LIONHEART

Kate Bush second album Lionheart was released under a year after her debut The Kick Inside yet it is a very inspired effort from the sensual lady. I say sensual with respect because this is one of the things I associate with Kate Bush, and I´m sure this is what she intended with lyrics like the above mentioned quote from Symphony in Blue. Well, that aside Kate Bush is one of the few female artists I know of that can really excite me with her art. I don´t mean to be chauvenistic here, but it just seems I like music written by men better compared to music written by females. Kate Bush is an exception though as she proves here for the second time that she has something unique to offer.

Lionheart only has 10 songs compared to The Kick Inside which had 13 songs. I think this is an important thing to notice as there were a few not so interesting tracks on The Kick Inside. On Lionheart Kate Bush has taken all the good things from her debut and made them just a notch better. The overall feel after listening to Lionheart is that of a full and thought through album where with The Kick Inside it felt like 13 songs put together to make an album. The Kick Inside is still an excellent album, but I just want to emphazise the difference.

The music is mostly piano driven, but there are also bass, guitar and drums as the standard instrumentation. There are added lots of flavour with the use of keyboard, mandolin, panpipes, mandocello and hammond though. It´s notable that the hammond organ is played by Francis Monkman of Curved Air. Curved Air and especially Renaissance are also a few of the bands I would compare Kate Bush to even though she has a very different approach and sound. The album starts with Symphony in Blue which is a beatiful song. It´s one of my favorite Kate Bush songs. It´s one of those songs from her discography that sends chills down my spine whenever I listen to it. Kate Bush singing in that particular song is very strong and unique. In search of Peter Pan continues with an equally strong melody line and vocal performance. Oh England my lionheart and Hammer Horror needs to be mentioned here too as the first one is a very emotional patriotic song and the latter is an ode to the Hammer Horror movies of the seventies ( does anyone remember Blackula or The daughter of Dracula ?). The rest of the songs are also very memorable and there are no fillers here.

The musicians are all great and of course Kate Bush is the greatest of them all. In addition to being an outstanding pianist she is also a very unique singer. If you have never heard Kate sing you´ll have to get one of her albums ( preferably the three first) to experience something strong and unique. She has the power to put deep emotions into every word she sings.

The production is very similar to that on The Kick Inside but it´s a bit better. The production is very good indeed. Nice and soft seventies sounding.

With Lionheart Kate Bush does exactly what people wanted of her, she made beautiful pop music on the edge of progressive rock with her unique voice in center. This would continue on the next album too, but then the experimetation would start for better or worse. Lionheart is a very beautiful album though and I think it sees Kate Bush on the hight of her stardom. She peaked early IMO. Lionheart deserves 4 stars for being an excellent pop album with progressive tendencies. Highly recommendable.

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