1) Symphony in Blue; 2) In Search of Peter Pan; 3) Wow; 4) Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake; 5) Oh England My Lionheart; 6) Fullhouse; 7) In the Warm Room; 8) Kashka from Baghdad; 9) Coffee Homeground; 10) Hammer Horror
Am I listening to a completely different album than everyone else is? The general consensus on this says that this is supposed to be the weaker of the two albums Bush released in 1978, and Bush herself agrees. Certainly it's got the recipe for disaster, having been released only about eight months after The Kick Inside when the label wanted capitalise on its success, leaving Bush scrambling to start the new sessions. But if anything, it's incredible just how much Bush had developed in that scant over half a year. This is so much more confident, diverse and so much more her than the debut was.
Granted there’s nothing on Lionheart that matches “Wuthering Heights” directly, but that song was a fluke within The Kick Inside anyway. Lionheart does however follow in that song's footsteps in terms of the ambition that the debut's torchlight song alone exemplified, and overall the album as a whole is far more consistent than the debut was. Bush is far more adventurous, playful and even a little surreal here: there's a couple of of songs that carry over from the more straightforward style of the last album, but on the whole she's started to treat songs like movies where she's twisting her songwriting and arrangements to suit the stories she wants to tell like an auteur director. Thus while it's consistent, it's also a remarkably diverse album: there's little to connect the Disney dreams of "In Search of Peter Pan", the "Wuthering Heights"-esque rises of "Wow", the glam stomp of "Hammer Horror", the rock musical centrepiece "Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake (absolutely written pun first, music later), the wistful solemnity of "Oh England My Lionheart" and whatever the hell is happening in "Coffee Homeground" beyond just that they exist on the same album. That, and the general emphasis on laying out a particular tone and atmosphere for each song through the production and arrangements which carries through track to track: while for most parts Bush has kept the session band and the producer from the last album, she's brought out more synthesizers and a handful of slightly less conventional instruments on the table this time around and they do a lot of textural background work across the songs. A little bit of the debut's classic rock warmth has been lost in the process for sure, but the trade-off is that the sound is deeper and more compelling.
The result is that Lionheart is a lot of fun to listen through. Bush herself certainly sounds like she's having a ball: the cheeky lyrics and the ludicrous "wow wow wow wow wow!" chorus of "Wow", the roaring rock posturing and stabbing strings in "Hammer Horror", the extended outro of "Kashka from Baghdad" which somehow outstages the fact that she's doing a gay love ballad in 1978, the whole of "Coffee Homeground" where it sounds like she had a mental breakdown in the studio and went and did a pop song as a result (is... is that a German accent she's haphazardly putting on?). But there's just as much delicacy and grace throughout, with Bush reaching towards sentimentality and even sensuality throughout (she may sing "the more I think of sex the better it gets!" with gusto in "Symphony in Blue" but even that sounds cheekily flirty rather than raunchy). "Wow" itself balances on the line: it's the canon Reader's Digest selection off this album for a good reason because much like "Wuthering Heights", it steals the attention through its cosmically sizeable chorus, but what I love most about it is how that chorus breaks through from the waves of lush synthesizer textures that hint at an entirely different song before the curtain drop happens. The quasi-title track lends its name to the album for a reason because its theatricality is quintessential Bush and arguably demonstrates her growth as an artist here the most, Bush narrating the last thoughts of a shot down WW2 pilot through primarily just gentle piano and recorders but with big helpings of charisma and drama: a stage actor in the guise of a musician, in a whole different act than she was earlier in the same year.
I honestly didn't even plan to make this point when I started this review but having noticed how I've inadvertently constantly referred to movies, acting, musicals and other types of drama, the common thread rising from Lionheart is Bush realising her penchant for assuming roles and portraying stories other than her own, even if otherwordly or dream-like in nature. She's stepping outside her own room lyrically (there's little of the slight autobiographical bent of The Kick Inside present here) and in tandem also musically, making sure that each play she stars in has a unique soundtrack to go with it. It's not a coincidence that the weakest parts of Lionheart are the ones most reminiscent of the debut, i.e. the dual feature of "Fullhouse" and "In the Warm Room" which leave a bit of a lull in the middle of the album (though "In the Warm Room" is arguably a better interpretation of the debut's "Feel It" regardless): on an album where she's making leaps and bounds to new ideas and fearlessly jumping into even slightly wilder ideas, the most "ordinary" songs undoubtedly feel a little overshadowed. The singer/songwriter-as-actress trait would become a driving force in her career and here she's starting to own up that role.
Bolder, sharper, more unique and with an astounding amount of development in just over half a year - I know I'm often a bit of a contrarian but I really can't comprehend how this has been twisted into being the rushed follow-up failure?
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