Kate Bush cut a peculiar figure in the early 1980s, somewhere between post-punk and Pebble Mill At One, between pop and Prog. Despite her performative nature, she was reclusive, reluctant to perform except on her own terms. When Wuthering Heights was a hit in 1978, her vocals pitched way over the top, it would have been forgivable to predict one hit wonder status for her. However, she managed to make her histrionic style work, in the way that Toyah, say, could not.
By 1985, she was at the height of her powers, and Hounds Of Love, recorded using all of the state of the art apparatus of the mid-80s – LinnDrum, Fairlight, synth strings as well as more traditional Irish instruments – is highly contemporary but also exudes a misty, mystical sense of the land.
The ever-ascending Running Up That Hill is an immortal classic, demonstrating the absolutely perfect, balletic poise she had attained, balancing paradoxical elements. It also showed an awareness of the best of what was happening around her, like The Blue Nile’s Tinseltown In The Rain, released a year earlier.
There are other reminders. Watching You Without Me is has much in common with Japan, another group who journeyed from the pop to the sublime. But the qualities of Hounds Of Love are unique to Kate Bush: their diversity, their arrangements (Hello Earth features traditional Georgian choral elements), and the sense of femininity she projects as a counterpoint to the dully ubiquitous male perspective prevalent elsewhere.
Cloudbusting is emblematic of the album as a whole, melding the forces of nature with impossible techno-pop dreams, bursting with potentiality. In a year in which both pop and rock found themselves in a sort of hiatus, uncertain of what was going to happen next, Hounds Of Love represented a standout achievement.
It was almost too good for its own good. Bush would never quite attain the extraordinary heights she attained on Hounds Of Love. Certainly, there are elements that date the album – the extensive use of flange bass, for example, on Mother Stands For Comfort. But in its cinematic sweep, its projected intensity, its balladic grace, its evocation of the natural and the eternal and its artistic shrewdness, Hounds Of Love remains an album for evermore.
The Baskerville edition of Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love, and the Lost At Sea box sets, in which the album is divided into two seperate wall-mountable art boxes, are all available from Kate Bush's website. A newly released coloured vinyl edition is also available.
