Product Description

'Aerial' is the eighth album from the enigmatic English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. Her beguiling mix of progressive rock and pop sound as fresh and imaginative as ever on this release. The single, 'King Of The Mountain', is included.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. King Of The Mountain
2. Pi
3. Bertie
4. Mrs. Bartolozzi
5. How To Be Invisible
6. Joanni
7. A Coral Room

Disc 2:

1. Prelude
2. Prologue
3. An Architect's Dream
4. The Painter's Link
5. Sunset
6. Aerial Tal
7. Somewhere In Between
8. Nocturn
9. Aerial

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1390 in Music
• Released on: 2005-11-07
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's often said that a musician's debut represents the culmination of a lifetime's worth of experiences, but their sophomore effort is usually derived from just the intervening year. By waiting 12 years between The Red Shoes and her new double CD, Aerial, Kate Bush has tried to regain that lifetime. It's a remarkably coherent recording, reflecting the unique world of sound and spirit Bush has inhabited since her debut.

The first disc, subtitled A Sea of Honey, is a suite of personal reveries. It ranges from "King of the Mountain", a contemplation of unbridled celebrity and its isolation that references Elvis and Citizen Kane, to the piano-and-voice study "Mrs. Bartolozzi", an ode to household chores whose chorus is "Sloshy sloshy sloshy sloshy, get that dirty shirty clean". With its Depeche Mode-influenced synth-pads, electro pulses, and lyric cadences, "King of the Mountain" is vintage Bush pop. But many of the songs attain more epic proportions, like the dynamic "Joanni", a hymn to Joan of Arc. It's the second disc--a suite called A Sky of Honey--on which Bush really comes into her own. Using metaphors of the turning of the day and the flight of birds, she orchestrates a meditation on the cycles of life. Musically expansive, she weaves her compositions out of birdsong, subtle orchestrations, and jazz trios, showing herself at her experimental best. Embracing her relatively new motherhood, as well as the death of her mother, Aerial is a deeply personal album, and a welcome return from one of pop music's true icons and vocal wonders. --John Diliberto

More Kate Bush

The Kick Inside	Lionheart	Never for Ever
The Dreaming	Hounds of Love	The Whole Story

From the Label
Aerial marks the long awaited return of Kate Bush--one of the UK's most unique, respected and influential figures. The double album, Kate's first since 1993's The Red Shoes, presents the perfect opportunity to reintroduce Kate to her global fanbase and introduce her work to a whole new audience. The album will be released as a double CD in special gatefold card packaging (plus 24 page booklet).

Customer Reviews

Sunset and Aerial
I have delayed writing this review for a couple of reasons. Firstly, after waiting 12 years for this albulm,I was a bit stunned by how many of the tracks of disc 1 were irritating, consequently I kept giving it another listen expecting it to improve. Secondly having seen that 236 other people had reviewed Aerial before me, I felt obliged to have given disc 2 a good airing before delivering my verdict. I'm glad I did.

I have given the whole album 3 stars because, like other reviewers, I still harbour a disappointment with disc 1, but the sheer brilliance of the second disc and in particular the tracks "Sunset" and "Aerial" encapsulate what Kate Bush is:- diverse, experimental, lyrical, but at heart a rocker. I just loved the Jeff Beck style guitar ending to "Aerial" and the wonderful interlude in "Sunset", which has been described as Flamenco, but I thought Brazilian(?). I loved that part so much I want to hear more like it. Any recommendations anyone?

Underwhelmed
I've always found Kate Bush albums full of fresh ideas, some ideas not so great, but could always rely on a handful of tracks of astonishing genius.I was delighted she was returning as this would surely provide some similar moments of pleasure.

So I'm underwhelmed with what we have here. 'Joanni' is my favourite and there are some good parts throughout, with maturity in the sound and some nice bass lines/rhythms. But I find the album lacking real melodies and that edgy originality that always made previous albums a must-buy.

There are some parts which are simply embarrassing. 'Pi' and that washing machine song are both fine musically but lyrically........I listened to pi thinking 'surely she's not going to run through the numbers', but she does, lots of them. When it comes to 'Washing machine......
WASHING MACHINE.......................WASHING...............MACHINE! I cringe ('slishy sloshy get this dirty shirty clean') - PLEASSSE NO!- ENOUGH!!!!! Berti would be good fun round the Bush family piano at Easter but should be kept strictly 'in house'

I had high hopes for 'Sky of Honey' but it rumbles on with some pleasing sections without ever really grabbing me.And there's yet another cringeworthy moment in it when 'the artist' has to sing about the rain spoiling his painting.The birdsong becomes irritating too grrrrr...come on Kate....you can do better than this.

Somehow this album reminds me of Jane Siberry's 'The Walking', which suffered some horribly naive moments ( and songs about washing lines and birds!). Siberry and Bush have always for me been two of the most original female artists, but where Siberry went on to produce the amazing 'When I was a Boy', Kate here seems to have lost her way, which is a real shame.

Before posting this I listened again to the supposedly inferior 'Red Shoes' and was reminded that while the genius might have been flawed, it was genius indeed.

Superb
I was introduced to Kate Bush when I first saw her video for "Cloudbusting" Hounds of Love. This was sometime in the 80s. Donald Sutherland plays a father, an eccentric inventor on the wrong side of the government somehow. Kate plays his daughter. Cloudbusting is about Wilhelm Reich (The Mass Psychology of Fascism ) the astoundingly brilliant psychoanalyst and fringe researcher. The song was wonderful and I was hooked.

Kate is a beautiful woman, and a fantastic singer and artist. She is an experimenter with sound and style, too. She is much more than a pop artist, she's a little girl stuck in a woman's body. She never loses touch with her inner child and it's always there, in the front or in the back, but it's there. This quality of childishness makes Bush very insightful. The Sensual World, The Dreaming and Lionheart were all fantastic records, and the Hounds of Love, even better. And it's been a long time between records, almost ten years I'd guess, but I never forgot about Kate. I was excited to listen to this record much like I was with Joe Jackson's Rain. While I was delighted with the former I was disappointed with the latter.

Kate Bush walks a fine line between many styles. She can be straight ahead poppy, very artsy, very avante-garde, too. Her voice can be almost annoying shrill and elegantly sultry and dark and sexy. The lyrics in this record one reviewer compaired to Steely Dan's for their silly obscureness. One song in particular spends a great deal of time on washing machines. It seems silly, and it is, but I didn't care. Much like Steely Dan's lyrics can be silly and absurd one generally doesn't care as the arrangements and the quality are so fantastically good.

"How to Be Invisible" is particularly driving... it keeps moving forward with Bush's vocals going up and down. "A Coral Room" is beautiful, reminding one of "And Dream of Sheep/Under Ice" from Hounds of Love. Kate is still a force to be reckoned with here. This album is a real pleasure.

On first listen I really liked it, but felt challenged in particular by "King of the Mountain's" minimalism. But even that song grew to something much bigger. Building upon the spare openings of that song Kate created a massive sound assault that works so well. Kate does all kinds of vocal jumping and games in "Bertie". She is an artist and demands some patience and acceptance from the listener. But in the main, this album is so spare and so haunting as to make it very special. It is one of my favorite Kate Bush records. I hope she makes many, many more!
Brava!