songwriting process for Come Ahead began in 2019. At which point Bobby Gillespie had no idea if he would make another Primal Scream album again. For the first time, the lyrics came before the music. The story came first. Bobby wrote alone, using an acoustic guitar. Ideas flowed fast, in long bursts of inspiration. This process, in tandem with encouragement from producer David Holmes, provided a new way in. Working with Holmes and Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes, the Come Ahead sessions were completed between Belfast, London and Los Angeles.

“I'm very excited about this album in a way that you would be making your first record. If there was an overall theme to Come Ahead it might be one of conflict, whether inner or outer. The title is a Glaswegian term. If someone threatens to fight you, you say, ‘come ahead!’ It’s redolent of the indomitable spirit of the Glaswegian, and the album itself shares that aggressive attitude and confidence. They have a word for this up there, gallus. Come Ahead’s quite a cheeky title too.” Bobby Gillespie”.

There are four albums due on 15th November that you’ll want to consider. The first is Gwen Stefani’s Bouquet. It is an album I would urge people to pre-order. There is not a lot of information about the album available. It would be nice to have a bit more detail and insight. However, this People article from September gives us a little bit of insight. Whilst Bouquet might suggest a Country-heavy album, that is not necessarily going to be the case at all:

“While Gwen Stefani may have been sporting a cowboy hat in the photo that accompanied her album announcement for Bouquet, she has revealed that she isn't sticking to country music.

“It’s not a country record," she told Rolling Stone in an interview released Friday, Sept. 20.

Gwen Stefani performs during the iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on Sept. 20, 2024 in Las Vegas.

While the album was recorded in Nasvhille, the record is actually full of '70s pop-rock songs with Stefani's signature flair.

“It’s all the stuff I listened to in the station wagon on the way to church,” she said of the forthcoming record. “Yacht rock, though it wasn’t called yacht rock then. The music I listen to now, I wanted this album to reflect that.”

Stefani, 54, added that she wanted Bouquet to be "one big statement."

"That’s why I feel Bouquet is a really perfect title,” she said. “Like each song was handpicked with meaning”.

There is another great album out on 22nd November that you will want to pre-order. The amazing Michael Kiwanuka releases Small Changes. Following on from the Mercury Prize-winning KIWANUKA, it is going to be another prized and tremendous album from the London-based artist. If you want to pre-order the album then you are in for a treat:

“Small Changes is the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Michael’s eponymous third LP, the Mercury Prize winning, and Grammy Award nominated Kiwanuka. Small Changes was produced alongside Danger Mouse and Inflo, the team behind the globally acclaimed Kiwanuka and its equally acclaimed predecessor, Love and Hate. The new record was recorded between London and Los Angeles. The core trio made up of Kiwanuka and his trusty co-producers expanded into a wish-list ensemble that featured legendary bassist Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, John Mayer, Beyoncé) and Jimmy Jam of the iconic Jam and Lewis songwriting and production duo (Janet Jackson, Prince, SOS Band). A welcome return for one of Britain’s most talented of songwriters, most recognisable of vocalists, and most virtuosic of guitarists”.

On 15th November, Mary J. Blige releases Gratitude. Two years after Good Morning Gorgeous, we get another great album from an icon. There is not too much information out regarding Gratitude. There is an article from People that reacted to Mary J. Blige’s recent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. If you are a fan of Blige’s work then you will definitely want to order your copy of her forthcoming album. I am really interested to see what it offers:

“Mary J. Blige’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was nothing short of emotional.

Seconds after performing a sweat-producing medley of favorites from her decades-spanning body of work (“My Life,” “Love No Limit,” “Be Happy,” and “Family Affair”), the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul poured her heart and some tears into her speech at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland on Saturday, Oct. 19.

"If you’re a fan of Mary J. Blige, you know that I needed God," she told fans from the stage. "I needed something other than men."

After wrapping a photo shoot backstage, Blige spoke with PEOPLE about her new single, "You Ain't the Only One," out now, and more.

"I listen to a lot of stories that my fans talk to me about. I've been through a lot, but sometimes you listen to other people's stories, and you say, 'Wow, I'm just complaining' because their stories is worse than yours,” Blige says about the first single off her upcoming album, Gratitude.

Through teary eyes, the Grammy winner explains how listening to challenging stories from fans over the years has given her perspective on challenges of her own.

“Everyone has something that they're dealing with and that they're suffering through,” Blige says. “The single is basically saying, 'You're not alone. You're not the only one out here dealing with life. Life is not life-ing for you only."

Following the induction, the "Just Fine" singer hopes fans visiting her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame exhibit will walk away knowing more about her pre-stardom beginnings.

“The jersey [in the exhibit] represents how I came into game,” she says. “I came into the game with knee pads on, jerseys, leggings, hat turned backwards. It just shows the history of how I've been and who I am right now.”

