Customer Reviews

Hounds of Love

5 star:		(155)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

At first listening, HOUNDS OF LOVE would seem to have little in common with Kate Bush's previous work; in some ways, however, it is a logical extension, for throughout her earlier work she had increasingly fused unlikely instruments with synthesizers while gradually leaving behind certain vocal affectations. For HOUNDS OF LOVE she would repeat this, fusing distinctly Irish-sounding instruments with synthesizers while continuing to downplay her extraordinary range to create a remarkably clean yet multi-layered sound that serves her material remarkably well. At the same time, she worked her penchant for macabre and bizarre imagery into a much more subtle idiom. The resulting HOUNDS OF LOVE seems, to me at least, like a combination of the melodic delicacy of her earliest recordings with the raw power of her immediately previous THE DREAMING.

HOUNDS OF LOVE breaks into two distinctly separate yet stylistically similar parts, and it is a tribute to Bush's talents that she was able to unify these portions in such a way as to make them obviously different in content without making them feel separate in tone. The first half of the recording-"Running Up That Hill," "Hounds of Love," "Big Sky," "Mother Stands For Comfort," and "Cloudbusting"-are at once independent of each other yet distinctly of the same album, raveling the same musical and lyrical thread. The second half-"And Dream of Sheep," "Under Ice," "Waking the Witch," "Watching You Without Me," "Jig of Life," and "Hello Earth"-are more in the line of a single recording from which the individual titles cannot be easily separated. In these selections, she seems to be telling a story of her dreamlife, capturing the beautiful and fearsome images that come to her in sleep and then awakening to face the new day with the concluding "Morning Fog." Throughout the recording, Bush seems considerably less interested in vocal gymnastics than in the past-although "Big Sky" and "Waking The Witch" certainly make good use of her remarkable talents in that direction. Her voice is full, rich, and sure, and her bursts into extreme displays of range seem less a matter of showmanship than of artistic inevitability. This is Kate Bush shorn of her eccentricities, and she is every bit as remarkable without them as she was when she gave them full play.

Although Bush has always been extremely well regarded in England and in Europe, she was not widely known in the United States, where her recordings were deemed too alternative for the mass market. With HOUNDS OF LOVE, however, she made a perfect leap into American commercial success, creating a more popular sound without sacrificing any of her uniqueness in the process. It was and remains a remarkable feat, and even some fifteen years after its release HOUNDS OF LOVE remains as fresh and as compelling as the first day it was recorded. A powerful statement by a truly gifted artist, highly recommended.

"Hounds of Love" is the best Kate Bush album, her most successful, and yet it may be her least accessible. Certainly it contains a much wider musical range than most albums in 1985, what with the drums, guitars and pianos, followed by the bouzoukis, fiddles, uillean pipes, cellos and balalaikas. The album also has a wide range of allusion. Not only does it include a clip from "The Wall," but it also makes reference to Tennyson and Reich. Even more amazingly it actually make the portentous imperialist and the pseudo-scientific quack sympathetic and aesthetically successful. It starts off with the unusual love song "Running up that Hill," ("I'd make a deal with God/And get him to swap our places"). The video consists of a strange, intimate pair of dancers, which slowly spirals out of the attic where they are dancing to a strange foreign runway. "The Hounds of Love" is next and it is probably the song I care about the least. But then there is the joyful cheeriness of "The Big Sky." Then there is the carefully understated "Mother Stands for Comfort," ("She knows that I've been doing something wrong/But she won't say anything.") "Cloudbusting," one of Kate Bush's triumphs, refers to William Reich and his crackpot belief that by manipulating "orgone energy" (energy from orgasms) he could make it rain. Yet the song is a moving success, with its cello-driven melody, notwithstanding the fact that in both the song and the video Bush is playing a boy. ("Ooh I just know that something good is going to happen/And I don't know when/But just saying it could even make it happen.")

