Kate Bush Album Poll: The Dreaming (1982)

Absolute masterpiece without a doubt. I can't listen to Leave It Open without wanting to turn up the volume!

The title track imo is the only mis-step on the entire album; I've never warmed to it either vocally or musically. And that was before knowing Rolf Harris was involved.

 

I was first turned on to this album by a friend in high school back in '84. My age was probably a factor but I took to it on the first spin and have loved every second of every song ever since.

She heads pretty far out in terms of lyrical subject matter, instrumentation and production, but at the same time everything is underpinned by solid compositions that far more 'timeless' than 'of their (80's) time'.

In the 34 years years since I first heard Kate my interests have evolved and expanded considerably, but she will always hold a special place in my musical heart - and The Dreaming still spends more than it's fair share of time on my turntable.

I play it a lot and always play it loud

 

Yep, The Dreaming pulls you in, but it took me a bit more time to get into it, but I finally go onboard with it and I’m eagerly anticipating my next listen, which will be this weekend.

 

If you are talking about the vinyl LP, for what it's worth, I found the Canadian pressing to be very rolled off and washed-out in relation to the UK and Japanese pressings. If you're talking about the CD, though, I think there was only one worldwide mastering.

 

THE DREAMING is a masterpiece.

Unbelievably brave and ahead of its time. First heard it when I had a brief stint working at a Wherehouse record store in San Jose, the manager was a complete Kate Bush nut at a time when really nobody knew who the hell she was (except for the "Wuthering Heights" video on MTV). He was a major tool, but I have to thank him for introducing me to Kate Bush's amazing musical world. I was floored the first time he played side 1 of THE DREAMING. How did she do it? How did she make outright shrieking sound so musical and "right" on "Pull Out the Pin"? It is incredible how quickly she advanced musically. I mean, I like the first 3 Kate Bush albums, a lot - by no means boring or conventional, but they do sound relatively polite and occasionally a bit twee by comparison.

I have been listening to Esperanza Spalding's EMILY'S D+EVOLUTION album a lot lately, and it is mostly excellent for sure (aside from a really ill-advised and poorly executed cover of the song Veruca Salt sings in WILLY WONKA, I kid you not - ugh, what were ya thinkin', girl...) - but there are a number of things she outright lifts from Kate Bush circa 1982 (not to mention a bunch of lifts from the FOR THE ROSES through DON JUAN'S RECKLESS DAUGHTER period of Joni Mitchell, probably even more borrows there in fact). It's good to see Kate's moves being referenced and carried forward over 35 years later, but nobody can touch her for the type of shoot the moon, heavily theatrical, strangely singable and danceable material that permates THE DREAMING.

I used to feel that HOUNDS OF LOVE was even better, not as out there or flat out exciting as THE DREAMING, but it incorporated a good deal of adventurousness (side 2 especially, utterly fabulous) and added a maturity and more centered vibe that was appealing. It is certainly a bit more universal. And there are some all-time amazing songs on there. "Cloudbusting" just brings a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye every single time, even all these years later. But nowadays I think it's really a coin toss. Taken together, these are just a stunning pair of recordings, so why try and pick?

To be honest I haven't really been knocked out by anything Bush has done since. Too many rough edges came off after that. I was literally depressed when THE SENSUAL WORLD came out. Apart from the opening track and "This Woman's Work," drab drab drab. It didn't really get any better afterwards in my opinion. And, sadly, her voice just isn't the same and that was such a huge, huge part of her impact. That said, I admit I haven't re-explored the post-HOUNDS work in a long time, and I am going to pick up the REMASTERED 2 box for the rarities portion and to give it all another chance, figure I can sell it off if it still just doesn't click. But the REMASTERED 1 box, unless they really screw up the sonics, that'll be a keeper (though I have all the stuff on original vinyl and/or CD, plus the Gray/Hoffman-mastered HOUNDS OF LOVE vinyl reissue).

 

My favorite Kate Bush album.
I don't know what else to say

 

The Dreaming a masterpiece just takes time to get into it but when you do you'll be hooked,have this on Japanese cd and it's wonderful..

 

Which Japanese CD issue do you own, @Floyd Crazy? I own the 2005 Japanese issue in addition to the original UK issue.