After profusely thanking God in her acceptance speech, Blige also shared her gratitude for longtime collaborators Dr. Dre and Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man, who inducted her into the Rock Hall.

“Y’all have always been there for me from music to television," she said of the rappers. "I love y’all and appreciate you so much. These guys are here with me today, and they’re my friends."

Method Man and Blige collaborated in 1995 on "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By.”

“I wouldn't be here if Mary didn't make the phone call. She actually called me to be here for her tonight,” Method Man tells PEOPLE backstage after the moment. “[Mary has gone] through trials and tribulations, most of her career being misunderstood, being put in spaces that she does not belong in, or she's too big for…I love her. I’m always rooting for her.”

Blige’s Gratitude comes out Nov. 15, and the title represents her current focus in life.

“I start my day off by giving thanks,” she says. “I do not step on the floor from out of my bed without giving thanks and praise to the most high God... And that's how I move. That's how I move”.

Before moving onto 22nd November, there is another album from 15th November that you will want to check out. Warmduscher’ Too Cold to Hold is an album I would recommend people look into. You can pre-order the album here. It sounds like it is going to be a pretty exciting album with some great guests contributing:

“Too Cold To Hold is undoubtedly their best and most ambitious album to date. Taking on board the repetitive and polyrhythmic grooves of gqom (an alluring South African take on house music), adding in a dash of hip hop flavours and even jazz, and then harnessing that to their punk-funk, disco pogo, it’s a spellbinding mix. The album is produced by the band’s Ben Romans Hopcraft alongside Jamie Neville.

Too Cold To Hold sees the band stretch out, open up and produce their most dazzlingly eclectic and honest album to date. One of the many aces in Too Cold To Hold is that not only does it give people what they want, it also provides what they need. Having come off tour enthused about what the future held for the band.

Guests include Irvine Welsh, Lianne La Havas, Janet Planet, Jeshi and CouCou Chloe”.

I am going to finish off with two great albums due on 22nd November. The first I want to bring your way is Father John Misty’s Mahashmashana. I love Father John Misty’s work, so this is going to be another awesome album by the sound of things. Even if you have not heard his music or are quite new to it then I would urge people to investigate the new album. There is a bit of information about it below:

“After a decade being born, Josh Tillman is finally busy dying. Mahashmashana is the sixth album by Father John Misty.  It was produced by Josh Tillman and Drew Erickson. It was engineered and additionally produced by Michael Harris.  It was arranged by Drew Erickson.  It was performed by Josh Tillman, Drew Erickson, Jonathan Wilson, Dan Bailey, Eli Thomson, David Vandervelde, Chris Dixie Darley, Jon Titterington, and Kyle Flynn.  It was executive produced by Jonathan Wilson.It was recorded and mixed at Five Star and East/West , United and Drew's House

Mahasmasana - great cremation ground, all things going thither”.

One notable album from this week that you will want to pre-order is Kim Deal’s Nobody Loves You More. The former Pixies and The Breeders musician prepares to release her first solo album. With its striking cover and eleven incredible songs on it, you will want to pre-order Nobody Loves You More. It does seem like it is going to be an album that you will not want to miss out on:

“Kim Deal releases her new album, Nobody Loves You More. Featuring recent single ‘Coast’, the collection of 11 songs is the Dayton, Ohio resident’s first full-length album under her own name.

Nobody Loves You More is Kim Deal’s debut album although it’s not the first time she has gone solo – she self-released a five-part, ten-song seven-inch vinyl series in 2013. In keeping with Deal’s meticulous approach to her art, the album was refined over several years. Its oldest songs, ‘Are You Mine?’ and ‘Wish I Was’, were written and originally recorded in 2011 shortly after Deal came off the Pixies’ “Lost Cities Tour” and relocated to Los Angeles (early versions of those songs were included in said vinyl series); the last recording for Nobody Loves You More took place in November 2022 with legendary engineer and close friend Steve Albini, who helmed final track ‘A Good Time Pushed’ at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. Along the way she has brought in a variety of collaborators from Breeders past and present (Mando Lopez, twin sister Kelley Deal, Jim Macpherson, Britt Walford), to Raymond McGinley (Teenage Fanclub), Jack Lawrence (Raconteurs) and Savages’ Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan. Nobody Loves You More was mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry.

Every song has a story behind it, from the winter vacations with her parents in Florida Keys (‘Summerland’), wedding band covers of ‘Margaritaville’ (‘Coast’) to her mother’s dementia (‘Are You Mine?’). All in all, the record is a celebration of Deal’s unmatched artistry, nodding not only to her career highlights with celebrated bands across the alternative landscape (Pixies, The Amps, The Breeders), but also to her immovable cultural weight influencing musicians like Kurt Cobain and Olivia Rodrigo through the generations”.

