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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliantly original composition from our Kate, 12 Sep 2000
To follow on from her brilliant 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, and it's immediate (if overly similar) successor Lionheart, was always going to be a difficult task for Kate Bush. She knew there was a need for a completely different look and feel to her music, consequently borne out expertly via her introduction to the Fairlight synth, with delicate sampling and synthesised sound-sculpting utilised in perfect proportion with a variety of new and unusual instruments throughout Never For Ever (1980).The album begins with the perfect opening vehicle for Bush, the drama-pop of Babooshka, and from thereon in she takes us on a joyous and meandering ride through her New World of musical soundscapes, with the quality control never diminishing on a single track. From the chilling Infant Kiss, the poppy Wedding List and the Celtic-tinged Army Dreamers to the brilliant hard-rocker Violin and the haunting Breathing, Bush collates an unbelievable array of moods and styles and produced the one of the most startlingly original albums of the 1980's. You can see that an immense amount of thought has gone into this album, and Never For Ever saw the beginnings of Bush's fastidious attention to detail and dedication to total perfection on each and every component of every track. It may lack the tight cohesion of her brilliant Hounds of Love outing, but perhaps it is all the better for it. In fact it is one of those rare albums where you you invariably hear something new upon each hearing. This is certainly one of Kate Bush's finest moments and to this day, no female artist (ie, the likes of PJ Harvey, Bjork and Tori Amos) has come anywhere close to her brilliantly original creativity which was always years ahead of its time (in fact they are all excessively glum or precosciously obscure). Never For Ever is a timeless piece of work from one of our quiet and unassuming national treasures.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, Scary and (Mostly) Beautiful, 11 April 2002
By A Customer
This is one of Kate's darkest recordings - suitably, the front cover boasts a flurry of mythical beasts flying out of under Kate's skirt, and the back has a bunch of bats with her face on them. This sets the scene for a collection of fascinating, morbid and haunting songs with very different subject matter to most pop/rock music: The Wedding List is about a woman whose husband is murdered on their wedding day and sets out to get revenge (it's also brilliant to boot), while Breathing, about nuclear war, features the immortal backing vocals: "What are we going to do? We are all going to die!" The album opens well, with Babooshka and Delius, then settles into a warm but slightly disturbing sound. After a while - basically by "Egypt", which is the closest any Kate song has ever come to being a filler - the slow pace gets to you, but then the album springs into life with The Wedding List, Violin and Army Dreamers, then finishes with the epic-sounding Breathing. (Always entertaining, especially with the rumours that an EMI official came into Kate's studio while the backing vocals of "in out in out" were on repeat, and asked her if she was planning on selling such pornography.)Overall, this album is beautiful, rich and varied (something very rare in pop music), and doesn't sound too dated considering it is more than twenty years old. The lyrics are funny, clever and slightly bizarre (The Infant Kiss in particular), and the music is beatiful and absorbing, if somewhat eccentric at times. Depite the low points of Blow Away and Egypt, it is still a worthy addition to the collection of anyone who likes proper pop/rock music, and an great antidote to most of the stuff going around today.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Quintessential Kate Bush Recording, 30 Jun 2000
By A Customer
This is the album that smashed all the preconceptions of Kate's music and defined the directions that her music would move in later years. With this release she moved from being just another female singer/songwriter with a quirky voice to a serious artist, continually reinventing herself and seeking out new themes and directions. 'Never Forever' remains my favourite Kate album 20 years on, even though 'Hounds of Love' is probably a far more complete set. 'Breathing' is far and away the best single she ever released, although certainly not exactly radio-friendly. 'Infant Kiss' even now makes me shiver any time I listen to it. 'Egypt' would preview her later instincts for seeking out influences from far around the globe. 'Never Forever' introduced Kate's use of the Fairlight at much the same time as Peter Gabriel's third album did and both these artists would continue to wield extensive influence in the following years. I don't think its possible to underestimate how much the success of this album had on Kate's future work and I don't think that if this one had bombed out, we would have been listening to any more of this woman's work 20 years on. This, for me, is the quintessential Kate Bush recording.
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