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It may have been a sweet mishmash, but at that moment it was the most beautiful song in the world. At first, we looked at it with suspicion, but soon after it became impossible to resist. For us, poor hormonal creatures, the effect was like when Noodles looked at Deborah in secret, there it was Song of Songs, here Wuthering Heights.
The song talked about a ghost, but of course, we knew nothing about it; for us, it was just a girls' thing, a slice of shadow that we didn't understand, an absolute mystery. We even joked about it, like "how does she sing like that?" or "it sounds like chalk on a blackboard," but each of us secretly adored that girl with the spirited eyes, aka Miss Bush, aka Kate Bush.
So, dear Jane, imagine if my heart didn't skip a beat upon discovering that that enchantment trapped in a glass ball was your imprinting. I imagine the face you made seeing that glass crack due to a voice as least cat-like, but above all, I would say, witch-like, these are things that mark you forever, not to mention you were only five years old, a fact that makes the level of disturbance rise to the stars just by writing it.
Then, aside from the witch Kate, there is the girl on the cover, also a witch. She holds a mirror in her hand or perhaps a lens, an ocular prosthesis through which she reads the world; it's not too esoteric, after all, it's like opening a window, I imagine this is the love in the title, a kind of enchantment just a step away or perhaps "nature reminding you that you have to live." Furthermore, you should know that it's not even the witches' fault, it's the little spirits that seek them, follow them, tease them, at least that's what that wise person said, if I remember correctly.
Then there's also John Parish producing, someone who knows a thing or two about witches, starting with my beloved Polly. Wow, here the sounds are so beautiful that you'd never want to unplug, for the batteries to last forever, in short, for the songs to never end. How did you do it John, what did you come up with? Did you follow the White Rabbit? Did you kill Spider-Man? Even if, in the end, you're only (?) the Mister Wolf of the situation, the humble craftsman, the one who solves problems. It's Jane who plays Alice. She's the one whose curiosity always leads her elsewhere, the one whose every record is different from the last, someone so in love with the unusual that if she finds an instrument made of clouds and buttons she can't wait to get her hands on it.
And it is always she who has ideas like sautéing the lyrics in a pan, i.e., shifting them from one Google Translate to another, trying to achieve an effect like a French film's subtitles where if you know a little French you realize that perhaps it's really talking about something else. Anyway, never mind magic formulas, our words are nothing but approximate subtitles compared to the reality they wish to describe, it doesn't matter since what counts is the music, i.e., the wind, the sun, the rain, the storm, or whatever you like.
...
I've been wanting to write about this record for a while, but nothing came to me, lost in the pleasure of listening, the reviewing beast lay quietly. Today, however, I arm myself with an analytical scalpel and dissect the songs to see how they are made. After all, what's the big deal, just be careful and take notes, here's a guitar at the bottom right, here are various thumps just around the corner, here's the angelic sander. But while attentively scrutinizing each nuance, nook, and cranny, a funny strict little voice warns me, "Oh dear Lulù, what's the point of disassembling, dissecting, fragmenting? That's something you do with dead things."
So, what I can't manage with the parts, I try to do with the flow, the sound wave, the undivided whole. So I suddenly improvise a formula, the classic reviewer quip, like this stream would be "a dreamy vintage freshness now expansive, now enveloping," but the fact is that the little voice immediately comes back and invites me (one) not to beat around the bush, (two) to focus on the witch on the cover. At first, I don't understand, but then, after a while, I get it. The flow, the sound wave, the undivided whole is all stuff that passes through the witch’s ocular prosthesis, somewhat like how light goes with the prism of colors.
And, while Jane sings with her crystal voice, the sound breaks into a varied array of little magical pieces. Here and there you notice tiny and beautiful things, a fragment that sounds like a toy, a glimpse of harp where the wind catches, the list would be long, but ultimately it doesn't matter, as everything is always the same and yet always different, with the individual parts stirred inside the same cauldron and a sort of unity of thought gracefully brushing the background color. Every joy, every melancholy is suspended within an enchantment that holds everything in abeyance, I imagine it is the power of witches or perhaps the act of writing songs as God commands.
It starts like that time I was in the car and at a certain point from a mixed C90 the Neu came on, then two is elegant and almost soul, three is the cosmic summer, four is folk enchantment, five is too beautiful, followed by six, seven, eight, nine, ten, with ten that’s almost Nico.
At a certain point, track nine, it's said that there is something wrong in the universe, so thankfully you are a witch dear Jane, and so please do me a favor, if you have a little spirit left over, one of those that make you see that love you speak of, then send it to my home because I am still behind on these things.
Ah, between psychedelia, folk, and modernist kraut with that somewhat Broadcast, somewhat Stereolab sound in filigree. All in a very, very pop key.
Trallallà...
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