The Wild Reed: "Can You See the Lark Ascending?"

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

"Can You See the Lark Ascending?"

A compilation of reviews of Kate Bush's
triumphant return to the stage.

Few comebacks in pop history have inspired as much anticipation as "Before the Dawn," Kate Bush's momentous return to the stage. The first of 22 shows in a run at the Hammersmith Apollo left fans and admirers assured of the lady's unique place in the canon of innovators and icons. Where her peer Madonna has made a career of co-opting trends, Bush has kept aloof charting her own singular course.

"Before The Dawn," with its beguiling blend of dramatic invocations of the natural world, its combinations of folk, classical, world music and wide range of theatrical disciplines – drama, film, mine and slapstick, brilliantly set the bar for pop as a mature art form.

At 56, Kate Bush's influence on music makers across the generations is vast but her reclusive mystique is also a major part of her legend.

– Gavin Martin
Excerpted from "Kate Bush: First Review of 'Before The Dawn'"
The Mirror
August 26, 2014

[T]hings began relatively conventionally, with Bush trooping on barefoot at the head of a procession of backing singers, opening with "Lily" from 1993's The Red Shoes. If she was nervous after so long away from the stage, she didn't show it. "Where have you been?" she enquired politely, in the manner of an eccentric aunt welcoming some long-lost family members in for tea. "It's so good to see you all."

– Mark Sutherland

Excerpted from "Kate Bush Returns to the Stage in Spectacular Fashion"
Rolling Stone
August 27, 2014

The show starts simply enough, as the band walks on to the spoken introduction of "Lily," a prayer of self-protection that seems entirely apt after so long away from public performance. The band builds up a steady, muscular groove, and suddenly there she is. Kate Bush, in the flesh, and looking and sounding wonderful. The years have been extremely kind to her voice, which may have lost some of its glass-shattering upper range but which has been tempered with a wonderful smoky, emotive quality. As she starts to flex her vocal cords, it's plain for all to hear that her voice is as powerful and affecting as ever. Between verses, she smiles wryly, seemingly to herself, as if she can’t believe that the audience is here to see her. Over thirty years since "Wuthering Heights," it may well seem unreal to her, but her devoted audience never went away. Bush's longevity gives a lie to the idea that musicians fade from the memory if they don't tour regularly.

– Dave Cooper

Excerpted from "Kate Bush – Live at Hammersmith Apollo"
Echoes and Dust
September 10, 2014

Over the course of nearly three hours, Kate Bush's first gig for 35 years variously features dancers in life-jackets attacking the stage with axes and chainsaws; a giant machine that hovers above the auditorium, belching out dry ice and shining spotlights on the audience; giant paper aeroplanes; a surprisingly lengthy rumination on sausages, vast billowing sheets manipulated to represent waves, Bush's 16-year-old son Bertie – clad as a 19th-century artist – telling a wooden mannequin to "piss off," and the singer herself being borne through the audience by dancers clad in costumes based on fish skeletons.

The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that "Before the Dawn" is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable twelve months ago.

– Alexis Petridis

Excerpted from "Kate Bush: 'Before the Dawn'
– 'A Lithe Grace and Note-Perfect Vocals'"
The Guardian
August 26, 2014

Eighteen months in the making, and with a running time of nearly three hours plus interval, it was clear from the outset that we were here to see a piece of theatre rather than a concert. That said, the first of the three acts is surprisingly spare as Kate gives herself not much more to do than a lot of gesturing, pointing and small, slightly awkward twirls around the stage. The focus is entirely on her voice and the flawless musicianship of her seven-strong band, though lighting designer Mark Henderson deserves every ounce of praise for his outstanding contributions. There are no dancers, no props, no distractions, just humble, happy Kate and a five-piece chorus starring her 16-year-old son and "Before The Dawn" 'creative advisor' Bertie, who claps his hand over his heart when mum reveals the extent of his involvement in bringing her back to live performance.