 

Very good post, sir. I don’t agree with your opinion of The Sensual World (truly a masterful album, IMHO), but I do feel that The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love need to be in every serious music lovers’ collection. Even if someone doesn’t like the music, it’s difficult to not admire what she accomplished within these 3-4 years. The Dreaming must have been a difficult album to make, but she manages to pull off all of these strange, yet menacing pieces with such an ease of expression. I didn’t like this album right away, but I absolutely love it now and I think it’s one of those albums that will continue to influence and inspire generations of musicians for a long time. Of course, I could say this about Hounds Of Love as well.

 

I wonder who the seven are that called it her worst album what they would say her best albums are?

 

I find it funny that critics seem to pan this album. Its her most creative, quirky and experimental work yet and fell in love on the first listen.

 

I guess they’re people who just don’t get Kate Bush and need their ears cleaned out.

 

”Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.” - Jean Sibelius

 

Here's what I had to say about The Dreaming back in 2014, prompted by the forum's album-by-album thread for Kate:

The Dreaming is easily Kate's most important album since her debut. In it, she not only set the course for the next decade of her career, but established an art rock precedent for the next two decades, one that would be followed - to one degree or another - by acts as diverse as Susanne Vega and Bjork.

After the uneven Never For Ever, Kate's awkward career adolescence, it wasn't particularly clear where she'd go next. A few of the ideas got bigger on Never For Ever ("Breathing"), but the lyrical execution of them was muddled, and perhaps a bit silly. There were beautiful soundscapes far removed from earlier work ("Delius"), but also incredibly awkward and annoying attempts to branch out stylistically and sonically ("Violin").

The first track off of The Dreaming, the prior-year's hit single "Sat In Your Lap", isn't a million miles removed from Never For Ever. In fact the production sounds quite similar, just a little more electronic, a little more frantic and a little less fluid. It still has a hint of its predecessor's crisp, crystalline coolness, although the sound is a bit fuzzier around the edges and more heavily-processed. Still, at this point you'd be forgiven for thinking you were about to embark on Never For Ever, Part Deux. "Sat In Your Lap" is vaguely similar to the prior record's "Violin", although here the lyrics, the occasionally strident vocals and the meaty instrumentation are interesting instead of annoying and embarrassing.

It's with this first track though where the obvious similarities to her previous albums abruptly halt. "There Goes A Tenner" has a few sparse threads connecting it to earlier works - the in-character vocals and broad music hall stylings hark back to tracks like Lionheart's "Coffee Homeground" for example - but sonically and lyrically this is a radical departure from her existing output. The moody fretless bass of the song's chorus is perhaps the only notable carryover from her old sound. “Tenner” features a fairly limited dynamic range where Bush modulates the intensity not with volume but by occasionally throwing in more layers of bizarre sampled vocal accompaniment and instruments. Complete with a Cockney accent and spoken word snippets sniping away in the background “Tenner” is "Coffee Homeground" on mescaline, a techno-psychedelic take on music hall nostalgia.

And with "There Goes A Tenner" - unlike the silly "Coffee Homeground" - what starts out as a somewhat-unusual, quaint retelling of a crime caper by its end has transformed into a truly unique character study of this unfortunate rogue, revealing deep insights into its central character in only a few moments.

I've been here all day
A star in strange ways
Apart from a photograph
They'll get nothing from me
Not until they let me see my solicitor

Ooh, I remember
That rich, windy weather
When you would carry me
Pockets floating in the breeze

The language here is simply delicious. "Rich, windy weather" and "pockets floating in the breeze". This is Joni Mitchell-caliber work, far beyond the odes to "***** queens" found on its immediate predecessor. On Never For Ever she was simply Peter Gabriel's protégé in this post-punk art-rock space, but here on the second track of her next album she's already eye-to-eye with his best work, and doing so in a wholly unique, only-Kate manner.

Remarkably, on the very next track the student surpasses her master. It's with "Pull Out The Pin" that Kate firmly established herself to all but the most jaded critics as more than just an eccentric novelty . How many established rock stars in 1982 were recording eerie, atmospheric tracks sympathetically recounting the experience of a Viet Cong tracking his American soldier prey? Only Kate, that's how many. Audacious subject matter wasn't especially new for Kate, but executing it so flawlessly - the lyrics, the vocals and especially the production - certainly was. Half ambient, half opera, with its liberal use of samplers you can certainly hear the influence of Peter Gabriel, but Gabriel – as much as I like him – could never have cut something quite like this. It’s simply too bizarre, too audacious, too raw and darkly inspired and too intuitive – his character studies always have a studied quality about them. Nothing about “Pull Out The Pin” feels calculated or contrived – it flows organically, vividly and empathetically. "Pull Out The Pin" is the mad spine of Kate's "she's gone mad" album. And as with its fellow character study "There Goes A Tenner," the lyric and the vocals convey more about its subjects in five and a half minutes than some films manage for their protagonists in two hours - their motivations, the humid, oppressive jungle environment they prowl, even their smell. Sampled helicopters and insects thump and buzz in the background, while Kate's vocals go from a disquieting, bizarrely-recorded coo to a throaty scream in an instant ("I love life!").

