Bush-whacked again

Whoever thought that 12 years of silence would tame Kate Bush's eccentricities should return to their Tori Amos records. No review I've read of Bush's Aerial has acknowledged how weird this record is. Fathomlessly weird. A weirdness that's as much shaped by domesticity as it is by Romantic and Gothic fiction. There's a murky song about Elvis on a cliff which sounds as if he's singing from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean ("King of the Mountain"), another about a housekeeper who gets an orgasm while washing her boss' clothes (the chorus is -- all together now -- : "Washing ma-c-h-i-i-i-i-n-n-e..."), and one in which Bush's laughter duets with a flock of twittering birds. The latter is found on Aerial's second disc, titled A Sky of Honey (the first is, of course, called A Sea of Honey).

I don't want to get all Second Sex on you, but no man could have created, let alone populated, a world like this, in which feminine responses to desire are given the aural and compositional space commensurate with their strength. Actually, maybe there is someone: Kid Rock's sonics often match his lyrics. If you're thinking that this comparison dishonors Bush, you're giving her too much credit. Explain the difference between a teenage girl keeping a journal with a flowered cover and whose ravishing entries are written in green ink, and her male classmate boasting about the size of a girl's tits to his buddies.

Is this twaddle any good? Stay tuned.