– Alan Pedder

Excerpted from "Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo, 26/8/14"
Drowned in Sound
August 27, 2014

[Kate Bush's] legacy, arguably, would have been diminished somewhat if her comeback concert had been a cheesy cabaret retread of her greatest hits, a West End-style production of Kate Bush: The Musical. . . . It's a monumental relief, then, to see her returning resolutely on her own terms, putting on a show which, perhaps pointedly, features nothing from her 1979 setlist, drawing instead on just four albums: Hounds of Love, The Red Shoes, Aerial and 50 Words for Snow, indicating a refusal to retread her juvenile footsteps and hinting that those are the records which, whether due to recentness of release date or thematic factors, she's particularly feeling at the moment.

– Simon Price

Excerpted from "An Ultrahuman: Kate Bush Reviewed Live"
The Quietus
August 27, 2014

[T]here was something daring, sly even about returning to the West London venue of her brief 1979 three show run [right], begging comparison with her younger self, or maybe trying to obliterate it. The first quarter of the show seem determined to do the latter. Bush boldly strode out in front of her band and backing singers in bare feet and an extravagantly tassled jacket that made her look like a cross between Loretta Lynn and Sandie Shaw. There was something touchingly gauche and bashful about her as she awkwardly twirled around the stage. Yet while her stage craft might have been creaky, her voice was an undiminished roar, surprisingly rich and powerful after such a long break.

– Bernadette McNulty

Excerpted from "Kate Bush: 'Still Wondrous, Rich and Powerful'"
The Telegraph
August 26, 2014

No longer the limber teen goddess in tight fitting leotard who graced stages in 1979, Bush [pictured at left in 2012] took the stage with the seasoned grace of a grand dame, in control of her own theatrical world and beautifully attuned to the musical resonances within it. With a superbly marshalled band recreating both favourites and obscurities from her back catalogue she gave an object lesson in growing old gracefully. At the same time she expanded the parameters of what is possible on a musical stage. All the while refusing to conform to, inevitably male, ideas of how a middle aged woman's show should proceed, she used many of the technological advances made in her absence from the stage to bring some of her most potent music to life.

In a career hallmarked by firsts – first female to top the charts with a self written song, first female to have top five albums in five successive decades, first artist to use and develop the radio mic – the pressure to live up to her past must have been keenly felt.

– Gavin Martin

Excerpted from "Kate Bush: First Review of 'Before The Dawn'"
The Mirror
August 26, 2014

Backed by a band of musicians capable of navigating the endless twists and turns of her songwriting – from funk to folk to pastoral prog rock – the performances of "Running Up That Hill" and "King of the Mountain" sound almost identical to their recorded versions – but letting rip during a version of "Top of the City," she sounds flatly incredible.

You suspect that even if she hadn't, the audience would have lapped it up. Audibly delighted to be in the same room as her, they spend the first part of the show clapping everything she does: no gesture is too insignificant to warrant a round of applause. It would be cloying, but for the fact that Bush genuinely gives them something to cheer about. For someone who's spent the vast majority of her career shunning the stage, she's a hugely engaging live performer, confident enough to shun the hits that made her famous in the first place: she plays nothing from her first four albums.

– Alexis Petridis

Excerpted from "Kate Bush: 'Before the Dawn'
– 'A Lithe Grace and Note-Perfect Vocals'"
The Guardian
August 26, 2014

I don't think any of us expected just how good her voice would be. Such power and delicacy together, such depth of field and yet a guttural feel when necessary. And not once all night could you say there was a single note out of joint.

– Bernard Zuel

Excerpted from "Standing Ovations for Kate Bush's Return in London"
The Age
September 11, 2014

The show can be split into four parts, starting with a traditional beginning, which almost acted like a trick false start. Bush, all in black with a fringed cape-cardigan, bare foot and hair long to her lower back, stood before an impressive seven-piece band featuring two extensive drums kits with various percussion: in the programme notes she says the two key people at the start of the project were the lightning designer and the drummer. She saw the drummer as the "heart" of the project.

The Gayatri prayer – an old Vedic mantra – opened "Lily," a track from The Red Shoes. "Hounds of Love," "Joanni," "Top of the City," "Running up that Hill," and "King of the Mountain" followed and thus ended the "hits" section of the set. Her voice sounded exquisite and remained rich, powerful and controlled through the night.

She thanked Mark Henderson, the lightning designer, and her son Bertie McIntosh, who she said had been there for 18 months and 'pushed the button' for her to do the show. "It's been an adventure and it's only just beginning," she beamed. Bertie provided vocals and acted in the part of the son and the painter later on.

