Ted McIntyre
I’ll never forget the first time I heard the eponymous opening track to Kate Bush’s 1989 album ‘The Sensual World’. It opens the record like a coastal window on a wedding day, all blustery and flustery and sailing on romance, before berthing into the windward side of the island, bolstered by warm gusts, tolling church-bells, percussive lashes and breezy whistles. Binding this all together are two tremendous sets of pipes: the vocals of Kate Bush herself, and the uilleann pipes, played by Davy Spillane. Unable to secure the rights to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, the lyrics are a reinterpretation of the moment that the character is overcome by the sensuality of the world, and possess the same disorienting abundance of imagery in which to sink your teeth. It felt like the first song I had heard in which desire wasn’t dangerous, but balanced and mutual, and yet, it still possessed such a breathless, lewd excitement.
When I played the record through the next day, the following songs enamoured me more. ‘Reaching Out’ and ‘Love and Anger’ are other rejoiceful tales of the universality of human connection. The latter is punctuated by affected laughter and a delightfully tongue-in-cheek exclamation of “Yeah!”. To hear the words “Just you wait and see / Someone will come to help you.” emerge from ribbons of humming is enough to turn a cynic to a hopeful romantic, though the next songs may well turn him hopeless.
When I heard ‘The Fog’ initially, I didn’t think it was for me. Something about the inclusion of the voice of Bush’s father unsettled me. But a month later, when I was struck by a classic case of unrequited pining, it meant a lot. The undulating strings perfectly captured that sudden surge of longing, sweeping in and sweeping us off our feet like the drag of the tide. From then, I revisited the album religiously, and found my taste reaching further into its depths with each listen.
It gets gloomier on the way down the track-list, as if, slowly, the sun starts to set in its setting. In ‘Heads We’re Dancing’ — a song that sees Bush dancing with Hitler as a somewhat misguided exploration of the banality of evil — the strings go ominous, bass guitars start to hum under the soil and rumble somewhere in the piston factory. ‘Between a Man and a Woman’ continues this raspier vein; it’s a song that chases you, full of doubt, conflict and steam.
The song is not left tragic, but in its bleakest moment, is enriched with majorly rhapsodic piano chords, creating what I consider one of the most beautiful moments of music out there
The ensuing night sees the pipes reopen their throats and cast out great yearning warbles. In ‘Never Be Mine’, the precise tension of her voice trembles like a lip, and the uilleann pipes mingle with the gorgeous wails of ‘Trio Bulgarka’ (a Bulgarian vocal ensemble that would also feature on Bush’s next album, ‘The Red Shoes’). All of these aspects work together to imply a great, isolating distance of reeded marshes and despairing attempts to reach across it.
‘Deeper Understanding’ is similarly desperate, only more quietly, as Bush is seduced by the faux-companionship of her computer, a phenomenon of increasing gravity in the modern day. The song is not left tragic, but in its bleakest moment, is enriched with majorly rhapsodic piano chords, creating what I consider one of the most beautiful moments of music out there. It reminds us that there remains a human touch where humans remain.
Acting as an antidote to these crippling feelings is ‘Walk Straight Down the Middle’. Put together in the space of a day, it was the last song completed for the album. It’s a hilariously melodramatic stand against melodrama, where the matter-of-fact lyrics (“Well, he thought he was gonna die but he didn’t”), exist in tandem with spiralling synths and flippant trills of distress.
‘Rocket’s Tail’ is the song that has taken me the longest to love, and yet it’s become one of my favourites. The barrier is the vast acapella intro, which welcomes back the dirge harmonies of Trio Bulgarka, and makes for a rather barren listen. But then! The tremendous finale kicks off. A guitar strikes, hot, electric, and rough around the edges. Sparks blast from the tail of the lonely firework and propel it into the night, a fable of the friendship often forfeited in favour of fame.
It all gets brought back to affection, most finally in the much loved piano ballad ‘This Woman’s Work’, originally written by Bush for John Hughes’s film She’s Having a Baby’ for a scene in which the protagonist’s wife is having complications in childbirth. You can almost feel the gentle touch of the fingers on the keys, before its severity increases as the love spills over into desperation.
Each of these songs has been instrumental at some point of my adolescence, and thus, to me, ‘The Sensual World’ is Kate Bush’s most important album. It’s a record laced with flirtation and femininity, melodrama and compassion, with an ever-present deep, earthly desire for connection. It gives us our first glimpses of the potential of sensuality. It warns us of the pitfalls of longing. It consoles us in lonesome hours. Most wholly though, it reassures us that tenderness prevails, thanks to and in spite of all this darned love.
Ted McIntyre
Featured image courtesy of Mark Cruz via Pexels. Image use license found here. No changes were made to this image.
For more content including uni news, reviews, entertainment, lifestyle, features and so much more, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and like our Facebook page for more articles and information on how to get involved.