Then there is the second side, "The Ninth Wave." The songs are all clearly different from each other, in style and tempo and instrumentation, and they discuss such subjects as sleeping, ice-skating, witch-hunts, ghosts, Irish jigs, the evening and a statement of love. But they are all united in their theme about a drowning woman. It starts off with the apparently soft and increasingly sinister "And Dream of Sheep." ("Like poppies, heavy with seed/They take me deeper and deeper"). Then there is the short, effective and quite chilling violin driven "Under Ice." The dramatic "Waking the Witch" follows, where Bush is confronted by a demonic inquisitor and which contains the aforementioned Pink Floyd reference, a forceful drumbeat as well as a brief sequence of bells. But the best cut is "Watching you Without Me," about the strange ghostlike presence, which is my favourite Kate Bush song of all. Here her voice, singing relatively understated material, shows off its true power and nuance. Then there is "Jig of Life" as well as "Hello Earth." The latter is the longest song on the album, as it starts off with childish innocence (Hello Earth/With just one hand help up high/I can blot you out,) and then moves on to a threatening storm. Finally there is "The Morning Fog," with its simple melody, relatively simple arrangement and genuine expression of love for her family. (The 1998 CD includes six other songs, including remixes of "Running up that Hill" and "The Big Sky." The four unreleased songs are all good, though they do not cohere with the original album. The best of them is "Burning Bridge.")

Kate Bush's fifth studio album was accused of being more accessible to the general public. While not as wonderfully bizarre as its predecessor, The Dreaming, Hounds Of Love not only proved she still had what it took, but had her develop a concept album for the latter seven songs.

The first half, Hounds Of Love, is basically most of the singles. "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" It's that chorus, where's she's "runnin' up that road/runnin' up that hill/with no problem", which makes me wonder what the angels Damiel and Cassiel from Wings Of Desire would think. Would Kate accept a compromise trade, where she would trade places and become an angel instead of God?

"The Big Sky" is a big yes to all those introspective, inwardly directed "extraterrestrial" cloudgazers who say, "that cloud looks like such and such" instead of literalists who say "that cloud looks like a bunch of suspended rain and ice particles." I always liked Kate because she was in her own Bush universe and who cares if no one understood her songs?

"Cloudbusting" is my favorite single from here, especially with its regimental rhythms of the synthesizers.

It is the Ninth Wave portion of this album that is intriguing. The series of seven songs portray the saga of a drowning woman. Now, how she manages the transition from the insomniac state of "And Dream Of Sheep" to "Under Ice", I'm not sure. Presumably, the radio doesn't help, so she goes outside to skate in order to work herself to a goodnight's sleep.

The action happens in "Under Ice", which begins with her skating, "cutting lines in the ice", spitting snow. In the last verse, she sings of something trying to come up, and guess what? It's her! She's fallen through the thin ice.

"Waking The Witch" is her struggle to stay awake in the freezing water, and a cacophony of her memories past and present, as well as her subconscious, interwoven with an ominous voice of an inquisitor that pronounces her guilty as a witch. As she sinks, there comes the blades of a helicopter, courtesy of Pink Floyd, indicates the Rescue Services.

It seems that in "Watching You Without Me", the woman's spirit has left her and she is a "ghost in the hall", watching her worried husband watching "the clock move the slow hand". The ghost's communicating to her husband is translated by chopped up, staccato dialogue.

Next up, the engaging Irish "Jig Of Life", which deals with efforts to resuscitate her.

The sounds of air chatter indicates that the woman's chances for survival is touch and go, as her spirit hovers above the world of senses and into outer space so she says "Hello Earth". She has an angelic perspective ("with just one hand/held up high/I can blot you out of sight/Peek-a-boo, little Earth") and it looks like she tries to save a ship of sailors from being deluged by a storm at sea. The low-register chant that sounds the second time might be angels she summoned. Once calm, she, or the head of the angels whispers, "Go to sleep, little Earth." She has helped save the sailors, and is transported back to her body.

The series ends with the chirpy "The Morning Fog", which is a celebration of life and the people in one's life. The woman has survived, and all is well again. Or did she wake up from a dream?

That's the thing I'm left wondering: did she actually fall into the icy lake, or did she have a DREAM of falling into that lake? Much of this septet is subject to interpretation, and mine is no exception.

