Hounds Of Love

The album Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush turned 40 years old this month. It has really stood the test of time. It still sounds like nothing else.

It’s kind of two albums in one.

There’s the A side with all those perfect pop songs—Running Up That Hill, Hounds Of Love, Cloudbusting, The Big Sky—each one brilliant and self-contained.

Then there’s the B side, The Ninth Wave. It’s like its own concept album within an album. It’s weird and challening, but I love it.

At times it’s downright frightening but the whole thing ends on a joyous note with The Morning Fog. There’s something about the clarity of the closing lines that brings me to tears:

I’ll tell my mother
I’ll tell my father
I’ll tell my loved one
I’ll tell my brothers
How much I love them

That’s after the magnificence of The Jig Of Life which happily crosses over with my love of Irish traditional music.

But, as with traditional Irish music, Hounds Of Love was not something I was into when I was growing up. Quite the opposite.

See, my brother was really into Kate Bush. And if my brother was into something, then I didn’t want anything to do with it. We didn’t really get along.

Mostly that worked out fine. I don’t think missed out on much by avoiding the Electric Light Orchestra, the Alan Parsons Project, and other Partridge-esque bands. But I was wrong to avoid Kate Bush.

It was only by the time I got to art college that I was able to listen to Hounds Of Love objectively, encouraged to do so by a girlfriend at the time who was a huge fan.

Now I’m listening to it again.

Ah, those closing lines …there’s just something about them.