Kate Bush
The Red Shoes
Columbia

With a coquettish twist and a ripe shot of sensuality, Kate Bush has recorded another great album that leaves most of its contenders (and there aren’t many) dancing in the dust. Based on the Hans Christian Anderson story of a campesque design, The Red Shoes tells the tale of a ballet dancer thoroughly torn between her lover and the demonic demands of her red shoes. A concept that is nothing new for Bush, who at the outset of her career, turned Emily Bronte’s classic Wuthering Heights into a sing-a-long-a-pop-therapy; and by doing so, turned herself into a fully-fledged pop star with just a splash of sex appeal thrown in for good measure.

The (verbal) directness of 1989’s The Sensual World (her last album) spills over into The Red Shoes, even though it’s a little more Peter Gabriel induced and… love-struck! The result of which is liberal pop with wide-angle eccentricity. The jump start, rock steady beat of the opening track ‘Rubberband Girl’ being a perfect example. Who else would even conceive of getting away with such a line as: ‘’If I could learn to give like a rubberband/I’d be back on my feet?’’ With a seemingly excellent groove laid down by Messrs. Stuart Elliot on drums and John Giblin on bass, there’s room for all kinds of musical coming and going. Realising this, Bush interjects the arrangement with a noizzze improvisation of see-saw vox and horn tribulation.

Continuing along similar lines with ‘Eat The Music’ and ‘Constellation Of My Heart.’ The former projecting something of a Malagasy/West Indies vibe, replete with World Beat virus and fruit ensemble: ‘’Take a papaya/You like guava?/Grab a banana/A sultana/Rip ‘em to pieces/With sticky fingers/Split the banana/Crush the sultana.’’ A lurid come on via juiced up proportions or an ode to Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer?’

Eric Clapton lends his more than prominent guitar attack on ‘And So Is Love,’ while former Yardbird mate Jeff Beck lends his on arguably the strongest cut on the album ‘You’re The One.’ While ‘And So Is Your Love’ is sexy and bluesy (in a sedate kind of way) on which Bush reveals: ‘’We used to say/’Ah hell, we’re young’/But now we see that life is sad/And so is love;’’ ‘You’re The One is a hurt drenched arrow to the heart. Like Sinead O’Connor’s rendition of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2U’ or Talking Heads’ ‘Heaven,’ the song is a full calibre, shock to the system of regret and remorse: ‘’I’m going to stay with my friend/Mmm, yes, he is very good looking/The only trouble is/He’s not you.’’ Beck, needless to say, glides through the entire affair with all the panache of a six-stringed disciple from guitar heaven. A love song and a torch song that stands as the album’s centrepiece, there’s nothing fake about ‘You’re The One.’ Just like there’s nothing fake about Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay,’ or Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Stolen Car.’

As a generality, The Red Shoes is a collection of extremely well crafted and seductively harmonious workouts for Bush’s hyper-iconoclastic singing style. ‘Moments Of Pleasure’ harks at 1978’s ‘Man With The Child In Her Eyes,’ ‘The Song Of Solomon’ comes sealed with a kiss of sextravaganza know-how (‘’Don’t want your bullshit, yeah/Just want your sexuality’’), ‘Top Of The City’ is firmly embedded within a semi-trance of explosive, underlying drama – on which guest Nigel Kennedy’s violin pertains to an eerie quality. As for the title track, it lends itself to a tremendous build that includes an ethereal arrangement, off-set with mandolin, tin whistles and Bush’s own lush squeak vox of hidden explanation.

Sexy, religious, innovative and in live, The Red Shoes is all these things and just a few of the things in between – such as Peter Gabriel, anguish, bells and red wine flavoured kisses.