And then the mood of The Dreaming shifts dramatically again with "Suspended In Gaffa", as Bush more fully integrates her interest in Irish folk music with her pop work than she had on the proceeding album's "Army Dreamers". The '80s were characterized by acts pulling African, Latin and Caribbean influences into pop (Peter Gabriel in particular helped to spearhead this movement), but by sticking to influences closer to her own ethnic background, Bush's work during the period continues to stand out from that of her contemporaries. She took a road far less-traveled, and the results are all the richer for it.

Lyrically "Suspended In Gaffa" isn't a million miles from "Sat In Your Lap", or from earlier tracks like "Them Heavy People" in that it deals with Bush's intellectual development and the frustrations such development can bring. It's an emotionally remote topic rendered more relevant by the uplifting and engaging melody.

"Leave It Open" is similarly intellectual and self-reflective, but also far creepier as it deals with the dark aspects of personality. The vocals are heavily processed - the most processed we'd heard Kate's vocals up to this point. The effects are particularly effective on the lyric:

I kept it in a cage
Watched it weeping, but I made it stay

She even sang one lyric - "We let the weirdness in" - backwards, giving it a odd, not-quite backward-masked effect. The track comes off more like a spell than a song, as Bush continues to pare back her once-verbose lyrics into more impressionistic work, backed by these brilliant sonic collages.

And then Bush transcends what we'd thought she was capable of on the title track, "The Dreaming". A genuinely angry, vicious work, it eviscerates the Australians' handling of their indigenous population in a way Bush never indicated she was even capable of prior to this record. Sneering and sarcastic - the "kangas" banging off the hood are darkly implied to be Aborigines - the track is also just about the furthest Bush had gotten from western music norms, with its pronounced didgeridoo, whomping beat and again those spellike vocals, replete with little minions buzzing in the background.

"The Dreaming" concludes on an even more musically bizarre note, transitioning into a full-blown Irish instrumental, with uilleann pipes, bagpipes and penny whistle, segueing into "Night Of The Swallow", probably the most emotionally powerful piece on the record up 'till this point. A rather spare dramatic ballad at its start, the song's lush intro resurfaces in the chorus, as a smuggler's lover begs to pilot the plane for his partner’s next caper. Swirling with broken, beating wings and blood, the song continues the theme of criminality and exploitation began on "There Goes A Tenner", and continued with “Pull Out The Pin” and “The Dreaming”, once again telling the story from the criminals' point of view. Bush had never been terribly class conscious in her earlier works - apart from perhaps a brief mention of being a "poor kid" during "In Search Of Peter Pan" off Lionheart - but here the lives of the less-fortunate are sympathetically placed on vivid display. It's much more effective than the condescending preaching you'd often hear from lesser lights. "Night Of The Swallow" soars musically and lyrically in precisely the way its protagonists probably can't, except in their dreams.

"All The Love" is less emotionally overwrought, but it's every bit as bitter as "The Dreaming", written from the point of view of a dying person exhausted by the well-wishes of friends who were never really there for her during life. Inspired by a malfunctioning answering machine - the resulting tape makes a hypnotic appearance at the end of the track, a mélange of disjointed goodbyes - it seethes with anger and disappointment. Again, Bush had never really dwelt on negative emotions in the direct way she does on this record.

It isn't all negative, though. On "Houdini" there's death of course, and also fakery and fraud as yet another medium "roams and rambles", but there's also hope - "this is no trick of his - this is your magic." Bush had often been accused of being a bit twee with her nods to older genres, music hall or Victorian trappings, but here the unusual combination of layered electronics and bone dry strings - not to mention a powerhouse vocal performance with dynamics unthinkable for most singers - lifts the entire production onto another plane. There was literally nobody in pop capable of conceiving - let alone pulling off - anything quite like this.

