Kate Bush
Lionheart

THE REVIEW

I could describe the sensations you evoke within me as I melt in your impossible voice, but Francis has already been commendable in doing so for your extraordinary debut. I could talk about your angelic nature that over time has darkened into screams and grave tones of a dark demon, but even that has been well told already, and NotMeAgain.

I could also take a more critical stance and talk about you as a brilliant and versatile artist, yet human. Sure, I could. But a tender-hearted punisher has already accomplished all of this in an impeccable manner. I cannot be original, Kate, and something of all three will resonate in what I will say; but let it be considered a tribute to how well they adore you and how skillfully they have described it.

How many things I would like to do, Kate, and how many things I cannot do. I wish to be like your voice, eternal and always able to surpass its own limits. I wish to be like that voice that lulls me to sleep at night, soaring and romantic, climbing over the steep snowy expanses while it screams its love to the wild nature; that voice which echoes shrill and impossible in the head and then penetrates hard into the heart, dark and deep, making it tremble with ice; that voice which creates clouds in the soul at first, only to dissolve them with a desperate violin cry.

But all that is mere words, and it's not enough: you, Kate, must be explored, savored; you must be lived, Kate, sublime creature, delicate as the dew in your wonderful videos. I see you, still and yet so alive and penetrating, in your leonine fur on that bare wooden chest, the wallpaper illuminated by the sun and by your presence. And if what you enclose in the chest may not be immortal like the soccer that once shook me inside, your voice will still make it wonderful.

"Symphony In Blue" is delightful, in its parsonian cadence (Powell in production, Elliott on drums and Bairnson - unless I've erred - on the brilliant guitars are the emblem) and in its enveloping vocality. "In Search Of Peter Pan" seduces instead in fairy tale tones, Kate's fingers play on the ivory that she knows in every facet. But how can you be so sweet, Kate? "Wow", I exclaim with open mouth, wonder for your incredible art; and it is the perfect exclamation, immortal in its simplicity. It takes a more aggressive and determined turn in the beautiful "Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake": the nightingale in its impossible melodies is anchored to the ground by an effective bass and a cheerful arrangement. But it's already time for legend; "Oh England My Lionheart": in a fluted atmosphere, an angelic voice distant from past eras and its piano torn in gentle chords creating magic.

The return to the present (but not on Earth) happens in "Fullhouse", where the rarefied rhythm accompanies Kate's hands in nonsensical and hallucinated chords like the voice accompanying them. We move to the warm room (echoes in the title of that masterpiece which was a few months before "Room For The Life"): intense voice and piano duet in "In The Warm Room". It’s followed by another famous track, that "Kashka From Baghdad" marked by a melancholic bass (played, if I’m not mistaken, by Del Palmer) and adorned by a theatrical and expressive voice like few others: a track of great atmosphere. But here ladies and gentlemen in a circus troupe jubilation now brass now pointed the sound evolutions of our acrobat: "Coffee Homeground" is tonight's number; step right up, step right up. Applause, of course, but now close your eyes. The mind is shaken by a "Hammer Horror", a showcase of Kate Bush's potentials: vocalizations, overdubs, whispers, roars. The electric guitar can only keep up with it, nothing more. Enchanting.

The LP is beautiful, undoubtedly. But let’s be clear about one point: it’s not "The Kick Inside"; the gestation of this work (still in nineteen seventy-eight) was too short by comparison. Excellent songs, a great fresh voice, but a little less magic: there are no Wuthering Heights and men with the child in their eyes. But Kate Bush was growing, beginning to shed the clothes of the celestial muse and increasingly delving into the depths of the human psyche and the darker recesses of her potentials. Nothing is forever, after all, as she will wonderfully make us understand some time later making us dream and moan while caressing a double bass.

You are unique, Kate.