There are other albums due next month that you can see here. The ones above are those that I would recommend you pre-order or consider. It is an exciting month for new releases. Maybe not quite as over-stocked as the summer, there are still plenty of albums well worth buying. It goes to show that the quality of releases is pretty strong as we head towards…

THE end of the year.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Scary Songs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Joanne Adela/Pexels

Scary Songs

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THIS may not be the most melodious…

PHOTO CREDIT: Moisés Fonseca/Pexels

or instantly accessible Digital Mixtape I have put out. As Hallowe’en is two days away, I felt it was only right to put out a suitable playlist. Rather than do what I do every year and compile Hallowe’en songs from the past and present or songs that have a spooky connotation, I have chosen songs from albums that are deemed to be among the scariest ever. That, or some intense or creepy tracks from albums. I would advise a note of caution going into the playlist. Not in terms of language and anything explicit. More a mood and particular tone. It is quite a heavy listen but, as we are a couple of days shy from a very scary and dark day on the calendar, it is fair that such a mixtape should come forth. For those who like scares and edginess in music to come from the sound and lyrics rather than the themes and a general, less tangible vibe, then this is for you. To mark the approaching Hallowe’en, below is a Digital Mixtape with some biting cuts that can…

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

PROVIDE chills and scares.

FEATURE: Black History Month: Bringing New Music Series to the Screen

FEATURE:

 

 

Black History Month

PHOTO CREDIT: Josh Hild/Pexels

Bringing New Music Series to the Screen

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AS it is Black History Month…

PHOTO CREDIT: John-Mark Smith/Pexels

in the U.K., it makes me think about the representation of Black artists and stories on the screen. In terms of original series, there has not been a whole lot recently. I am not particularly talking about documentaries. In terms of music series, there are relatively few that features Black actors. It is easy to say that it is due to a lack of opportunity or space on the air. Maybe few filmmakers and writers coming through. I am also thinking about American series. I have been thinking of ideas that are set at particular points in times. Maybe people will say the ground has been covered when it comes to Hip-Hop in the 1980s or Disco in the 1970s. I have been thinking particularly about female Black actors bringing musical genres and periods to life. Maybe an original series that features a female Hip-Hop group in the late-1980s. Perhaps set in Brooklyn or another part of New York. Featuring a soundtrack of other artists from the time, it would be interesting because we would get another exploration and examination of a phenomenal time in music. One where Black artists were laying down these incredible messages and timeless albums. I know it was a tougher time for women in that day. Not given as much room and respect as their male peers. Regardless, there is no doubt that a lot of the best and most original music from that golden age of Hip-Hop was from the queens.

IN THIS PHOTO: The National Museum of African American History and Culture/PHOTO CREDIT: MIke Von/Unsplash

There are a few reasons why it would be wonderful seeing a series set in the 1980s or 1990s. Focusing on Hip-Hop and some of the queens of the genre. Perhaps it would be a fictional trio. One that has to fight for rights and power among some of the heavyweights. The backlash they face. Their relationships with each other and outside the group. The way they have to work from the bottom to get to the same level as their peers. It would be a compelling multi-part series that I think would get a lot of viewers. Either featuring some amazing women from Hip-Hop in New York or, and maybe we stay within the state, a series that takes on Disco as its centre. Perhaps not a Disco troupe but something like Studio 54. A series that looks at some of the last days of Disco and some incredible Black stories. Rather than having well-known artists and figures from the time tell their story, they would be part of the tapestry and background. I would love to take a look inside the Disco movement of the late-1970s. All of the social and political tension around then. How there was all sorts of music. Not that Disco is an entirely Black movement. It would put Black characters at the centre. We have seen an absence of original and grippling music series across streaming channels. I am trying to think of the most recent examples. Nothing comes to mind.. I have been watching great documentaries like Summer of Soul and am inspired. How they are so intoxicating. Summer of Soul is a 2021 American independent documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. I was awe-struck by it. I was looking around Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+ and you don’t really see many series with music at the core.

I do feel there would be a huge demand. Maybe a series that looked at different periods of music and history around New York. Starting in the late-1960s and maybe Harlem. Late-1970s and Disco. Hip-Hop of the 1980s. Perhaps then ending with the 1990s. Perhaps a ten-episode arc for each series. The fact the soundtracks would be so eclectic and stunning is a big draw. Highlighting some amazing rising actors and telling inspiring stories. Putting Black stories to the front. At the moment, I can’t see any on the horizon. I think we need to have more music series available. I am not sure what would rule them out. Perhaps the cost of clearing music. Harder to make the storylines and characters as appealing or watchable as something that was more dramatic or conventional. I don’t know. There would definitely be plenty of humour. As we are coming towards the end of Black History Month, my mind has been opening up. How few music series we have seen in the past few years. How there are even fewer that centre Black actors. I would love to see that shift. I am not sure what the title of the series would be. As I say. If it is a conceptual series that has four different series in different periods, it would provide more scope. The budget would not need to be huge. Logistically, I think something ambitious could be created without it being inaccessible. I do think networks should think about it. If there are writers and directors out there with these ideas. Once one comes to air and invariably takes off, there would be even more series blossoming…

