50 words for snow - Kate Bush

I've been listening to this album on and off for the past few weeks, ever since an advance copy was available on the NPR website. I've been dreading writing about it, because I find the album difficult to categorise.

I was a very early adopter of Kate Bush, marveling at her 'Wuthering Heights' single and buying her first album in January 1978. I enjoyed all of her first five albums, although there were often songs which didn't find favour in these courts. The sixth and seventh albums were bought and almost never played. I obtained 'Aerial' when it came out but again hardly ever played it. It seemed as if time had stood still for Ms Bush and her music seemed anachronistic. 'The directors cut' again was hosted on NPR prior to its official release, earlier this year. The reworked album was quite listenable but again wasn't really the sort of music to which I listen these days.

'50 words for snow' is different from almost everything else Ms Bush has recorded. Unusually, it is very sparse, featuring mainly piano and vocals only. Of course, there are other instruments (Steve Gadd's drums are a highlight, as are the orchestral instruments which add shade here and there) but they're subdued.

In my humble opinion, the sequencing could have been improved. The album starts in a very risky manner, with Kate's son Bertie taking lead vocal on "Snowflake". I find this song very precious (in the non-complimentary sense of the word) and I can imagine many listeners being put off by the first minute of the song (which lasts almost ten minutes). The second song, "Lake Tahoe", also starts in a testing manner, with some operatic vocals. This song continues for just over eleven minutes.

But the third song, "Misty", is where it all comes together. Even though the track lasts for thirteen and a half minutes (!), one never gets the feeling that the track is over-long, or indeed, long. It is a master lesson in dynamics, especially the drums. The next three tracks are much more accessible than everything that has gone before whilst the closing track is a return to the amorphous ballad.

My wife has picked up on this album as well. Yesterday we had the bizarre situation in which I was listening to the album on headphones whilst writing a blog entry; when I finished, I went into the lounge only to hear the same album on the stereo, albeit not the same song (that would have been too weird).

This is an impressionistic piece of music full of prosody; as a musician who lives by harmony, I feel that I don't appreciate it as much as I could.