1985: Kate Bush, Hounds Of Love
By Serenity Hughes
I have always been fascinated by death. And, although I have looked death right in her eyes countless times, my body has always found a way to breach her tight grip — which could be luck, an act of God, or instances of me coming to the realization that I am a God in some way. And at the age of 17, I begrudgingly accepted the fact that the game of cat and mouse death and I had been playing since my inception would one day come to an end. Ever since then, I have been on the run from death, grief, and hopelessness. But I am a runner. And when I’m running, I feel the safest. And August 30th was a normal day of running for me.
Five days prior, my mama called to inform me that the coronavirus had made its way into my grandmother’s lungs, punching through her body so forcefully that she had to be rushed to the hospital. I could hear the fear and the angst in my mama’s voice that she was so dutifully trying to force back into the depths of her throat; lying to herself in the hopes that she could shield me from the death, grief, and hopelessness she knew I had been trying to escape. Before I hung up, I promised my mama that I would say a prayer. After I hung up, I chose to make chaos. I have found that disorder can be cathartic in a way that calling out to a God I only believe in when I am in fear cannot.
On August 30th, my mama texted me: “she has made her transition. she is with the lord now,” relenting to the realization that relaying this news by phone call would wreck me in a way she did not want to face. In response, my body turned into a thousand specks of dust, sinking into my wooden floors so deeply that I conceded, and screamed out: “GOD PLEASE!” I got no response, and I felt lonely, so I took some shit that would make the worst of pain feel good.
Thirty minutes later, I wanted to dance, so I put on the first album that showed up in my Spotify queue, eager to fill the air that seemed so tightly compacted in my apartment. The woman on the cover looked like a mermaid in a purple sea, and I was taught to stay away from shit like that if I liked living, but I jumped into the water with her anyway. It could’ve been due to the drugs or the grief, but the synths and strings played in the first 25 seconds of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” sounded like an invitation to cry. So, for the first time in my life, I stopped running, allowing myself to wallow in the purple sea that seemed to bring me solace. Then, my cousin texted me to ask how I was doing, and all I could respond with was: “I know Kate Bush and Grandma love me more than God ever will.”
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Kate Bush released Hounds of Love in 1985, after spending three years running away from a world where experimentation left her marked as weird and mad by a group of parochial people of power. Her prior album, The Dreaming, was met with mixed critical reception; having peaked at number three on UK billboard charts for less than ten weeks, the album, and Kate, were labeled as failures by fans, critics, and her record label. Eager to escape the noise of London and pressure from her label to conform into a commercial hit-making Pop star, Kate retreated to her family’s property in the suburbs of London, turning their barn into a 48-track studio. Surrounded by the familiarity of blue skies packed with plush clouds and flowers that sway effortlessly in the wind, Kate found her artistry unbound by the despair that comes with forced conformity.
What sets Hounds of Love apart from Kate’s earlier records is her ability to thrust listeners into her exploration of the hopelessness and light associated with love through its baroque production. In 1979, she was introduced to the Fairlight CMI machine, a digital synthesizer and sampler that she used heavily while producing The Dreaming to overdub and layer her songs. Instead of composing the Hounds of Love demo with live instruments and a group of producers, Kate opted to intertwine the writing and recording process, using the Fairlight and Linn Drum machines to create rhythms and melodies that pushed instrumentation to its limits. Leaning into her newly found freedom from the outside world, she experimented with the sampling of unconventional instruments like the bouzouki, fujarlia, and her own voice to create sounds that only existed in her head, adding layers of texture and depth to her songs that simply produced magic.
Side A of the album consists of five chart-topping Pop songs that prove Kate’s genius. The thing about love that I believe people attempt to suppress the most is the grief that is inevitably tied to it. We learn from an early age that nothing lasts forever, yet we expect the people and things we love to be permanent fixtures in our lives. But Kate illuminates this link in a way that sends listeners to a state of ecstasy, fully committing herself to the trepidation and intensity that festers in all forms of intimate relationships. “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” is the album’s opener, and the use of drums and synths in conjunction with the rawness of her voice makes the song come alive. On “Mother Stands For Comfort,” Kate diverges from the up-tempo and exhilarating nature of the other four songs, opting to use synths and drums that feel rather cold and flat, leaving the listener on edge and pondering if unconditional love is something we want to experience at all. On “Cloudbusting,” with her celestial voice riding the waves of fervent strings, she exclaims: “but every time it rains, you’re here in my head, like the sun coming out, ohh, I just know that something good is going happen,” leaving the listener feeling optimistic that whatever is holding us down would not continue to break us for much longer.
Side B, The Ninth Wave, consists of seven inherently dark songs that tell the story of a woman lost at sea, floating in and out of consciousness while experiencing numerous nightmarish visions as she waits to be rescued. “A Dream of Sheep'' is the perfect opener for The Ninth Wave. Kate’s angelic voice, coupled with the layering of strings, piano, and occasional seagull noises, offers brief comfort from the chaos and horror we know we will eventually be thrown into. “Jig of Life” is more up-tempo than the other songs it is paired with. Written in Ireland, Kate’s use of folk instruments and her overdubbing of voices evokes a sense of perturbation that makes us feel like we are in the water fighting for our lives with her. Horror ceases on “The Morning Fog,” with the strings, bass, and synths working together to depict the rebirth that comes with making it out of a state where death feels imminent, promising us that there is light out there somewhere, even if we have not found it yet.
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Two minutes into listening to “Hello Earth,” I suddenly felt safe and less alone. Kate’s voice, so majestic and so sweet, found a way to slither out of my speakers and wrap around my body so tightly I could not cry even if I wanted to. I then drifted into a deep state of unconsciousness — I was aware of my surroundings, but what I was experiencing could not be reality. Kate, with her auburn hair flowing in the air and her mouth in a soft pout, stood right in front of me. As she placed my clinched fist into her hands, she sang: “little light shining, little light will guide them to me, my face is all lit up.” And in that instance, I felt full of love, at ease, and close to God.
Overwhelmed by my grief induced experience, I allowed myself to sleep. I dreamt of talks with my grandma about plants, Teddy Pendergrass, and promises to visit her during my sporadic trips back home to Chicago; holding onto the message Kate whispered in my ear before she disappeared into the darkness to jump back into the purple sea: “my love, your grandma is infinite. She is all around you. You can feel her everywhere. Serenity, you are a little Earth. Now, run free...”
Serenity Hughes is an essayist and music critic from the South Side of Chicago. She is a 2021 Periplus Fellow, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her on Twitter @63rdStreetSense.