So, my wife just won a contest and the grand prize is the Kate Bush CD library as well as a Limited Edition Lithograph. The Kate Bush CD library includes: Lionheart, Never Forever, The Dreaming, The Hounds Of Love, The Kick Inside, The Red Shoes, The Sensual World, The Whole Story, and Aerial.

The limited edition lithograph is a large format print of the album cover art. Printed in limited quantities and not available for sale.

Never heard a single song of hers (except for that duet she did with Peter Gabriel on So), should I go chronological? What's the best of hers? I figure you're the guy to ask.

Her best album is generally regarded to be 'Hounds of Love'. Even though you didn't ask me.

I appreciate the info, dude. I only knew that Phil was a huge Kate Bush fan. Didn't know about anyone else, though.

First of all, congrats! That's a nice haul. I'm in the minority (as usual) but I've always thought Kate's crowning achievement was The Dreaming. The title track especially - lyrically and sonically it conjures aboriginal dreamtime, and you can almost hear the kangaroos hitting the car - but the whole album is solid. I think I had it on my Listmania.

The Kick Inside was Kate as a young girl. I seem to recall she was 16 when it was recorded (may have been 18), but it's an impressive accomplishment from someone of any age. I remember at the time Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone mag dismissed her as "Patti Smith mated with a Hoover vacuum cleaner" - and there's some truth to that. Her vocals sound like they were induced by huffing on helium, but if you can get past the high-pitched trilling there's some great songs.

Lionheart and Never Forever were, IMO, examples of Kate trying (and failing) to find her way as an artist. It really took that 4th album, The Dreaming, for her to break through artistically.

And then Hounds Of Love broke through commercially. It's a good album, but I missed the harsher quirk of the previous one. And since then, she's become progressively slicker - a pleasant presence on the mainstream charts, never particularly bad and usually, in fact, quite good (for that kind of thing) - but less interesting to me with each successive release.

And I'm sure 'Spoon will disagree with pretty much everything in this post.

I agree!

I'm also jealous -- a lot of my Kate Bush is on vinyl or casette. I really need to get it all on CD.

Yeah, the Dreaming is the best. But I think there's something to love on all her albums.

Keep in mind her voice is more shrill on the first two albums, as she bansheed it up quite a bit in the higher registers. Some great songs, though.

What you can expect is a woman who has no concern with rock trends whatsover. She's quintessentially British, but not modern British, more like alternate universe Victorian-with-synthesizer British. Like if Emily Dickinson were Siouxsie Sioux or something. Or Emily Bronte were Lydia Lunch.

Like Peter Gabriel, her songs are often about highly specific things, but seem abstract on casual listen. She layers themes through her albums and sometimes you need a bit of time to realize she's painting suites (like the Drowning Witch theme of the second half of Hounds of Love).

She was a pioneer of sampling and the Fairlight, so her songs always sounded haunting and dense, not grounded in one time or chintzy-dated.

She has a tremendous vocal range and isn't afraid to shriek and howl and trilll and purr and moan lyrics and melodies that other artists would try to make more straightforward rock/pop.

She is one of those artists who's been emulated so much that someone just hearing her now might not have a context for how unusual her songs were a quarter century ago. Now, there are several dozen less theatrical and more sedate artists who plunk around on the piano and warble out Kate-ish sorts of things, but they rarely have the original spark of odd beauty that Kate has. Fiona Apple does. Bjork, usually. Tori Amos rarely does. But the Vanessa Carltons of the industry who equally worship Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush are a mighty hideous progeny.

What comes through on nearly all her songs are two main things: the sonic impact of her incredibly versatile voice and detailed lyrics bathed in deeply layered music; and a warmness and hope that penetrates through even the saddest songs. She develops characters in her songs and cares about those characters, instead of sitting in judgement of them.

Spoon's been waiting for this thread for 20 years. Well played.

I just wish I'd maintained some level of competent sentence structure during those two decades.

Alas, my dangling participle lost its syntactic fluidity ages ago.

Emily Dickinson was from Massachusetts, I thought....

Yeah, but a Dickinsonian Siouxsie would be tres Victoria.

Well, the first two albums or so, she was 'just' a chanteuse -- a singer, writing songs to show off her fantastical range. It wasn't until the third album that she really started to experiment.

I wouldn't know about how to listen to them in what order, as they are sort of in three different groups:

torch/chanteuse:
Kick Inside
Lionheart

experimental/80's:
Never For Ever
The Dreaming
Hounds of Love

mature:
The Sensual World
The Red Shoes
Aerial

It would be educational to listen to them in order.

The Whole Story will fit pretty much anywhere, as it is redundant with the others, except for Experiment IV, I think.

PS I deliberately let frosted answer first.

I think there's more than chanteusery on the first two albums. There's some very good lyrical themes, though they're more "little poet girl" than later work. As good or better than most other albums of the period, though. But, yeah, the sustained depth through album sides (rather than just impressive individual songs) starts with Never Forever.

I'm really looking forward to taking it all in. It's not often you win an entire discography and can listen to it all at once.

Thanks for all the input, folks.

Oh, also if you don't like extremely "girly" musical perspectives all that much, you might like that Kate plays characters in her songs, some are guys, some are historical figures, some mythical, they range from zygotes to the motherly, lovers, military leaders, relatives, mystics and misanthropes, Houdini's wife, psychotics and whatnot. She's not a claustrophobic and myopic navel-gazing singer-songwriter mumbling about her pain and tribulations over clunking piano. Many of her imitators are, but she isn't. There's far more Bowie to her "girlwriting" than there is Carly Simon.

She really should team up with Nick Cave for a project.

Yeah, it was an oversimplification, of course. The three periods aren't that distinct, either.

She should do a Storytellers.

That might involve travelling somewhere and leaving her estate. Will she do that at this point? I suppose they could film it at her studio or on her grounds somwhere.

I guess my point is, she tells really vivid stories in her songs, full of very visual imagery. (As opposed to being abstract, those of you about to accuse me of being redundant.)