All of the negative emotions, the demons, the technology and the spells make their final, darkest appearance on the album's powerful final track, "Get Out Of My House". Allegedly inspired by The Shining, although not in a literal way but more emotionally, the song almost seems to function as an exorcism, an attempt to drive out a seductive evil. All banging '80s drums, crunching guitars and cascading synths, it's everything "Violin" wasn't when it comes to being a successful rock song. There were always demonic spirits lurking in Bush's work, but the delicate musical surroundings made most listeners overlook them (no pun intended), mistaking them for fairies. There was no overlooking the demons here, the madness.

No doubt about it, The Dreaming is a disturbing record. Beautiful in places yes, but even that beauty is usually counterbalanced by horror, by loss, by failure or death or bitter disappointment. And it's also harsh, uncomfortable, disorienting, disjointed, a tremendous departure from the smooth lyricism of all her earlier work. While it's safe to say Hounds of Love would never have happened without it, it's also true that Bush never produced anything else quite like it. Whether she'd exorcised her demons sufficiently or was simply bowed by its relative commercial failure we'll probably never really know, but The Dreaming stands apart in her catalog.

Perhaps unloved - or simply misunderstood - at the time, it has since gone on to become one of her most appreciated records, and it wouldn't surprise me to see it eventually eclipse its beloved successor in the eyes of most critics and fans. It transformed Bush into a wholly different artist, and to an amazing degree for such a poor-selling record it set the stage for the next couple of decades of art pop. Within a few years everyone from Annie Lennox to Jean Michel Jarre would be pimping similarly sampled soundscapes, while Bjork made a whole career out of it over a decade later, still sounding perfectly fresh. The Dreaming found Kate Bush right out on the edge, and it beats and bleeds.

 

I was going to say something like this (well, nothing like this but praising it in different areas) but you said it so well I don't have to say a thing. Except ditto.

 

Excellent post, @sunspot42. I don’t agree with the criticisms you had of Never For Ever. I think this is such an excellent album that, despite some missteps here and there, comes out sounding fresh and, most of all, so uniquely Kate Bush.

 

I have EMC 3419 TOCP -67818 TOSHIBA EMI Japan in miniature card sleeve same as original vinyl.
Great CD sounds amazing.

 

I love Never For Ever, but I can see problems with it, too. It didn't sell particularly well and began attracting some critical scorn, which I don't necessarily agree with entirely, but think is justifiable.

 

I rated it a masterpiece, but here’s the thing ...

I started listening to Kate Bush when The Kick Inside came out, and stuck with her faithfully through Hounds of Love. The Dreaming was a favorite at the time. It was like a reinvention of what a song could be; structure, instrumentation, all of it. But I listened to it the other day for the first time in a decade or more, and I had a different reaction. Now it sounded overly busy and mechanical, with an edge I associate with 80’s production. Maybe it was a mood thing. I need to give it another spin.

 

Thank you!

I am looking forward to revisiting The Sensual World in the upcoming boxed set - open to having my mind changed - it has been a long time since I gave it a listen. I do absolutely love a couple of the tracks already as I mentioned so it won’t take a lot to sway me...

 

almost on the same level as hounds of love

 

You’re welcome.

I always say this about The Sensual World: fans just weren’t going to be happy no matter what she did. I mean it did follow-up one of her biggest selling albums up at that point. Compared to Hounds, The Sensual World sounds like drop in quality, but it’s not. What she did was strip the excesses of the previous albums down to something that was direct and pure. There is a heartbeat behind this album. There are no veils, no grand theatrics, nor is there anything remotely outlandish. It is an album that has to be approached with the mindset that this isn’t The Dreaming or Hounds Of Love nor was it ever meant to be. To me, I believe The Sensual World receives an unfair amount of flack for being inherently different than its’ predecessors and this shouldn’t even be the case at all as it’s one of her best albums.

 

That may all be true for some but is not my beef at all.

Two of the most stripped down songs are my favorites.

I just didn’t find many of the pieces very compelling and I also dislike the production. Some of the songs just sound busy to no effect.

Bear in mind I like the pre-Dreaming albums a lot too which aren’t much like The Dreaming or Hounds

So again - I will revisit The Sensual World - and as was the case back in the day, I will approach the album on its own terms.

 

A masterpiece - it's her best album, IMO.

 

My favourite Kate album and a masterpiece in my view.

Her bravest and most extraordinary album, love it.