Kate Bush - The Kick Inside (1978)

1) Moving; 2) The Saxophone Song; 3) Strange Phenomena; 4) Kite; 5) The Man with the Child in His Eyes; 6) Wuthering Heights; 7) James and the Cold Gun; 8) Feel It; 9) Oh to Be in Love; 10) L'amour Looks Something Like You; 11) Them Heavy People; 12) Room for the Life; 13) The Kick Inside

The humble and rather normal beginning. Apart from that one song you know.

Key tracks: "The Saxophone Song", "Wuthering Heights", "Oh to Be in Love"

For a young solo singer/songwriter it's hard to imagine a better launchpad than what Kate Bush got for her debut. David Gilmour's backing guaranteed she could get nearly all the creative freedom she could want, not to mention the label deal and the PR push to begin with. The only concession she had to make was that she had to use session musicians rather than her own backing band, but all the hired hands involved with the album were seasoned pros who clearly understood her vision and who clicked not just with the songs but with each other as well. Above all, she had a calling card as triumphant as "Wuthering Heights" up her sleeve - one of the all-time iconic debut singles and genuinely an awe-inspiring song of the magnitude that any artist would kill to have somewhere in their discography, much less as their first single. The odds are so stacked in favour of Bush that it's easy to forget she's barely 19 here and, to put it politely, still learning the ropes.

It wouldn't be fair or correct to call her the album's weak point - she's deservedly the star of this show and commands the songs with confidence - but she is the greenest thing on what is otherwise a staggeringly professional production and it does show across the songs chosen. This is especially true if you're coming onto this album with any kind of expectation of what "a Kate Bush album" should sound like whether that's through her reputation or having heard any of her later works first (which I imagine is the likely case these days). For that matter, even if you're only aware of "Wuthering Heights" that's still the case because in all of its arrangement, structure and performance it stands out massively from the rest of The Kick Inside. "Wuthering Heights" is a colossus of a song that's constantly on the brink of overwhelming itself with another new trick around the corner but which never falters, only boldens: just when you think it couldn't get bigger, it throws in front of you something like a guitar solo straight from a prog rock guitar hero album. Every little detail and aspect of its arrangement - and there are many - are put to powerful use, to weaponise Bush's eccentrically rambling verse melodies and the chorus that must have dropped the jaws of every label head who heard it for the first time to the floor. It's by and far the most fleshed-out, most deftly arranged and most ambitious song on the entire record, something that in a logical sense should've appeared a good couple of albums down the line and with more experience in her belt. Instead, it's here and it's by and far the most accomplished thing on the album and you won't hear anything else like it on The Kick Inside. 

Outside its big centrepiece song, you can tell Bush is still a young songwriter. A good one for the most parts, but her writing is more conventional and straightforward in a manner that doesn't feel entirely by intent, and her lyrics are rather matter-of-fact and often very obviously indebted to whatever media she's consumed recently. The Kick Inside is at its best when you do start to hear her more recognisable elements emerge: the deliciously fluttering chorus and swiveling structure of "Oh to Be in Love" where she moulds a pop song in her own image, the atmospheric waves of "Moving" and its counterpart "The Saxophone Song" where those waves are turned into a lush prog-pop dream (with some wonderfully delirious synth arpeggios towards the end), or "James and the Cold Gun" which probably doesn't work quite as much as it would want to but Kate Bush doing a cowboy rock anthem is exactly the kind of off-kilter firecracker the album benefits from. You can hear a talent emerge, rearing its head across the album on and off. Though also on the flipside that same inventiveness does also lead onto the cod-reggae flavoured "Kite", which is exactly the kind of awkward idea you bury in your debut and never play again once you come to your senses.

At thirteen songs The Kick Inside also feels oddly long despite its perfectly average 40-odd minute length, thanks to a number of songs particularly towards the latter half which sound like lesser versions of others you've heard so far already: "Feel It", "L'amour Looks Something Like You" and "Room for the Life" come to mind in particular. Bush's backing band here is as fantastic a set of session musicians as you can get and the production still stands up, as even now this sounds wonderfully warm with some delightful instrumental flair (I heavily recommend headphones for this, especially to appreciate those gorgeous basslines); the downside is that every song bar "Wuthering Heights" and the three Bush solo pieces (of which the tender "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" is the highlight) is treated with the same approach, which makes much of the album sound alike to some extent and in turn really highlights the parts where the writing is weaker than elsewhere. I always feel it's unfair to judge an album based on what its creator would go on to do in the future, but in the case of The Kick Inside it's nigh impossible to avoid doing so when one of Bush's fortés in every single other album of hers is the range of her palette. Here the one particular shade used across the entire record mainly points out that she's still not quite there.

I may be lowballing the rating here a little bit because The Kick Inside is an enjoyable listen but I also don't think this would be quite as remembered if it didn't have "Wuthering Heights" or if it didn't have the retrospective benefit of her legacy afterwards keeping its memory alive. Only about half of this is genuinely remarkable, while the rest paint a picture of a young musician's humble beginnings. Which is, well, enjoyable certainly to some extent but I don't think anyone really pines to hear Bush in the role of just a frontwoman of a standard 70s pop band.

Rating: 6/10

Kate Bush - Lionheart (1978)

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? 

Rating: 8/10