IN THIS PHOTO: Inside a New York Disco in the 1970s/PHOTO CREDIT: Bill Bernstein via The Standard

AFTER that.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: 1994-2005: Taking a Break and Stepping Away

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in London at the 1994 fan convention on 8th May

1994-2005: Taking a Break and Stepping Away

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I want to be quite up front…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: John Stoddart

and transparent when it comes to my inspiration for various Kate Bush features. At the moment, I am re-reading a few biographies about Kate Bush. One by Tom Doyle, another by Rob Jovanovic and the other by Graeme Thomson. I will nod to each of them as I put these features out. In the course of reading back through them, they provide ideas for features. One that was influenced by Graeme Thomson and Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush concerns a subject I have touched upon when writing about 1993’s The Red Shoes and 2005’s Aerial. It is Kate Bush taking time out and stepping away from the industry. Not a full retreat, but definitely a need to lessen the workload for the improvement of her health and happiness. It is an important topic to alight on. A reason why Aerial was such an album of wonder and scope. Perhaps more rested, refreshed and revitalised by infusions of happiness and new responsibility. The birth of her son in 1998. Recognising that she did need to shift her priorities to herself rather than the music. As someone who spent days and weeks in studios slavishly working over songs in the pursuit of near-perfection, it was hard to break out of a routine. Bush had not really had much time to relax and not think about music since she was a teenager. Consider the years 1978 through to 1993. That fifteen-year period of intensity and work. Her appearance on Top of the Pops in 1994 performing And So Is Love was her final T.V. outing. You can see how tired she looked during that performance. It was clear that Kate Bush needed to repair. In fact, on page 281 of Graeme Thomson’s essential book, he writes, with regards to 1993’s The Line, the Cross and the Curve film and the overload of 1993 and some mixed reception, how “there was to be a break in transmission. Necessary repairs”.

I find that period between 1994 and 2005 fascinating. There was a feeling that Kate Bush had disappeared. There is a song on Aerial called How to Be Invisible. In media terms, Bush had disappeared. She has at the moment too. The fact that then and now, she has not been releasing music means people assume she is not active or relevant. Today, Bush is still engaging with fans and doing stuff. Providing us hopeful words that suggest a new album will come along soon enough. Even though she is not putting anything new out there at the moment, she is still keeping busy enough. When she did step away from regular recording and releasing music after 1993, it was a period of transition and readjustment. Apologies if I repeat previous features or ideas. She did pack a fair bit into the years between 1994 and 2005. I will concentrate on various events from that period in future features. I am not going to mention Aerial too much, as I covered the album a bit recently for anniversary features. I love how Kate Bush was focusing on her health, home and family. Building a new one. On 4th July, 1996, the wonderfully and reliably unique Kate Bush was ranking her favourite singers. Rather than them being human singers, Bush listed a couple of birds. Specifically, songwriter Don Black was on BBC Radio 2 and talked about a meeting with Kate Bush. She revealed her two favourite singers. At number one was a blackbird and the second was a thrush!

Whilst some would see Kate Bush moving to the country and breaking from transmission as something melancholic and ordinary, they forgot their history. Like Hounds of Love, Aerial’s music and moods were inspired by the scenes and sights of her surroundings. The infusion of the landscape and visuals. How she was free from too many distractions to write in a more open and imaginative way. Rather than a move to East Wickham Farm, Bush now moved into a 160-year-old building, a former mill house, at Theale. It is a beautiful and pricey house that Bush adapted and modified. A gorgeous and big garden plus a studio right by the lock. Similar to 1983 and 1984 when a bespoke studio was built near her family home, in the 2000s, Bush had her studio decked with harlequin floor and ballet bars. In public, there was this sense of ignorance and assumption. That Bush had either broken down or was gone for good. Definitely no sense that, actually, she was slowly and productively planning the next stage of her career. I am always compelled by Kate Bush’s connection to home. The connection between her surroundings and the way she writes. How her music comes together. Maybe it was a conscious effort to return to her post-The Dreaming life. Burned out in 1982, 1983 was a year of rebuild and refresh. Consciously exiling from smokier and more suffocating surroundings and building her own studio. Facing a similar exhaustion and breaking point after 1993, Bush set about giving herself some time to start again. At least create a more comfortable surrounding. Release another album when she wanted. Whereas there was only three years between The Dreaming and Hounds of Love, we waited twelve years for a follow-up after The Red Shoes.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993

