Kate Bush is an amazing lady. She's not only an amazing singer song writer, she is also a spectacular performer (which is evident in The Line, the Cross & the Curve, which I will get to a bit later). She puts more emotion into her songs than in any other songs I've heard by other artists before. You can just tell that she cares about her music and what she's singing. The only tour she's ever done, Tour Of Life, was ambitious and was a template for modern pop concerts. She was a pioneer of the big theatrical style of concerts today and she was the first performer to wear a radio mic so she could sing and dance freely. Kate Bush is incomparable to any artists of her generation and to artists of today. To put it plainly, she's spectacular.
I have often brushed Kate's later work aside, assuming that it's not as good as her earlier work from when she was more in the limelight after the success of Wuthering Heights, but I was definitely wrong to do so. For the past week or so I have been a little bit obsessed with her 1993 album The Red Shoes. There's so much contrast, light and shade. From fun, quicker paced songs like Rubberband Girl, Eat The Music and one of my favourites Why Should I Love You? to the beautiful, slower songs like Moments of Pleasure, The Song of Soloman, and another one of my favourites You're the One. And then there's something with a bit of both in a song like Top of the City. Her lyrics are always pretty great, but on this album they are out of this world fantastic. I really just can't get enough of this album.
The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1993) is pretty much a series of film clips for The Red Shoes album with bits of dialogue in between to string them together that was inspired by the the 1948 film The Red Shoes. It has some pretty great choreography, particularly in the opening scene, where Kate and a male dancer are moving as one in Rubberband Girl.
There's also some great visuals including a floor that is covered completely with fruit, a mirror that gets smashed releasing a gush of water (this reminded me of Titanic when the windows cave in), and a scene in which a character is running down a tunnel that eerily reminds me of a recurring dream I had as a child where I was walking down some sort of creepy never ending dark tunnel (surely there's some fucked up interpretation for that one).
The short film gets a tiny bit silly at times, sometimes even a little kitsch and often over the top. It's also a bit strange, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Kate Bush. Some could almost find it a bit pretentious and gratuitous, but I have too much respect for Bush to think that. Kate herself described it as "a load of bollocks" but I actually enjoyed it. I think it was fun, and a short film provided a good platform for Bush to showcase some of the great songs from her album, and they are very good songs.
The film doesn't have a lot of dialogue, but I particularly liked this monologue said by Kate's character:
I can't go on. I'm torn between what I was and what is to become of me. In these shoes every step I take is laced with madness. They fill me with pain and confusion, with thoughts that are not my own. I have danced their dances. I see streets and buildings I know so well, although I have never been to these places. Together we raced with wild horses til they dropped, we have leapt from cliffs into the raging waters below. And together we tripped from a stage into the pit. I see me falling. I feel my fear. And yet I was never here. These shoes are all anger and passion. I am possessed. And I no longer have the strength to fight them.
Of course it's hard not to love purely talented ladies. Kate Bush is certainly fits that discription.
Kate Bush - Why Should I Love You?
The first time I heard You're the only one I want, I thought the line that says "the V of the Velvet" said "the V of the Vulva"
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh that is the funniest thing ever. Oh, and Ally, I didn't realise you had a blogspot... maybe it's because you don't have any posts.
ReplyDelete