The 1985 Project Part 18: Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Let's go running up that hill, shall we?

One of the biggest albums of 2022 was actually released back in 1985. Hounds of Love did alright when it was new, especially in Great Britain where it continued her run of great success. But somehow, of all the songs featured in the fourth season of Stranger Things, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” captured the imagination of a younger generation. It became a massive hit, generating well over a billion streams on Spotify alone.

I was a fan of Bush since I discovered her previous album, the 1982 release The Dreaming. I went back and picked up her first three records, and was especially enamored of 1978’s second release Lionheart. There was nobody else doing what she was doing. It was prog rock but not showy, experimental but intimate, harsh with a sweetness inside it. Bush had an extensive array of voices – the little girl mew, the lion’s growl, the folkish croon, the angry scream, and more. She also had an intriguing melodic sense that attracted me the most.

I know I played Hounds of Love quite a bit that first year of its existence, but it’s pretty clear that I was way more a fan of side one than side two. Listening again for the first time in decades, I remembered every moment of the first five songs and almost nothing of the next seven. I was startled to read in Wikipedia that each side was considered an independent suite. I find this easier to believe with the second side, which does seem to have connecting threads in the storylines. But perhaps I just know the first side as individual songs so much that I can’t notice anything that makes them work together.

Bush was one of the first users of the Fairlight synthesizer, and while I think it was more common by 1985, she was a remarkably inventive practitioner with it. Her Linn drum usage was also quite original. There are moments of 80s big production hinted here and there, but mostly Hounds of Love stands as a sui generis work. Bush used a lot of overdubs vocally and played with these synthetic instruments, while also adding strings and piano for texture. The sound of the record, even the weirder things on side two, is simultaneously inviting and stand-offish, something very few musicians have ever achieved.

“Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” deserves its success in both eras, though honestly, I think “Cloudbursting” gives it a run for its money. Each of these songs has fast-paced Linn drum beats influenced, I think by the Irish bodhran you hear on side two’s “Jig of Life.” The Fairlight keyboard dominates the background of “Running Up That Hill” while a thumping string quartet drives “Cloudbursting.” Each has one of Bush’s most dramatic melodies and arrangements. “Running Up That Hill” concerns hate for the ones we love and the ways we hurt each other, while “Cloudbursting” is about someone who’s gone but whose memory comes back up like a radioactive yo-yo.

Side two’s suite is entitled The Ninth Wave and is called a vision quest by somebody quoted on Wikipedia. I might listen again sometime with that in mind, but for now, I’m gonna stick with my initial call that side two is deliciously weird. It doesn’t have much of the pop elements that were always necessary for me to fall in love with Bush’s songs. “Waking the Witch” and “Hello Earth” have all kinds of oddball musique concrete bits, with a traditional Georgian chorale bit in the latter which pointed to her later working with Bulgarian musicians. The side does have a dream-like feel that probably wouldn’t have grabbed me as much at age 26 as it does now.

I gave The Sensual World and Red Shoes a few listens but didn’t enjoy them as much as the first five Kate Bush albums. In fact the two albums after those have escaped my notice entirely. I should probably check all that stuff out again sometime to see if I just wasn’t ready for the changes in her style.

Hounds of Love deserves 8.5 out of 10, I think.