– Lucy Jones
Excerpted from "Kate Bush's 'Before The Dawn' Shows Begin:
The Story of the First Night"
NME
August 27, 2014

One of her keyboardists, Kevin McAlea, actually figured on 1979's Tour Of Life, while other bandmembers include David Rhodes, John Giblin, Jon Carin and Omar Hakim, auspicious session vets who have long moved in a world populated by Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Simple Minds, Dire Straits and Barclay James Harvest.

With . . . attention to detail, Bush, the seven-piece band and five backing singers (including Bertie McIntosh), set about recreating the sound of the original records with phenomenal accuracy. The opening six songs move with a steady relentlessness, a mellow funk, a precise digital rendering of those glassy Fairlight epiphanies, and provide Bush with a calm base to display the still-astounding potency of her voice.

– John Mulvey
Excerpted from "Reviewed: Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo"
Uncut
August 28, 2014

[J]ust as she reached the crescendo of "King Of The Mountain," there was an almighty explosion, throwing darkness, dry ice and an avalanche of notes reading the rhyme of The Ninth Wave [above] across the entire audience.

. . . Great waves of water effects drown the stage as frozen rooms rise from the ground, and Kate along with her backing performers, skates across the stage, beginning the infamous Ninth Wave segment of her Hounds of Love album; the story of a woman who . . . must take a treacherous journey to survive a frozen death out in the cold sea. As the story of The Ninth Wave is played out, we see floating houses pass the stage, helicopter spotlights over the audience, video footage of Kate clinging to life out in the open sea with nothing but a shining light and a life jacket, and gangs of skeletal fish people, all very reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen’s skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts.

The entire audience gasped in awe, straying somewhere between ‘jaws on the floor’ and ‘clutching pearls’ throughout the entire segment, and I chewed my fingers down to stubs. These were stage effects beyond any concert I had ever seen, and Kate not only took centre stage throughout like riding a wild bull, but sang every note of it live, loud, and as criminally outstanding as the album it was first recorded on.

– Mikey Walsh

Excerpted from "Review: Kate Bush – 'Before the Dawn'"
Gay Times
August 27, 2014

It was at this point that the evening moved from being a highly impressive comeback gig that silenced any potential critics, to being perhaps one of the most visually spectacular and sonically perfect events in live popular music. Never one to be overly swayed by stage effects, it was possible only to marvel as Kate Bush and her production team brought the products of her unique imagination to life. A video of a desperate message regarding a sinking ship is followed by a film of Bush adrift in life jacket as the whole of The Ninth Wave suite is performed. This included the stage being transformed into a nightmare sea-bed scene where 'fish people' take the 'drowning' singer into the crowd and a brilliantly created 'helicopter' searches across the auditorium for her. The whole effect was an utter triumph. It was truly awe-inspiring.

– Dave Jennings

Excerpted from "Kate Bush, First Night: Hammersmith Apollo, London"
Louder Than War
August 27, 2014

[The Ninth Wave] is the greatest part of the show, as the story of a woman lost at sea is brought to dramatic life. Projections of waves toss and surge on a screen, as do heavier ones, on the stage floor, wrought in fabric. The set is like a whale's mouth, huge teeth bending in, with a back projection of our girl in her life-jacket. Dancers in strange steampunk costumes menace the stage; at the end of the set, they carry Bush away in tragic and terrifying fashion. Then there's a man phoning the coastguard, and Bush's husband and son in their living room, arguing about dad burning the dinner. This set-piece begins embarrassingly, before taking another dramatic turn: Bush turning up behind the door, unseen, in black, like a ghost. What would happen if she was lost, we all wonder, as her stunning songs, performed stunningly, ram this message home. It's an incredible half hour.