I think that there was genuine hesitation releasing an album and maybe getting caught in a promotional cycle that could have caused more damage and stress. Bush clearly gathered plenty of inspiration from her garden; the birds that visited and her new family. Someone always captivated by people and things around her, she would not keep these recordings private. She wanted the world to hear a new album. However, knowing how bad things were by 1994 – the fact her mother died in 1992 and she broke up with Del Palmer – meant that she would have thought long and hard about putting out an album and how she would promote it. I love imagining Kate Bush in the mid/late-1990s in a great home with this cool studio gradually putting together Aerial. Bush’s new life in Theale (just outside Reading) meant that the everyday and family was back into her music. Something much more important and personal. Maybe she felt her music was becoming less personal or easy to write. Not that Aerial was easy to write. However, you get the feeling of more air and space. Things gradually wound down after promotional interviews for The Line, the Cross and the Curve in April 1994 (the film got a limited cinematic release). She released a cover of The Man I Love in 1994. As I will discuss in a future feature, Bush donated original artwork to War Child for a celebrity auction.

I actually think that her post-The Red Shoes years was more interesting and diverse than the years before. Rather than plugging an album or releasing a new one (Regarding King of the Mountain) - “She first recorded a rough track just two years into her hiatus. Most of the vocals were from the original demo because she couldn't capture the same feeling when she revisited the tune years later” - she was laying foundations and focusing on things away from music. It is a little strange and heartbreaking knowing Kate Bush had some regrets about The Red Shoes. Somewhat apologetic in terms of its quality and potential. Maybe a little over-long and not as good as it could have been. The 1994 fan convention was the last Kate Bush attended. Negative press around The Red Shoes and The Line, the Cross and the Curve contributed to serious exhaustion. Bush was burned out. She did need to regroup and retreat. Some artists would have retired or come back with a lesser work. Instead, Kate Bush needed to get out of the studio. When speaking during a dubbing session for The Line, the Cross and the Curve, Bush said she needed to get away from the studio. She had not wasted many years or had any significant break. Not to lean too heavily on Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush but, when reading about Bush’s plans after 1994, there were some genuinely emotional observation. Her mentioning – during that dubbing session – the love of the sea and being there recalled childhood trips to the seaside. A mention of the joy of museums took us back to 1976 and that pre-The Kick Inside time when she was taking in art, literature, culture and strands of inspiration. It was clear that she was a little lost and needed to find her way back.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the Q Awards on 29th October, 2001

In a future feature, I will discuss how 1994 and 1995 were particularly tough years. What is curious about the time after 1994 is how the press jumped on this absence. How Bush, always seen as a recluse and odd figure, was in some castle or gothic mansion away from the light. The rather insulting and dismissive terms they employed. Kate Bush needn’t have worried. She needed that time away. Bush was always wary of the press and their intrusive nature. Bad enough that they were spreading rumours about her when she stepped away from the spotlight a bit, there was a new wave of media in 2000 hysteria when Peter Gabriel accidentally let slip that she had a new son. Bush started recording interviews she was involved with from 1990 onwards. Keen to be represented correctly. Not being misquoted. Although the start of this period of downtime and rebuild was marked by some black months, there was this sense of nesting and rebuilding. New home, studio and family. I think that many people assume the twelve years between The Red Shoes and Aerial was Kate Bush doing nothing. In fact, there were bursts of activity and visibility. Away from the media and behind the scenes, she was busy drawing up blueprints. Spending some necessary and positive time focusing on life and ensuring that she could continue her career. Things would change with her new album. I do think there is an entire book in the years before Aerial’s arrival. How many interesting things happened in that time. Including Kate Bush writing a series of short compositions for adverts for a new drink, Fruitopia. Bush recording her rendition of Mná na hÉireann in 1995 for the 1996 compilation album, Common Ground – Voices of Modern Irish Music. In future features, I will also check off some of the events and notable moments after 1996. A 2001 Q interview. Her appearing at the Q Awards and being photographed with John Lydon. All the while, she was recording and putting together a future double album. Finding time to rest and recharge. Something she hadn’t had the chance to do since she was a teenager. In 2005, the divine Kate Bush returned…

STRONGER and more wonderful than ever.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Top Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: kelvin carris/Pexels

The Top Twenty

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THIS is a somewhat…

PHOTO CREDIT: Digital Buggu/Pexels

simple Digital Mixtape. I am including twenty songs with numbers in them. Specifically, it is albums or songs with the numbers one through twenty included, in sequential order. Starting with the number one and then working down to twenty. Just a nice way of including some broad and diverse music and having that numerical theme. Many people might have their own altering opinions when it comes to the songs and albums collated. I think that ‘1’ was quite obvious from my viewpoint, though there are many albums featuring that number. It has been fun thinking about what to include and some numbers where there are fewer options! A great top twenty of interesting songs and albums, this Digital Mixtape is one I have been meaning to do for a while now. I hope that you enjoy…

PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Haupt/Pexels

THIS numerical blend.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Prince Charming: Adam Ant at Seventy

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Prince Charming: Adam Ant at Seventy

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ONE of music’s…

true innovators and personalities turns seventy on 3rd November. The brilliant Stuart Goddard, a.k.a. Adam Ant fronted the brilliant Adam and the Ants. One of the most distinct and pioneering bands ever in my mind. Their lead filled with this charisma and raw talent. The dandy highwayman. This Prince Charming! Even if you were not old enough to be there in the 1980s and see this incredible showman and songwriter at the peak of his powers, you will recognise songs like Prince Charming, Antmusic and Stand and Deliver. In fact, Adam Ant is currently touring the U.K. He will play Manchester on his seventieth birthday, so I hope he gets an extra-warm reception! To mark the approaching seventieth birthday of Adam Ant, I am going to end with a playlist with some Adam and the Ants and Adam Ant tunes. A mix of classics and deeper cuts. Prior to getting to that playlist, AllMusic provide some biography about the peerless and phenomenal Adam Ant:

“One of the seminal figures of new wave, Adam Ant (born Stuart Leslie Goddard) had several distinct phases to his career. Initially, he explored a jagged, guitar-oriented post-punk with his group Adam and the Ants before giving way to a more pop-oriented, glam-tinged musical direction that brought him to the top of the charts. After that had run its course, he refashioned himself as a mainstream singer, which enabled him to stretch his career out for a couple of years. Once it seemed that his musical career had evaporated, he made an unexpected comeback in the early '90s as an adult alternative artist. During all this time, he recorded several great pop singles and had a surprisingly large impact on alternative rock.

Adam Ant formed Adam and the Ants with guitarist Lester Square, bassist Andy Warren, and drummer Paul Flanagan in London in 1977. The group's approach was more theatrical than most punk groups, incorporating sadomasochistic imagery into their concerts. During this time, the group's lineup was fairly unstable, with Square being replaced by Mark Gaumont. The band released their debut, Dirk Wears White Sox, on the independent label Do It in 1979. Dirk was an ambitious and somewhat dark album, filled with jerky rhythms and angular guitar riffs, and elements of glam rock crept into Adam's vocals; Adam re-acquired the rights to the record in 1983, reissuing it in a resequenced and remixed form, with the tracks "Catholic Day" and "Day I Met God" replaced by "Zerox" and "Kick," as well as including a new version of "Cartrouble."

At the time of its release, Dirk Wears White Sox wasn't a critical or commercial success, and the band felt the need to rework their image. Ant hired Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols, to help redefine them. McLaren dressed the band in pirate outfits and suggested a more accessible and pop-oriented, rhythmic variation on punk. Adam and the Ants followed his advice, preparing material for a new album. However, McLaren persuaded all of the Ants to leave Adam, using them as the core members of Bow Wow Wow. Adam Ant immediately formed a new version of the Ants, adding guitarist Marco Pirroni, bassist Kevin Mooney, and drummers Terry Lee Miall and Merrick (born Chris Hughes). Pirroni, in particular, became very important in the band's musical direction, co-writing the majority of the songs with Adam, thus beginning a collaboration between the duo that would continue into the '90s.

Driven by a relentless, driving beat and chanting melodies, the new band's first album, 1980's Kings of the Wild Frontier, became an enormous hit in the U.K., launching three Top Ten hit singles, including the number two "Ant Music." The band's success was helped by a series of visually enticing videos, prominently featuring the skinny, handsome Adam Ant decked out in pirate gear. Prince Charming, released the following year, retained the same formula as Kings of the Wild Frontier, spawning two number one singles, "Stand and Deliver" and "Prince Charming." Even though the album was a commercial success, the formula was beginning to wear thin.

After Prince Charming, Adam Ant ditched the Ants for a solo career, retaining Marco Pirroni as a songwriting collaborator and a supporting musician. Adam's first solo album, Friend or Foe, was released in 1982 and featured the number one single "Goody Two Shoes" and the Top Ten title track. Although his next album, 1983's Strip, had some highlights and hit singles, it marked the end of his reign as one of Britain's top pop stars.

Released in 1985, the Tony Visconti-produced Vive le Rock had some fun moments, but the performance was too studied and the record didn't earn any hit singles, so Adam Ant pursued a surprisingly successful career in acting. In 1990, Ant made a comeback with the catchy hit single "Room at the Top" from the Manners & Physique record, but the album failed to produce another hit single. For the next five years, Ant concentrated on acting.

By the time Adam Ant returned to recording in 1995, echoes of his music could be heard in the spiky singles of Elastica, the neo-goth industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails, and the pseudo-glam of Suede. Instead of capitalizing on the burgeoning new wave revival, Adam Ant's 1995 comeback, Wonderful, had little to do with the stylish, intensely rhythmic music he made in the early '80s. Instead, the album repositioned him as a more mature pop-rocker, with crafted songs that featured acoustic guitars as prominently as electrics. The album was a moderate hit in the U.S. and the U.K., as was the single "Wonderful."

