Kate Bush
The Red Shoes

THE REVIEW

If there's a seven-year itch in marriages, perhaps it's not a coincidence that the number seven might bring bad luck to artists as well. "The Red Shoes", indeed, is the seventh album by Kate Bush, someone who had thoroughly spoiled us with her previous works. But in this case, the results don't live up to the ethereal British singer. Not that "Rubberband Girl", the opening track, disappoints expectations: on the contrary, it's a perfect opening song, rhythmic and captivating, difficult to shake off once it gets into your bloodstream. The rest of the album, however, doesn't entice. Red shoes, yes, but they don't become a cult like Powell and Pressburger's film.

Rather than showing us the world through different eyes, as she had done previously, here the sweet Kate seems to limit herself to telling stories that don't impact, that don't leave a deep mark. Take "Why Should I Love You". From the title itself, you can sense something is amiss: the chorus is a bit silly, the organ is a bit dull, and the lyrics linger on cloying word plays ("The L of the lips are open/ to the O of the host / the V of the velvet / the E of my eye", and as if the acrostic weren't enough, here's the assonance "The eye in wonder / The eye that sees / The I that loves you").

Contributions from two renowned guitarists, Eric Clapton on the track "And So Is Love", and Jeff Beck, aren't enough to make this album soar. Nor are the many other guest stars, or the Trio Bulgarka, the Bulgarian voices that had already collaborated with Kate on the previous "The Sensual World".

Released in 1993, "The Red Shoes" is a respectable work, worth listening to, but it lacks that spark one would expect from an artist with as much talent as Kate Bush. Despite the impressive 3 million copies sold worldwide, an impending creative fatigue is evident. In fact, a long silence will follow the album, twelve years of absence from the music scene which only "Aerial", in 2005, will be called to interrupt.