Kate Bush
Aerial

THE REVIEW

In general, I complain about the excessive productivity of certain singers who release their work on a yearly basis, and I usually hope that it is a sincere inspiration that gives birth to the idea of a work and not sordid business or various forms of interests. It is also true that certain artists, the longer they stay away from the scene, the more they manage to amaze us. But fairy tales, alas, remain fairy tales, because there are also artists who, left out of the loop for too long, return to the stage with mostly outdated and old products in terms of sounds and/or arrangements. This is the case of the former muse Kate Bush, for a long time a reference point for those looking for experimentation in pop and vice versa (was it the late 80s?!) who, after a good 12 years of absence from the scene ("to raise her children, to live differently and seek new stimuli" as she herself declared in a long interview with an Italian music monthly) comes out with a double work that is almost ambient-new age (if you'll allow me the term) fairly tasteless, with very little experimental about it.

Divided into two parts called "A Sea Of Honey" with 7 songs including the single "King Of The Mountain" to the lively "How To Be Invisible" ending with the intimate and suggestive piece "A Coral Room" reminiscent of certain works by David Sylvian and Peter Gabriel. The second "A Sky Of Honey" is a sort of concept album in 9 parts born under the influence of nature, the song of birds, the attention to small things, all over the course of an entire day: from dawn to dusk. There is a melancholic and pathos-rich air, with peaks of passion and almost magical atmospheres, but we are far from works like "The Dreaming" (her masterpiece) or even just "Red Shoes" from 1993. The atmosphere that emerges mostly sounds "fake" and "sampled" with a great work of craftsmanship that offers little to the emotions (apart from a few tracks like "Bertie" innocent and with an ancient Branduardi-like flavor dedicated to her little son or the track "Pi" sung on figures of music made musical by her ethereal and fascinating voice like never before).

The class is all there, nothing to say, but there's a sense of "little soul" encapsulated in sounds not particularly captivating or modern (similar to Peter Gabriel's journey with "Up") giving us a nice album, at times beautiful, but which does not seduce like the Bush of the good old days could. The album indeed doesn't particularly stand out for anything, the tracks flow quite predictably and pleasantly just enough to be listened to. An album that after a couple of listens I imagine will be, like others, placed in the most unlikely point of one's music shelf or, at best, resold for 8 euros at some downtown stall. I wonder if it's better to "let Kate simmer" for another 10 years and send her to a better sortie or if instead, to strike while the iron's hot, and urge her to put herself under pressure to give us a true musically "more heartfelt" successor worthy of the name she carries.