Even without the extra tracks, this album is worth at least five stars. However, even if you already own the original, it's worth plunking down a few extra bucks for the bonus tracks.

'The Big Sky Meterogical Mix' is really fun, creative remix with different voice-overs added. The 'Running up that Hill' remix is also more than decent though I admit I like the original better.

'Be Kind to My Mistakes' is a sweet song about when you love someone you have to accept their blemishes along with the rest. 'Under the Ivy' is a gorgeous and sentimental piece -- it's one of my favorite Kate songs ever. Also, her piano playing really gets to shine on this track.

'My Lagan Love' is a beatiful a cappella piece -- the music is taken from an original Irish/Scottish folk song and Kate's brother wrote the words. 'Burning Bridge' is an upbeat pop tune with great vocals.

It's really nice to have all these rare tracks together (ligitly) on one CD. If you are a real Kate fan you can do what I did - resell your original copy on amazon and buy this one for the bonus tracks.

"Hounds Of Love" by Kate Bush
Genres: Rock, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, College Rock
Release Date: 1997(1985-6,1988)

This entirely self-written and produced album was a huge success for Kate both in England and overseas, the single "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" being a hit in America. She produced it all inside her own private studio at her house in England, and when released in September of 1985, it knocked Madonna's "Like A Virgin" off the top of the album charts.

The success is understandable, as this is Kate's best album to date. However the two halves of it are very different. There is the first half of the album entitled "Hounds Of Love" and features the more commercial, pop-orientated arrangements and tunes on the album. The second half is a mini concept album called "The Ninth Wave" in which Kate tells the story of a drowning woman which may end with her surviving and waking up, or dying and being reborn. This was extremely ground-breaking and sounds like nothing else that came out of the '80s and is therefore not dated in the least today. It's a shame that movie plans for this concept fell through. Everyone who brought this album the first time around probably brought it for the four hit songs packed on side one, the only non-single being a strange song ("Mother Stands For Comfort" that would only be out of place with the rest of "The Ninth Wave" for the mood ring synthesizers. It too could have been a hit single with the crashing glass sounds (used also on "Running Up That Hill" and an earlier Kate masterpiece "Babooshka"), cold piano, and warm electronic waves. All four singles are spectacular, and even groundbreaking on "Cloudbusting", a beautiful if not instantly catchy number full of strings and heavy drums about a machine that makes it rain. Kate rocks out on "Hounds Of Love" and "The Big Sky" and performs with sensual and energetic catharticity on "Running Up That Hill". Full, bewitching and layered pop/rock is not where the album description ends.

Riding the death-whale that is "The Ninth Wave" Kate moves on to haunting territory with the sentimental sounding "And Dream Of Sheep" (Kate sings and plays the piano beautifully) that leads onto the tense and brilliant "Under Ice" which stirs up the imagery of a snowy day with a tragic accident waiting underneath the ice on the lake, through to the calm but ominous and eventually terrifying "Waking The Witch", then onto the mellow "Watching You Without Me". Sampling is used very expertly on all of those tracks. Kate then experiments further with the Irish sounds used on 1982's "The Dreaming" album with the dramatic, unforgettably epic "Jig Of Life" (Complete with recited poetry by her brother John during the climax). Then the creepy "Hello Earth" breathes down your neck like a scene out of "Nosferatu" during the dark cathedral chants before Kate is reborn in some way through the light and bouncy "The Morning Fog".

Arguably the best and most enduring album released in the 1980's, this is widely regarded as Kate's masterpiece. It shows off all her best qualities and in their best light. The British reissue in 1997 by EMI adds 2 uneventful remixes (although the commentaries on the appearances of clouds by the disguised voices of Kate and her brother on "The Big Sky" remix are enjoyable to listen to) and a few B-sides, "Under The Ivy" and the beautiful a-capella rendition of the traditional myth-song "My Lagan Love" standing out more than anything. Someone should have told EMI that 1988's "Be Kind To My Mistakes", although good, would have made a better inclusion on a future re-issue of 1989's "The Sensual World". "The Handsome Cabin Boy" or "Not This Time" would have been better. Also, the Orgonon remix of "Cloudbusting" should have been used rather than the extended 12" remix of "Running Up That Hill"

Best Tracks: Every single one. "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" is the most catchy, and "Under Ice" the most instantly memorable from "The Ninth Wave". The B-side gems "Under The Ivy" & "My Lagan Love" a impress greatly.

