Wave After Wave (Hounds Of Love - Kate Bush)

Member Name: Whitehorse

Product:	Hounds Of Love - Kate Bush
Date:	20/05/02 (227 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just genius

Disadvantages: None!

I was just 10 years old when I first heard Wuthering Heights. It’s funny how moments in time are frozen in clarity. I was in the car with my Dad. I don’t remember where we had been but we were just driving home. Wuthering Heights came on the radio and I instantly fell in love. I remember praying for my Dad to drive really slowly so that I could hear the end of the song before we reached home. I also remember my Dad turning the radio up - a shared moment.

I guess it was the inherent and obvious witchiness of Kate that captured me. She was just so different. It wasn’t until the Hounds of Love however that I bought any of her albums. I rarely bought music when I was a kid. Hounds of Love was actually a birthday present for my Dad but er...I seem to have the album here and playing now - sorry Dad!

Released in 1985, this was the long awaited follow up to ‘The Dreaming’. I know quite a few people who don’t appreciate the wildness of The Dreaming but personally I think it’s fantastic. It was edgy, chaotic and utterly unique - anything but mainstream which is probably why it falls into a love it or hate it bracket. At the time of writing Kate was determined to find a way of dealing with the harsh realities of life - war, hate, anger - the negativity of mankind.

Once this was out of her system, room and time were made for ‘Hounds of Love’. As a whole it seems more mature than any other previous album.

For me every album by Kate is pure genius but Hounds of Love is the one that I love the most. After all, even the cover with the gorgeous Kate lying in bed with two Weimerraner dogs and a quote from Tennyson on the back - I mean is this woman trying to seduce me?

The album is really two albums - two movements. The 1st side is the ‘Hounds of Love’ and contains the more poppy songs released as singles such as Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God), Hounds of Love Cloudbu
sting and The Big Sky. The latter is one that brings alive memories of drunken shenanigans in the Number 1 club in Manchester from my early 20’s. You could tell the time by the records they played and so when The Big Sky came on it was usually around twenty to two - and yes we’d do all the dance movements because we were too drunk to care by then! I loved this album from the moment I saw Kate doing her sexy dance to Hounds of Love on Top of the Pops.
I love the idea of being hunted by love and the line
‘Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake
I’ll be two steps on the water’
...is just pure genius

The train beat of Cloudbusting is always a firm favourite. Based on the esoteric work of Wilhelm
Reich, the video stared the wonderful Donald Sutherland. I practically collapsed in horror when I first watched, thinking Kate had cut off her hair - thankfully it was just a wig. The song is based on the special relationship between father and son - a child's eye view of his father. Father is everything, Daddy can even make the rainfall.

‘Just saying it can even make it happen’

Kate was inspired to write this after reading A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich which told of his relationship with his father Wilhelm. Sadly the video and song does actually tell the true tale of Wilhelm eventually being arrested by the government and imprisoned for his ideas. He died behind bars leaving Peter bereft - hence the Book of Dreams.

‘The Ninth Wave’ is the second side of the album and explores the journey of someone caught far out at sea floating on the water - really it is the story of a journey to death. I love the concept - the ultimate horror of being in the ocean alone, hoping for rescue, knowing that death is inevitable. We don’t know why they are there - they just are.

‘And Dream of Sheep’ begins with our hero floating on the water, knowi
ng they cannot go to sleep because they may roll over and drown. The song - as is the whole of the Ninth Wave is surreal. It follows the twists and turns of a mind that is fighting to stay alive - a mind that has nothing to do but focus on staying alive and turn in on itself.

‘Let me be weak, let me sleep and dream of sheep...’

‘Under Ice’ brings in the horror and the dread as memories of skating on the river weave into the present situation - not knowing what lurks beneath the water, the fear of drowning and being trapped under the ice. The Ninth Wave is very visual and this adds to the magic and intrigue of the story.

‘There’s something moving under the ice’

I find this very disturbing - not least because of that bit in the film The Omen when that kid is trapped under the ice. Kind of a real fear of mine although hardly likely to manifest seeing as I can’t even stand up on skates...
Drowning somehow has that romantic quality to it - we drown in love, we drown in kisses - somehow drowning in water has taken on that seduction of death that many of us have. Whenever I have been on a boat or ferry or a high cliff over the sea I always think of jumping - not because I actually want to die - just something about the experience seems glorious. Yet somehow in all of this Kate manages to weave the reality of the situation - the real hair-standing-on-end horror of facing you death absolutely alone in the middle of the ocean. Can you imagine that?

‘Waking the Witch’ begins with the voices of the past waking the hero as he falls into sleep. Voices of Mother, Father, Brother all eerily whisper from speaker to speaker.

‘Wake up’

Here it seems as though the hero finds themselves wondering whether they deserve to die. She uses the analogy of the Inquisition and the drowning of the witch. The songs feels aggressive, frightening - the demonic
voice of the Inquisitor rips into being and makes me feel like I am struggling for breath. I remember the tales of the witches who couldn’t win either way - if you drown you’re not a witch, if you float you’re a witch and we burn you!

‘Wings in Water - go down’

Perhasp before death we mourn those things we did wrong and never meant to - perhaps guilt becomes an issue in the face of eternity.

‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’

The song moves into the haunting ‘Watching You Without Me’ which has been known on occasion to make me cry. Here we have the tale of a someone who has died watching those they love grieving for them. Broken voices that beg to be heard, beg to be acknowledged build up the sense of being utterly lost and alone. It calls on the dreams I have had of being dead and no one can hear me - it calls to my attention my fear of being trapped on earth after death and not being able to communicate with those I love. It taps into my need to acknowledge any sensation I get of ‘presence’ in my home because I would hate for some spirit there to feel as lonely as this song.

Hello Earth is probably my favourite on the whole album - perhaps because it is so visual

Hello Earth, Hello Earth
‘With just my hand held up high
I can blot you out
Out of sight
Peek a boo, peek a boo
Little Earth

This is the most epic of songs. The spirit of our drowning hero leaves their body and now travels high up into the sky to regard the planet. The lyrics and music evoke the awe and wonder of seeing planet earth from space - the beauty and insignificance of us in this giant universe. A male voice choir quietly intones a powerful lament as we feel drawn further and further away from earth. It is infinitely sad and inspiring.

‘Go to sleep little earth’

Finally we have The Morning Fog, light and fluffy in tune but
powerful in words. The night has passed for our hero and the morning light dawns. They begin to fall through the water but now as they look death in the face they realise how much they truly love their friends and family. In the face of death the thought of parting shows us how much we love life. It kind of follows my theory that the moment before death is when we are most alive.

Originally I believe the Ninth Wave was meant to be a film - or was to be filmed. At the time I remember thinking wow! However now I tend to feel as though any images put to the music would somehow take away from my own vision of the piece. I am content just to listen and let the lyrics form pictures in my mind that have meaning to me.

Kate Bush has inspired me musically, spiritually and creatively in general. She has a creative ability that is utterly unique, a voice that can reach ranges I can’t even dream of - a ability to paint with words and a deep sensitivity to and reverence for life. The album seems to call upon images from my past, wandering the fields near my home in childhood. It reminds me of being in the car at night driving home through the country roads and being scared of the dark trees looming over the car. It reminds me of gothic novels, Edgar Allen Poe, the music of Elgar and the silence of the graveyard where my grandfather lies.
Wave after wave of emotion.
There’s something about me in here and something I long to be.
Just perfection.

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