Kate Bush "King of The Mountain"

[BombaySapphire3]

2nd October 2005: As expected, a few mentions in this morning's UK Sunday papers. The Observer has an article entitled "Comeback Kate" by Barbara Ellen: "We've had a sneak preview of her new album, and can assure you - it's been worth the wait... I'm allowed to listen to one side - I choose the first - so long as I sit in a room at the EMI offices with a man guarding me, presumably in case I try running home with it, thereby committing the crime of trying to listen to an album properly. Despite these shenanigans, first impressions of Aerial are as good as one hoped. It is in fact vintage Bush: a melodic, organic sprawl of wind, sea, seasons, time passing, dreams, secrecy and revelation, all mixed up with a sound that seems to segue smoothly on from The Red Shoes and The Sensual World...Joan of Arc pops up in the stunning, atmospheric 'Joanni'. Most intriguingly, there is a song called 'Bertie' where one hears a whole new Kate Bush - a mature, doting creature both energised and sucker-punched by mother love. 'Where's that son of mine?' sings Kate, adding breathlessly, 'Here comes that son of mine.' I was ready to believe anything by the time I listened to Aerial. What I discovered is that nothing much has changed in Kate Bush's world, except perhaps everything. She's still seething with strangeness and brilliance. Even the fact that she's a mother now isn't likely to change anything. Bush has always written beautiful songs on all manner of themes including motherhood, and will doubtless continue to do so. It's just kind of cute that far from being coy and privacy-obsessed, Bush can't seem to shut up about it. As well as the song one of Bertie's drawings graces the cover of 'King of the Mountain'; he's credited on the sleevenotes as 'The Sun'. Finally, you might cry, the human face cracks though the Pop Ophelia's ethereal visage. Mind you, for some of us, it always did."