Contentious title….. at least it WOULD be if I were being read by a gang of 40-something UK males.
So… Kate Bush… Icon, Sex Symbol, amazing Singer-Songwriter-Dancer-etc etc has just released an album called Director’s Cut 2011.
Basically it is a 3 disc set of tracks from her albums, The Red Shoes and The Sensual World, re-done and also two remixes of the albums themselves. So… what are they like?
Well, if you read most of the reviews they seem to be inconclusive. Nothing looks to say they are the most amazing thing ever produced by any female artiste ever, but neither do they say what should be said…
It’s bloody awful.
Three of the most emotionally charged songs she ever created have been torn apart, re-vocalised and, in my opinion, brutalised. “Deeper Understanding”, originally a haunting tale of a soul so lonely that their computer becomes their only solace, family and friends cannot draw them away from it, it becomes an obsession. The music drives you forward with this poor soul as they get lost deeper and deeper in their madness and sorrow.
The remake… it is so bad it is difficult to explain. Pointless, and almost randomly selected computerised auto-tuned vocal, robotized and constantly changing, take the song into the realms of comedy more than anything else. It not only weakens, but utterly destroys the sense and feel and heartache of the original.
“This Woman’s Work”, again, a classic of poignant hope. The tale of a woman who may be dying, and the struggle of her husband to hold things together. Seeming to be told from both their sides at once.
The remake… It’s just…. not good. A distracting tone leaping back and forth (very annoying in headphones), slowed down too much, sung frankly, badly. The best thing about the track (and indeed most of the remixes) is the backing vocals. One thing This Woman’s Work never needed was an ambient bridge. The frustrating part is, that in there, hidden away, are snatches of the Old Kate’s voice. But it sounds like a demo… it really does. (The lyric is sometimes transposed and often sounds like she’s picking random lines at times.)
The Sensual World. Ohhh man… I have spoken about The Sensual World -(video here) so often on my radio show at The Look 247 that those who are regular listeners will know that I think this is one of, if not THE most (imagine!) ‘sensual’ songs ever written/sung. There was a huge furore at the time as the song is based on (and was originally to be entirely the body of) Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Now, I’ve never read Ulysses, one of those things I keep saying I’ll get round to, so I have no knowledge of the book. But the story at the time was the Kate wanted to use a few lines of the section. Well, now that she has finally been given permission (20 years later) she’s used the whole thing… All I will say is, the faults are two-fold.
Kate is now 51 and cannot sing the way she did 20 years ago, and James Joyce is a CRAPPY lyricist. (Okay, to be fair it was never intended to ‘be’ a lyric, and my God does the remake prove this.) All that the remake does is show Kate’s tremendous talent at having taken the piece and twisting it to create a gorgeous and sensual lyric that flows beautifully, (check the video above), in the original. The remake is just bad, bad, bad.
The main problem seems to be that the good people at EMI just don’t seem to be able to say ‘No’ to Mz Bush. I firmly believe that had any other artist tried this they would have been told, “C’mon, get serious, eh!?” I am not ageist, I am a singer myself and will hit 50 in 2013, but Kate’s voice has not aged well. Which is a real blow. To be honest I had thought that when I bought her last album, Aerial, some 6 years ago. It had been 12 years since The Red Shoes and frankly, it was sub-standard. Engineered beautifully, produced amazingly, musically alright, but vocally… she was losing it even then.
The worst part of this whole thing is that it was apparently Kate’s own idea.
And that, more than the loss of voice, more than the destruction of some of her most soaring and emotional works, is the worst thing of all to take. One thing I had never seen Kate as being was a sell-out. But I just can’t accept the quasi excuses given for this release. You can talk of stripping down and re-imagining all you want, but when the result is as disappointing and technically flawed as this is, it only smacks of excuses.
Okay, so it isn’t a TOTAL disaster, the remix of ‘Lily’ is okay, but her newly recorded ‘rants’ towards the end seem forced and … again… too much for her voice. ‘Moment’s of Pleasure’ is an attempt at a simple voice/piano take, but again… her voice doesn’t do it justice anymore.
Sorry Kate, I’ve loved you since I was 15…. Maybe that’s the hardest thing to take… I see there is an album slated to be released in November this year. I’m praying it isn’t just to be slated.
