Kate Bush - The Hounds Of Love

Don’t bother trying to label Kate Bush as one of the most important women in popular music, let’s suggest that her fifth album may be the most epic English record since Sgt. Pepper. And let’s also suggest that Hounds Of Love is a better album than Sgt. Pepper while we’re at it.
Any comparison between Kate Bush and The Beatles may seem a little far fetched, but listen closely: it’s clear that Kate heard endless sonic possibilities in those old Beatle album and, well, she had a forty-eight track studio at her house, so why the hell not give it a try herself?
Ironically, there is so much going on throughout Hounds Of Love that all of those over-reaching sounds, themes and arrangements are downright endearing. I can’t hear an ounce of pretension in this album, but I can hear a bunch of wide-eyed ideas going right to the edge of tackiness and stopping short of putting that last ornament on the lawn.
Separated into two suites (only a true Kate Bush fan could identify them and explain the suite’s concept), she places the clear single choices on side one and the continually segueing material on the progressive-leaning side two.
Lyrically, every song comes across as the CliffsNotes version of a larger read. And typically, Bush does a worthy job of promoting enough interest in the topic that, maybe for a moment, you actually want to pick up the original inspiration. “Cloudbusting” hints at Wilhelm Reich, “Running Up That Hill” hints of Sylvia, and the entire second side reeks of Tennyson.
The twenty plus years have demonstrated two things: the first is how dated the production sounds and, second, how remarkable it is in every other measurable area.
It’s true: the entire disc is marred in 80’s electric drum and, because every track is not spared, the bright and dark of the sonic landscape is whittled down to a muddy goo.
At the same time, there should be no shame in being a product of an era’s poor production strategies; Hounds Of Love probably would have sounded muddled in any decade, bogged down by the weight of Kate’s intention.