THE DREAMING

The Dreaming is a truly remarkable piece of work. This is the first album where Kate did not incorporate songs from her large cache of material written as a teenager on the piano. She changed people she was working with, changed the way they worked, changed her writing style, and wrote brand new material. Rather than beginning on the piano and working with the studio musicians to fill in the flesh, here Bush begins with rhythms and then works from there. Her friendship with Gabriel and her own desire to break her own mold resulted in a work that was as jarring to those around her as it would be to the public. Some of her collaborators did not like the work and insisted it was too noisy, abrasive, and impossible to absorb. Undeterred, Kate moved forward willing to make some mistakes in her quest for reinvention and wonder.

It is an album I'm somewhat torn on. Without doubt it was her most challenging work, her most adventurous, her most "out there", and her strongest lyrically to date. It is groundbreaking and stunning. And yet it is musically speaking colder than its predecessors. For years I believed this made it less preferable to me as a listener but over time it has improved greatly in my eyes. While I once preferred the dreamy romantic vibe of Never For Ever, I've now come to feel that The Dreaming may be her best or second best album, rivaling her debut masterpiece. It also shares the stage with side 2 of Hounds as Bush's most challenging work and is an obvious problem for people who insist Bush was not a progressive artist.

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