Waiting For The Big Sky To Fall? - Kate Bush : Director's Cut

And so...it's here. Rather pathetically, there was real trepidation weighing on me when I clicked the play button, when a) they're just tunes and b) as Bush herself has said recently, the old versions are all still around, so if you don't like these, stick with them. Yet, when the dust settles, if Kate Bush feels she has unfinished business with some of her back catalogue, who am I to object? It might even be the liberating point which ushers in some proper new work, so the fruits of this labour may be yet to come.

Overall, its hard to see what that is substantive has been added to these songs ; I can see what has been physically added, and what has been taken away, but I'm struggling to really connect with the upshot of it all. And for an artist for whom emotional connection is such a key aspect of the work, that's a rather unsettling place to end up. More questions than answers? More the same question - WHY? - than any kind of answer at all. I've read a lot about how much of the exercise has been to correct some of the production foibles of the originals, but unless you're well versed in said techniques, much of that doesn't go beyond adding or removing various levels of sheen.

In fairness, it's not RUBBISH. Five of these songs, in their original format, sit proudly northwards in the Bush canon, and the rest most mortals would kill to have written, so there's some capital there already. She hasn't gone all Glee with her own back catalogue, there's no radical shifts for the sake of it, and once you get past the initial incongruity of how these relatively subtle changes make such big waves, you CAN still enjoy these versions of the songs as you did the originals.

Specific points? Flower Of The Mountain's proper recreation of Joyce thankfully keeps much of it's musical identity, but falls down for me as the lyric, despite being the ACTUAL text of Molly Bloom's climactic monologue sounds LESS ecstatic than The Sensual World's initial re-imagining did. Lily has a little a little more loose-ness in it's groove, and a bit more skittishness in its vocal, both of which sit well with the song. The Red Shoes has a few more electronic pulses underpinning the original folky reel, and that's about it. And So Is Love has a lyric change and that's about it. Top Of The City aims for more big-ness and muscularity but remains as 'meh' as it did in 1993.

The Song Of Solomon and Never Be Mine are perfectly decent recordings which maintain what was special about the first versions, whilst adding a little more sturdiness to the mix - the latter keeping much of the Trio Bulgarka's vocals helps immeasurably however. Rubberband Girl's Stonesy guitar riff is an interesting surprise, one of the most striking departures and most notable improvements on the original track.

Strangely enough, the tracks which truly work are those which offer the most major deviations from the source - and are the tracks which I was most perturbed about hearing. This Woman's Work and Moments Of Pleasure inhabit the centre of the record, and both are now removed from their majestic and intense original incarnations, and are now more brooding, spacious and clean - and yet don't lose any of their emotional punch. I didn't think Pleasure could even exist without Michael Nyman's unbearably beautiful string arrangement, but here it is, stark piano and the latter day, deeper, richer Bush voice finding newer depths of feeling in the song's ruminations on memory and time passed .

Clearly, if I'm going to be objective, I'm too close to some of these songs to ever be totally happy with these new versions. It will be interesting to see how I feel about them after repeated listens - as yet I can't tell which will be summarily dispensed with and which will sit welcomed alongside their 'parent' recordings. Director's Cut is FAR from the abomination I rather childishly feared. Interesting and diverting, and in a couple of places as spellbinding as Bush has ever been, yet overall a little inconsequential. And still the sky didn't fall in....