This is an expensive version of Kate Bush's best album which is simply a work of art. Beautiful in many ways where every single track is a masterpiece of composition. Now this album mini-lp sleeve packaging is a work of art in itself and like most art, costs a bundle. The sound quality is patchy and the volume levels are higher for some tracks than they are for others. As this version of the disc is not remastered either, you'll have to decide whether or not to pay the much higher price for this disc if you either already have the remastered version of this or even any other version if the packaging is not important to you. If you are new to Kate's work and don't yet have this, you may have to decide if sound quality is important to you as well. Otherwise, although the tracks are good and the album itself is worth getting, I'm not sure if it makes economic sense to pay so much just for the mlps. Just my 2cts worth.

After the relative lack of success of "The Dreaming," Kate Bush tried on this album to achieve a more accessible sound. I think that this brought out the best in her: while not abandoning her sense of drama, her vocal range, and her unique "take" on love (erotic and familial), she's reined in her fascination with outlandish characters and situations, and created an album almost anyone can relate to. The title tune and "Running Up That Hill" are thrilling, and she enacts a memorable series of mini-dramas in "Cloudbusting," "To Dream of Sheep," and "Under Ice." "Waking the Witch" is Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" in miniature, and "Hello Earth" links the personal and the cosmic with immense tenderness. And the first time I heard "Jig of Life," it made the hair stand up at the back of my neck: I was in my early 40's, just beginning to confront my own aging process, and she summed it up perfectly. Despite the variety of subjects and moods, she cleverly weaves themes and literary allusions throughout the album, creating a cohesive experience for the listener. This one always shows up on my desert island list.

"This remastered classic CD: "Hounds Of Love" from England's favorite sweetheart Kate Bush, goes all out to give you your moneys worth. The six additional bonus tracks-(there are 18 songs in all), and beautiful new pics of Kate are well worth your purchase. If you already have the original version, sell it now and get the remaster! I really enjoy listening to the 12 inch version of "Running Up That Hill"...the production quality is better than the original, and Kate had added some new twists to the song. I wasnt as impressed with the remix version of "The Big Sky" however its still an interesting addition to this masterpiece. "Under The Ivy" and "Burning Bridge" are fabulous!! It's as if they shouldve been on the album in the first place. "My Lagan Love" adds a unique touch at the end of the bonus tracks as Kate sings accapella in a traditonal Irish folk style.If you are searching for any reasons why you shouldnt buy this remaster of Kates classic album, give it up right now! Cause you'll never find any that are worth holding back your purchase.If you are already a Kate Bush fan and you dont have the remaster of "Hounds Of Love" then you really have no excuse not to get it. And if you arent a Kate Bush fan yet, this remastered CD is the perfect purchase to begin your collection!

I first heard Kate Bush on MTV late at night when they played the video for "running up that hill". I remember the host saying "it's an aquired taste, but once you aquire it what a taste it is". I then went out and bought the album, and figured out it was her on Peter Gabriel's "games without frontiers". Album is great, have the origonal on CD and tape hoping I will get this new issue soon. The sensual world is also stellar. Great music for those with a romatic spirit and who like music that does not fit into any one category.

A True Masterpiece in every way. The songs are Great and different in style, though real Kate. The production is outstanding for 1985.
Kate is sensitive, so is the album.
Kate is experimental, so is the album.
Kate is A Perfectonist, so is the album.
Kate proved with this album she is the best female artists the UK has to offer(and probably worldwide).
Kate captured the 80's but this album has proven to be timeless.
And it still grows on me.

Now about this Remaster; Back in 1985 I worked over at the Dennon dealer for the Benelux and this was one of the standards for listening and reviewing.
And CD was still a new item back then.
Listening to this Remaster, there is a more booming sound than earlier. But Drums do Boom (in real life!), so this is a more acurate presentation.
I Like It, I Love It!

Also the bonus traks are a real treat.