Following the promo push for Wonderful, Adam Ant and Pirroni attempted to write a new clutch of songs but no finished album came of it, nor did anything surface from various sessions over the next few years. Instead, the rarities-studded retrospective Antbox appeared in 2000. Ant continued his attempts to launch new projects -- including a collaboration with Morrissey guitarist Boz Boorer, who did appear on Wonderful -- but he also suffered from erratic behavior, resulting in several arrests between 2002 and 2003, leading to a period of hospitalization for mental health (he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder). A further round of reissues arrived in the mid-2000s, this time expanded double-discs of his first six albums, all containing a second disc with rarities, B-sides, and unreleased material. At the conclusion of this campaign came Stand & Deliver, Ant's autobiography, which he promoted with his first live performance in 11 years. Soon, Adam Ant began to mount a proper comeback, beginning a new label called Blueblack Hussar Ltd in 2010, then starting to perform with regularity, touring the U.K., Europe, U.S., and Australia as he began to work out new material. This new material finally surfaced in January 2013 as the messy, ambitious pseudo-concept album Adam Ant Is the BlueBlack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter”.

I am looking forward to 3rd November and seeing how people pay tribute to Adam Ant. Someone I hope has not done in terms of albums. It would be great to see another album from someone who still seems impossibly cool and otherworldly. Like David Bowie in a sense. Someone who has this persona and magnetism that is constantly engaging and exciting. Those three albums from Adam and the Ants – 1979’s Dirk Wears White Sox; 1980’s Kings of the Wild Frontier and 1981’s Prince Charming – is one of the greatest golden runs in all of music. No dropping a step with three timeless albums. With plenty of Adam and the Ants and some Adam Ant blended together, below is a mixtape saluting Stuart Goddard’s Adam Ant…

AT seventy.

FEATURE: Volume Control: Why Clubs and Gigs for Neurodivergent People Is Particularly Important

FEATURE:

 

 

Volume Control

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Stanley

Why Clubs and Gigs for Neurodivergent People Is Particularly Important

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TAILORING gigs to people…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sensory stimulation at a Disco Neurotico event/PHOTO CREDIT: Wendy Gannon/wo0 Photography

with particular needs it quite difficult. I don’t think a lot of venues have quite cracked it when it comes to providing safe and easy access for disabled people. There are also the needs of women to take into consideration. If they feel threatened at a gig and need a calm space of safety. There are a lot of considerations today. It is a good thing that this is being discussed. Live music should be accessible to all. In terms of adapting spaces so that this is the case, how easy is it? Maybe smaller venues might have a more difficulty in adapting and modifying so that they can support a variety of different people. It is quite hard for neurodivergent people to feel comfortable at gigs. For me, it is the noise of gigs and not being able to be heard. I feel quite nervous and awkward around other people, so it is not that easy and experience going to gigs. I go to the odd gig but, when I do go for one, it tends to be smaller venues to see an artist I know well. I tend not to take risks when it comes to spaces and new acts. It is a pity that it is quite stressful going to gigs as I would like to do it more. It might be impossible for all gigs and venues to cater to neurodivergent people – even though they are a large part of the population. I think there are a lot more neurodivergent people out there than we think. With conditions such as autism or ADHD. The gig-going experience can be daunting for many. I know there are special club nights and gigs that are designed for those who live with neurodivergence. In fact, a recent article from The Guardian investigated the rise of clubs and gigs for neurodivergent people:

“Neurodiverse is the umbrella term for a range of diagnoses and experiences, including but not limited to autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia, and which often occur together – it’s estimated that one in seven people in the UK are neurodivergent. Out of Body Pop is part of a growing clutch of music events geared towards these audiences, many of whom find regular nights out difficult. My own experience as a music journalist with ADHD has been marked by festival meltdowns: sudden bursts of anger or tears after days of sensory and social overwhelm.

“For weeks before I go to a show, I will be stressed out about it and going over every single potential outcome,” says Marianne Eloise, a writer whose book Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking explores the convergence of autism, fandom and fixation. “Everything about it is overwhelming, no matter how many times I do it: travelling there, getting inside, standing around annoying people, finding a space, leaving. I hate every second of a show that isn’t the precise 90 minutes I am watching the band, but that time is so precious and feels so good that all the other bullshit is worth it.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Will Soer, the founder of Out of Body Pop, a ‘neuro-inclusive’ event in London/PHOTO CREDIT: Rita Simao

The aim of neuro-inclusive gigs is to reduce these obstacles, and let autistic fans and those with other neurodivergences access music spaces without such a physical and mental toll.

