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45 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Glorious Return..., 11 Nov 2005
I've been listening to "Aerial" for 4 days now - we get new releases on Friday over here in Ireland - and I can't recommend this record highly enough to anyone. It takes a couple of listens to aclimatise to the weird and wonderful world that Kate conjures up - but it's always the ones that don't sound so impressive at first that become the most enduring, timeless and addictive classics.
Aerial is all of this and more. It has a collection of songs on "A Sea Of Honey" which defy categorisation, swooping from reggae tinged rock in "King Of The Mountain" through medieval sounding (yet somehow funky!) lutes or suchlike on "Bertie" and on to the incredible piano and voice tour de force of "Mrs Bertolucci". This is one song which really sounds ridiculous at first - but get past the bizarre subject matter and the emotional intensity is all consuming. "Washing Machine" never sounded so creepy, erotic or melancholy.
"How to be Invisible" should be the next single - a funked up yet completely understated slice of tasteful rock-pop which invokes the mundanities of everyday life to create a cloak of privacy for our heroine - ironically it's more revealing about Kate Bush's state of mind than any of the more crazy tracks on the CDs... "Joanni" is an odd one, a grower though that sounds better and better every time I hear it. "A Coral Room" returns to piano and voice... perhaps the most beautiful thing ever recorded by Kate Bush, it's classical overtones and changes in tempo serve to accentuate an intensely moving, cinematic lyric involving cities covered in nets, the "little brown jug" that once belonged to and now reminds of her late mother. It's heart wrenching yet somehow uplifting and leads beautifully to the second half, "A Sky Of Honey" which begins on a musical echo of the close of the first CD.
This suite of songs and instrumental passages almost resists review on a song by song basis as the cumulative effect of the whole creates a sense of great exhilaration, the epilogue to the relaxing calm and beauty of much of the disc. "Prelude" is so beautiful I could listen to it on repeat over and over again, "Prologue"... bliss, especially as Kate slips into Italian as the languid drums assert themselves. "An Architect's Dream", though having rather ordinary musical accompaniment in comparison to some of it's company (lovely chiming synths notwithstanding), fearures some amazing vocal swoops and dives and the potentially embarassing appearance of Rolf Harris on "The Painter's Link" is handled beautifully...
From here it's all further uphill! "Sunset" combines a languid, jazzy arrangement with stunningly vivid imagery and the unforgettable enunciation by Kate of the words "A sea of honey, a sky of honey..." wherein both sea and sky are stretched to about 10 syllables each! The flamenco interlude is as surprising and dynamic a shift of focus as I have experienced in music with the gruff male voice duetting "the day writes the words right across the sky, they go all the way up to the top of the night" adding wonderful depth to a beautifully poetic notion.
"Arial Tal" sees Kate duet with a bird to wonderful effect leading us to my personal Highlight - "Somewhere In Between". Lyrically, musically and structurally perfect, potentially generic skittering drum and bass sounds are instead transformed into a vivid evocation of twilight. It's moody, erotic, mystical and beautiful. Kate bush at her best.
There is no drop from this peak. "Nocturn" drifts in on a swell of new agey synths, features a superbly controlled vocal performance which ranges from soft ethereal tones describing the dreamlike experience of surrendering to the Atlantic to the roaring chorus heralding the sunrise "climbing up the aerial" (possibly the most spine tingling moment on the album....).
And still more, the unrelenting climax of "Aerial" sweeps us up in the celebration of dawn. Kate sounds almost deranged "I gotta get up on the roof" as a pounding, almost disco beat drives us towards the utterly climactic yet tastefully understated guitar solo as Kate's voice becomes one with the birds...
This is Kate Bush's masterpiece. It has all the positives and none of the overindulgent negatives of her past output. Everything is reined in, controlled and perfected in pursuit of the ideal. It's a bloody incredible piece of work that needs to be listened to loudly and repeatedly for the sheer genius to sink in... And when it does its very difficult to think about much else...God it's a brilliant piece of work. Well done Kate and long may you continue creating your amazing, beautiful, mind-expanding music away from the glare of publicity and the emptiness of celebrity. I'd be willing to wait another 12 years for something else as wonderful as "Aerial", but it'd be great if it arrived sooner!
