50 WORDS FOR SNOW

"50 Words Of Snow" is a full time dedication to wintery themes.

Legendary singer/songwriter Kate Bush is one of the main contributors of genres such as Art Pop, Progressive Pop, Baroque Pop, and Alternative Rock as a whole. Her tendencies towards creating a solid, Ambient-induced atmosphere have been plenty, that said for her tenth studio album as well, "50 Words Of Snow", a full time dedication to winter, opposing 2005's "Aerial" and its summery themes.

On "50 Words Of Snow" Kate gives herself much more freedom songwriting-wise: she stretches the length of the songs, and makes them a lot more complex, to the point where it reminds of Progressive Rock. But the music itself is very piano oriented, a piano that is for the most part very minimalistic and soft, just like Kate's vocals. A background touch of either keyboards or strings gives a magical aura that surround these seven compositions: It truly is an album that digs deep into the winter spirit, excluding any festivity.

Kate always shows the listener that she knows what she is doing: some of the tracks though have flaws, which to me is an unexpected thing from somebody like Kate Bush: "Lake Tahoe" has a beautifully mysterious intro, with it's soothing chorus vocals, but then the song takes a turn I wish it didn't take, loosing itself a little bit, not being consistently haunting. But other songs like "Misty", a thirteen minute song that shifts just as much as the previously mentioned track, keeps much more consistency in the songwriting. "Snowflake" is the beautiful intro for the album, even though repetitive, it has a somewhat trance-induced atmosphere, even if it's heavily piano driven and quite minimalistic. Another highlight would be "Wildman", a very peculiar song with great hooks, a little more enlivened and much less minimalistic than the other pieces. The other few songs aren't bad, but they haven't personally given me much emotions, and felt a little more flat. And the title track could be straight-out annoying, where Stephen Fry is simply listing 50 different ways to describe snow, and while some of these synonyms are entertaining and clever, the song itself drags on in a way that doesn't even make you interested in the lyrics.

Overall "50 Words For Snow" is a decent listen with some very good songs that stick, other however are flawed in some way or the other, and unfortunately drag the album's enjoyment factor down a bit. Nevertheless, an album that deserves full respect.

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