– Jude Rogers

Excerpted from "Live Review: Kate Bush's First Show in 35 Years"
Pitchfork
August 27, 2014

[After the interval] the show is taken up with another concept piece, this time the A Sky Of Honey disc from Aerial. The title of that album, of course, is a triple entendre. Firstly, its subject matter is, literally, things that happen in the air. Secondly and thirdly, Bush is both an aerial and an Ariel, half lightning-rod tuning into the elements, half mythical sprite. It's crucial, in the understanding of Kate Bush, to realise that she isn't a total alien like Prince or Bowie. She's one of us, but more so. A heightened version of ourselves, a conductor of the sensual world (incidentally, it's a minor pity that nothing from The Sensual World itself gets played). An ultrahuman.

The bucolic reverie of A Sky Of Honey begins with an enchanted forest, "real" snowfall, and an almost life-sized wooden artist's mannequin. It involves slow-motion footage of birds in flight, cloud formations developing and the moon rising. The singer-dancer-actors, this time, play skull-headed bird-people, while the Rolf Harris role in "The Painter's Link" is taken by Bertie (which is probably for the best), who also performs a new song, "Tawny Moon," inserted near the end of the suite. There are attendees who, after the show, will complain that this section is boring. But, while it admittedly lacks the drama and peril of The Ninth Wave, there's nothing that's boring about the ending: Bush, wearing a giant pair of crow's wings, spreads them wide like a gothic Pygar and – for just a few seconds – flies, as if in an affectionate fuck-you to Faith Brown's famous wire-flying "Wow" pisstake all those years ago.

– Simon Price

Excerpted from "An Ultrahuman: Kate Bush Reviewed Live"
The Quietus
August 27, 2014

A Sky of Honey is all about light, a chronicle of day as it turns into night. [It's a] nine-song suite that fills the entire second disc of Aerial with chirrups of birdsong and abstractions of domestic bliss that give way to some of Kate’s more out-there leanings. It’s true that nothing much happens in these songs, with a couple of notable exceptions (the flamenco breakdown in "Sunset," the crescendo of "Nocturn" that leads into the wheeling, madcap finale of "Aerial"), but, as with everything we’ve seen so far, it’s marvellously and inventively staged. As the light transforms, so does Kate herself as a wicked spell abounds. Perhaps the most moving element of A Sky Of Honey lies in the skilful puppetry that brings to life what may or may not represent Kate Bush’s son at the age he was when Aerial was born. It would certainly explain why Kate hugs his short wooden frame several times throughout the set, and why Bertie himself, while playing the character of The Painter, gets to tell him(self) to “Piss off!” Keep an eye on that puppet, if you go. He’s not as hapless as he seems.

– Alan Pedder

Excerpted from "Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo, 26/8/14"
Drowned in Sound
August 27, 2014

A Sky of Honey is about transience and mystery. The painting cannot be fixed in time, its colors run when the rain begins; so, even art is finite. Man is subject to greater cycles of nature than we would like to admit. Bird song is emblematic of this sense of mystery: Who knows who wrote that song of Summer / That blackbirds sing at dusk / This is a song of color / Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust / Then climb into bed and turn to dust (“Sunset”). For the track “Aerial Tal” Kate mimics bird song, momentarily entering into a shamanic channeling of the spirit of the birds. Her eyes widen and she is for a few seconds the timeless artist/shaman communing with nature. No other artist would be willing to risk ridicule in this way. This is what sets her apart and allows her to reach a deeper form of artistic communication that has nothing really in common with other popular singers. She is an artist who happens to work in the medium of pop music.

Despite the fact that it is about the passing of time, A Sky of Honey is an amazingly life-affirming work. Rather than focusing on lost time and the approach of death, it chooses to use time’s progression to accentuate and heighten every moment, every detail. Each passing moment is not a cause for mourning but rather the discovery of a new perspective, the celebration of a world born anew. The rich colors used for the set are a huge contrast to the darkness of The Ninth Wave and the whole experience is satisfyingly complete. Whereas The Ninth Wave is about discovering a new appreciation for life through the trauma of a near death experience, A Sky of Honey is about the realization of a near transcendent beauty being always close at hand, only waiting to be realized by the openness of the truly receptive individual. Bird song is one key to unlocking this mystery.

– Christopher Pankhurst

Excerpted from "Kate Bush's "Before the Dawn""
Counter-Currents
September 11, 2014

[In A Sky of Honey] the presiding element shifted from sea to sky; bird imagery replaced the fish; an optimistic ambient-dance rhythm entered the music. Bush played the piano and sauntered the stage with a puppeteered tailor’s dummy while Bertie played an artist painting a skyscape.

