A shadow of her former glory

It's now totally clear that Kate Bush peaked with Hounds of Love. In fact, I don't think you can find a more consistent artist than she, in terms of a progression up to that album: from The Kick Inside, her first album, to Hounds of Love, each record gets better. But then came the long pauses between releases, and the shoddy work of her later years. It's obvious that she simply isn't moved by the same sense of discovery that moved her back then. Bush was primarily a piano-based songwriter who progressed to using the studio as a means of composition, and her passage from the piano to the Fairlight was strewn with all sorts of wildly invigorating experiments. She never slotted into a trend (neither New Wave nor New Romantic), I think, because it was *sound itself* that seemed to be her concern: those gutteral vocal textures on The Dreaming; the patchwork quilt of styles and stories that is Hounds of Love. But everything post-Hounds has seen Bush giving up on sound texture and experiment -- including this present disc. She makes a stab at her old conceit-building here, but it comes off as sketchy and silly. The pretenses didn't always work in the past either ("Pull Out the Pin," for example), but her playful use of varied sound is what always made her work matter anyway. That's what I miss most about the old Kate Bush: the sense that a good songwriter was also discovering the strangeness of hearing itself for the first time, everytime she stepped into the studio. But Aeriel, like The Red Shoes, is the distracted, listless Bush, who seems to have forgotten the wonderment of audio as such.

Love it or dislike it? Somewhere in between

After waiting over 10 years for her next album, I was elated to discover the release of "Aerial". However, once I listened to it, I definitely had mixed emotions. Musically, it's really good. I particularly liked the more upbeat songs "King of the Mountain", "How to be Invisible" and "Nocturn" as well as the medieval sounding "Bertie". Lyrically, it's very cryptic, too much so. Songs range from painting pictures to doing laundry. Hmmm! I've listened to it a few times and I still haven't figured it out. I will say that the first disc is definitely worth 4 stars! The second one I didn't enjoy as much. Was it worth the wait? Regrettably no. Sorry Kate!

This one did not blow me away

I thought there could be no such thing, but this CD doesn't blow me away. I have been a fan since I bought her first album in 1978 and love every single album she had since released. This CD though, is not up to her standards. It is by no means a "bad" album, but the songs sound a lot alike to me and it also has a gloomy feel. Not what I expected and hoped for.