From dedicated events such as Out of Body Pop and Disco Neurotico to relaxed performances from the London Symphony Orchestra, and queer-centric events like Dalston Superstore’s Spectrum club night, the neuro-inclusive live music scene is as diverse as the people who make it. As charities like Stay Up Late campaign to increase nightlife access for autistic people and adults with learning disabilities, neurodivergent promoters are taking matters into their own hands, informed by lived experience and community research.

“In terms of my own neurodivergence, I feel like I experience things at quite a low level of intensity,” says Out of Body Pop creator Will Soer. “So part of Out of Body Pop is trying to create an environment where you can sink into something in various different ways” – hence the painting as well as dancing.

Accessibility for neurodivergent people often revolves around making spaces feel less overwhelming, and brands are taking notice. Take earplug manufacturers Loop: while their products were initially positioned as an aesthetically pleasing way to prevent hearing loss among concertgoers, recently the brand have made the neurodiversity angle explicit, with their Loop Engage 2 earplugs marketed as “earplugs for ADHD”.

However, many neurodivergent people actively seek out highly sensory experiences, finding comfort or joy through texture, sound or movement. When it comes to music we might be fans of black metal, EDM or the looping rhythm of shoegaze; anything you can lose yourself in. Live, the music and the crowd can block out other mental input and positively overwhelm the senses, leaving little space for the looping, intrusive thoughts neurodivergent minds can be so prone to. “I do also enjoy a pop show and have seen a ton of pop girlies live, but there is nothing like a rock show,” says Eloise. “Something about the chaos, the wall of sound, the bodies crashing into each other – it doesn’t really leave room for getting irritated or overwhelmed. Most of the time.”

But even sensory-seekers may still feel overwhelmed at gigs, fuelled by other difficulties with things such as crowds, expectations and emotional regulation, so the challenge for promoters is how to best serve these often conflicting needs. Disco Neurotico, a reimagined rave series that puts on events for neurodivergent and anxious clubbers across England, are now looking to implement “chaos rooms”: spaces filled with soft-play structures, drum’n’bass and strobe lighting, which will provide a safe environment for sensory-seeking punters”.

It is a good thing that a range of projects are out there for people with various neurodivergent needs. Every punter has different needs. It is complex coming up with a single solution. I worry that regular gigs will alienate more and more people. If we specifically want to go and see a particular artist, it may be far too stressful. I guess you cannot change things radically so that every person feels safe and relaxed. For me, it is bigger and packed crowds that is quite intimidating. A lot of noise. The stress of having to talk over loud noise and a lot of chatter. You can’t really do much about this. It is a shame that so many people with neurodivergence avoid most gigs because they feel like they will suffer so much. I am also routine-based and find it quite intense if I do not get home at a particular time. It is not as severe for me as it is for many, though I do find gigs quite intense and full of obstacles. Struggling to really relax and enjoy things. It is interesting that many neurodivergent people prefer the stimulation of excess. The bodies crashing into one another. The distraction and catharsis that they can find there. Many are the opposite. They go for something calmer and more private. For me and so many others, there is a tolerance level. A certain size of crowd. The largest gig I went to was to see Queens of the Stone Age at the O2 years back. It was quite daunting going in and queuing up but okay when the show started as I was so high up and the volume was not that bad. I was sat down too so it was more like going to the cinema in a sense. Seeing people near the band compacted and jumping around was quite nervy and unsettling. I have been to smaller gigs where you are close to people and it is quite awkward. Not sure how to move, react or emote. I find the volume there is more noticeable and intense.

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo By: Kaboompics.com/Pexels

I do like the fact there are these initiatives and ideas to make live music more appealing and less stressful for people who are neurodivergence. It is going to be very difficult catering to everyone. Neurodivergence is a broad spectrum. Someone who is ADHD has different symptoms and difficulties compared to someone who is autistic or has other needs. Tailoring gigs that much is not going to be feasible. However, as much as I like the consideration going into these bespoke and tailored spaces/ideas, I do wonder about regular gigs. Is it possible to make it more appealing for the neurodivergent?! I am seeing Nadine Shah play at the 02 Kentish Forum next month and I am excited, as she is one of my favourite artists. However, from the nerves of finding the place and getting there on time to having enough space to see the gig and not be crowded, through to the noise and whether I will truly enjoy the performance, there are these things nagging and niggling. Maybe it isn’t really possible to adapt the gig-going experience so that it is truly all-inclusive. As I mentioned earlier, women who perhaps feel intimidated in a venue and fearful of sexual harassment or assault, how do you truly protect and make them feel safe?! The more discussion we have, the more we can make gigs fun and safe for everyone. Also, there is this issue with venues closing at an alarming rate. Quite a difficult time for live music. It would be ideal, in years to come, if we can preserve as many venues as possible and make the gig-going experience happy and comfortable…

FOR everyone.