There was a degree of indulgence in having him there, especially when he gamely sang a song, yet at a deeper level it made sense. Family has always been an obsession in Bush’s music, and now it’s parenthood – a vast subject that pop has hardly mined.

One of the concluding songs, “Cloudbusting” from Hounds of Love, underlined the theme, with Bush singing the role of a son touchingly serenading his fallen father. If growing up means accepting your parents’ flaws, then so too it must be accepted, as a condition of Bush’s return to the stage, that she is not the flawless performer of fantasy.

– Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Excerpted from "Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo, London – Review"
The Financial Times
August 27, 2014

Remarkably, the entire audience appeared to obey Bush’s earlier request not to take photos or use their phones throughout the show with a respectful, if slightly eerie silence filling the venue during the set’s quieter, more intimate moments. Onstage, Bush appeared to be enjoying herself hugely, displaying none of the nerves or apprehension you would expect of someone who hadn’t performed live in over three decades.

– Richard Smirke

Excerpted from "Kate Bush Makes Live Return Following 35 Year Hiatus"
Billboard
August 27, 2014

The ideal of transformation in song, person and spirit have long been a staple in Bush's music. Though for this show there were relatively few costume changes, her command of form was intense and delivery of content profound, transformations came time again, wondrous, uplifting and liberating. This was an astounding triumph in ways that must have surprised even her most devoted followers.

– Gavin Martin

Excerpted from "Kate Bush: First Review of 'Before The Dawn'
at Hammersmith Apollo"
The Mirror
August 26, 2014

The first song of the encore visits Kate’s most recent body of work, 50 Words For Snow, in the shimmering form of "Among Angels." For this, Kate sits alone at her piano, exposed and, I suspect, feeling rather triumphant. There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it, you might feel it and just not show it . . . – a perfect summation of what has been exchanged between this most singular of artists and her singularly patient admirers. Both sides are showing it now, as the full band returns for the thundering consummation of "Cloudbusting." On top of the world, looking over the edge . . . Kate Bush has finally seen her people looking right back up at her. With 21 more shows to go, will she then retreat once more? Her face as she leaves is framed by an expression of deep gratitude, suggesting perhaps she will not.

– Alan Pedder

Excerpted from "Kate Bush, Hammersmith Apollo, 26/8/14"
Drowned in Sound
August 27, 2014

Amidst a show of such lasting imagery and potent symbolism (and let's not forget pure nuttiness), not to mention vibrant playing and a sonic arrangement that was perfectly balanced between strength and fluidity, it was an almost "empty" moment by comparison which came near to stealing the night. "Among Angels," with Bush alone at the piano, was crushingly sad and simply devastating, her voice all that was necessary to take you in and turn you inside out. There was no fuss but there was also no air left when the song ended, almost without warning. It would have been a sombre but killer way to end the show and I wouldn't have complained. But then she lifted us, literally (as we finally stood not just for an encore but a whole song) and figuratively (we moved, we sang and then almost shouted the lines back at her like a fully roused congregation) with the restless movement of "Cloudbusting."

– Bernard Zuel

Excerpted from "Standing Ovations for Kate Bush's Return in London"
The Age
September 11, 2014

"Before the Dawn" is light and film and movement and theater, but also a rock show, dense, cathartic and physical. The audience, still as stones during the music, stood to cheer whenever tiny between-song intervals allowed. After the full-band final encore, "Cloudbusting," it would not leave until the tech crew arrived to dismantle the stage. “Thank you so much for such a wonderful, warm and positive response,” Ms. Bush said, with remarkable composure. She’s going to do this 21 more times?

– Ben Ratliff
Excerpted from "Vision Undimmed by Decades:
Kate Bush Returns to the Concert Stage"
The New York Times
August 26, 2014

After the three-hour show, thousands spilled out into a damp London night knowing they had witnessed something unique. It's likely that many will wake next morning feeling they have been not only to a gig, but squeezed in a trip to the cinema and the theatre as well.

– Tim Masters
Excerpted from "Kate Bush: 'Before the Dawn' – A First Look"
BBC News
August 26, 2014