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Bush-release for twenty years..., 8 Jan 2006
Like many, I found 'The Sensual World' (1989) and 'The Red Shoes' (1993)patchy affairs - great moments like 'This Woman's Work' and 'The Sensual World' paling against the larger picture. Quite reasonably it could be seen that the days of masterpieces 'The Kick Inside' (1978), 'Never for Ever'(1980), 'The Dreaming' (1982), and 'The Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave' (1985) were over. Despite the fog of hype and expectation, Bush has managed to make her best record since 1985 and time may tell whether it is her peak...Like Nick Cave's 'Abbatoir Blues'/'The Lyre of Orpheus' (2004), Bush has gone for a two-disc/40-minute approximate duration. This seems a decent idea for me, as packed 80-minute cds' test the listener and attention waines around the 40-minute mark. The first disc 'A Sea of Honey' is less conceptual than its companion 'A Sky of Honey' - though there are running thematic concepts - songs like 'Mrs Bartolozzi' and 'A Coral Room' sharing aquatic themes, while the personal is invoked in something like 'Bertie.' Single and opener 'King of the Mountain' opens with some Cage-Sylvian style synths before bursting into life with a sound akin to the darker works of Peter Gabriel ('Digging in the Dirt') and Pink Floyd ('Sorrow'). The same caustic style of lyric found in 'Wow' ("He's always hitting the vaseline" say) is evident in something like "Why does a multi-millionaire fill up his home with priceless junk?" and "Another Hollywood waitress is telling is she's having your baby..." 'Citizen Kane' and Elvis populate the chorus and Bush reaches a sublime high as she sings, "the wind it blows...the wind it blows the door closed..." The songs criticised the most seem to me fine, both 'Pi' and 'Mrs Bartolozzi' have that "eccentric" thing common to all of Bush's back-catalogue (would you want her any other way?) and share the same style as the work of Robert Wyatt. 'Pi' drifts from electronica to warm acoustics to a math-babble - if Bjork or Radiohead did it, they would get duly revered. The rest of 'A Sea of Honey' is gorgeous stuff, 'Bertie', 'How to be Invisible', 'Joanni' & 'A Coral Room' are all as gorgeous as many previous Bush-highlights and sound as wonderful as could be. 'A Sky of Honey' is the more prog-tastic of the two albums, despite the fact former mentor David Gilmour isn't here (as many early reports of this record stated), it feels very Pink Floyd at times. Which is great, as Pink Floyd haven't released a decent album since 'Wish You Were Here.' As a sequence it works superbly, building over 'Prelude' and 'Prologue' (a bit of Satie and Sylvian's 'Blemish' detected here!) to 'An Architect's Dream'/'The Painter's Link' - which features Rolf Harris, her previous collaborator on 'The Dreaming' (come on, 'Sunrise' is one of the greatest singles ever - Sonic Boom knows!). Both 'Sunset' and 'Somewhere In Between' have a gorgeous acoustic/semi-classical quality, la Bush leaving people like Nerina Pallot and Tori Amos in the dust. 'Aerial Tal' predicts the climax of 'A Sky of Honey', the 16-odd minutes of 'Nocturn' and 'Aerial' - which recall 'Rocket's Tail', Eno, the Floyd, Bjork, electronica, Angelo Badalamenti and are worth the price of entry alone. 'Aerial' is undoubtedly a great return to form and a highlight of 2005, it might not quite top 'Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave', but what does? Here's hoping Kate makes a follow-up sooner rather than later...
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A honey-scented sea breeze, 17 Nov 2005
Aerial is probably the most clever name ever to have been given to an album - especially an album like this. It's literally the starting point: you have to think of it in terms of light, transience, whimsy; the intangible and the not quite there, yet the nevertheless pervasive and essential. It's Kate's broadcast to the world after twelve years of life away from the public eye, and such things she has to share with us!I had come prepared to be blown away, and it surprised me that it didn't, at first - it was more of a gentle breeze lifting the hairs on the back of my neck. I found myself initially charmed yet puzzled by the subtle chord structures and the seemingly haphazard placement of phrases: "What a lovely afternoon..." she tones in the background; fragments of laughter and bird song; the odd ting shaw; songs of washing and days on the beach - simple things. I was expecting the big emotional purging I had grown accustomed to with Kate. I was expecting to be left shaken by it, falling over myself at the drama and the intensity, as I was in, 'This Woman's Work', and 'Moments of Pleasure', and all the high impact theatrics of 'The Dreaming' and 'The Ninth Wave' But then, Kate was never going to do exactly what we expected her to. Instead, I found myself relaxing to this album - relaxing into it. And after about the fourth or fifth listen, the magic started to happen. I found the little refrains and piano riffs seeping into my mind throughout the day. Every thing seemed more ...wonder-full - everything in my day was set to a new sound: a sound of of light; of the sky and the sea. It was as if Kate had written a postcard from a special place: "Hello, the day is so beautiful here. Everything is so magical. Wish you were here..." Before I knew it... I was there. This album is so subtly brilliant it is almost subliminal. It's the maturity of her genius that, with so much apprehension and anticipation for this album, she has said in every note and word: "Let's just all loosen up and relax!" Even the heavier track, "How to be Invisible" is laced with humour, and, "A Coral Room" is wistful and bittersweet in its sadness. On the sixth or seventh listen this album starts to unfold as if you have been given - just like the cave formation on the cover, that turns out to be a soundwave of birdsong - something that is not what it seems at all. THEN I saw how incredibly musically intricate and deeply seriously thought out it is; and that only a genius at their craft could make something which sounds so deceptively simple. Like watching Nureyev dancing, it looks easy - for them - but try to do it. I challenge anyone to try to sing accapella the melody on 'Somewhere in Between'. Kate takes Jazz and shows that, not only is her voice superlative singing just about anything, but that she can elevate any form of music into something quite beyond its usual dimensions. The final two tracks I feel are a complete new departure for her. They remind me of the work of the musical artist BT and his incredible dance/progressive/trance style. But, once again, Kate takes the form and elevates it beyond anything that could be done by anyone else. The final part of Nocturne could have only been thought of and created by an artist such as she. We're lucky to have Kate to set music to our lives. And, due to her longevity, for most of us she's been doing that for most of our lives. If you happen to read the reviews, Kate, you sound incredible - the music is exquisite - but most of all, you sound happy. I am so glad! I'll wait another twelve years, or another twenty, but I hope this album wont be the last.
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