We Let The Weirdness In - The Dreaming by Kate Bush

And so we visit another recurring theme - once again I have found 'another record that changed my life'....several years - DECADES - after the time I claim it actually did. But bear with me. My sister had this record, and she disowned it. Hated it so much she gave it to me. Rarely has there been a more damning edict in popular culture. But then again she was just about a couple of years older than me, give or take. She was, at the time, always going to experience things first. And thus was the case with Kate Bush, and she got The Dreaming and it was a massive deal. But then she didn't like it, I don't know why - probably moved onto 'the next thing' as we all did at that age. But she was still cool. And she was just about a couple of years older than me. Always had been, always would be..... obviously she wasn't a just about a couple of years older than me until I was born. She had to wait for me to be born to be a couple of years older than me. Which must have been a pain, despite how much she enjoyed that fact in the subsequent years. Funny , now its not so much of an issue. If anything she plays it down. Anyway, back to the point....... Ask the average Jim in the street about Kate Bush, and if their averageness is indeed legit, they are highly unlikely to point to anything from The Dreaming. It doesn't inhabit the popular psyche in the way Wuthering Heights or Babooshka did before, or Running Up That Hill or This Woman's Work did after. Technological advances and a growing maturity and artistic confidence gave Bush the chance to wrest creative control for herself, and produce a record with little regard for anything but self expression and self satisfaction. And as we do, due to the fact that commercially it fell on it's arse, Bush was passed off as a spent force, the waifly naivete lost to the ages. Balderdash. Yes, The Dreaming isn't a straightforward pop record, yes it can be dark, deep, mysterious, utterly confusing, but is never anything less than compelling from start to finish. The rhythms are demanding, angular, the melodies oblique, the pacing beautfully wrong and all over the shop, the vocals are as often shouted and screamed as they are beauteously evocative. It's a glorious mess and it's a work of art. There is a lack of focus, and this hurt some of her later albums at times, but here she rides that like the crest of a wave - she just follows where it all leads just because she wants to find out. The Dreaming is the gateway to all that was great which was to follow - perhaps Kate's greatest triumph remains The Ninth Wave, but the guts to deliver that song cycle across the entire second side of Hounds Of Love were forged in The Dreaming. The steadfast belief that her vision and her voice was telling her the right path to follow was cemented in The Dreaming. Yet of course at 12 years old it confused me as much as anything. However a short time ago I listened to it properly for the first time in a long while, and whilst it was a different experience, I could still hear what I at least thought I heard back then. It still sounds crazy and deranged, but that just feeds into why it was and is so important a record for me. I'm not going to 'review' the songs. I'd just urge you to listen to them yourself.