What?! On the Piano?!

Here’s a funny one, Kate Bush Lionheart is an album that I really love in places but is nobody’s (including Kate herself) favourite Kate Bush LP.  It is one that stirs something in me though.

I have really strong memories of my mother playing the album one spring morning when I was about 8, a really strong beam of light cutting through the sash window, illuminating motes of dust in it’s ray, strong against the otherwise very dark room.  My recollection is sound tracked by the title track ‘Oh England My Lionheart’.

I asked my mum about it a few years ago, telling her I remember her playing the album a lot when I was little.  She told me she was surprised to hear that and that she wasn’t very fussed on Lionheart at all.

If I was French, I would probably write something quite pithy, even profound, about the unreliable and transient nature of memories and the way we shape it into our own self-serving narrative.  As I’m Welsh, I shall merely shout ‘arse!’ and plod on regardless.

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Pressed into recording again quickly after the whirlwind Bronte-boosted success of The Kick Inside, Lionheart was released a mere 268 days later; recording artists having to work hard for a living back then.  Only three tracks were written freshly for the LP in the 4-week window she had to write in, the rest were pickings from her original demos and a cast-off or two from her debut.

There are a few real moments of beauty here, a solid rocker, a couple of great wizzy-wiggy pop moments and a slight sense of sameness.

We get another great range of Kate-only song subjects here, along with her usual sex quota, in no particular order:

•  Sex
•  A gay actor, concealing his sexuality
•  The pain of growing up and forsaking your inner child
•  A mythical VE day vision of Albion
•  The story of a poisoner
•  Being haunted by the ghost of a horror actor
•  Sex again
•  A male couple keeping their relationship secret (a recurring one this)

And another couple that could be about cars, but are more likely to be about sex and emotions and stuff like that.   She always said that she was glad tabloid reporters could never be bothered reading her lyrics.

The more I think about sex
The better it gets              (Symphony In Blue)

The big two singles on Lionheart are both fabulous, ‘Wow’ and ‘Hammer Horror’.  Cue: videos with lots of emoting and flappy, flappy arm action.  Neither song sounds like anyone else ever has/ will do/ could do/ would want to and both feature Kate in full banshee mode.  Both tracks utterly idiosyncratic and instantly identifiable, ‘Hammer Horror’ just edges ahead for me, for the intro and for the slightly more unhinged vocals.

For me the real gem is ‘Symphony In Blue’, a stunning lush song about, well, you know, umm … (blushes) … you know, downstairs recreational stuff for two.  It’s a Kate all-timer for me, the song has a warmth and a wonderful enveloping atmosphere*.  Please note she is not singing ‘sodomy on the piano’, but try not to hear that now in the chorus** …

Ignore my crassness (and the odd bit of WTF, in the above), this is a beautiful song.  ‘In The Warm Room’ is a starker, more personal ditty on the same subject that goes further, I find the piano and vocal on this one is moving.

I have a soft spot for the rocker ‘Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake’ despite the fact that her voice can’t quite muscle it and the lyrics are all very 6th form poetry.  Recorded for and rejected, rightly so, from The Kick Inside there’s something very humanly imperfect about it all.

The title track, with references to Peter Pan, Shakespeare, air raid shelters and the glories of Albion is as sentimental and verging on twee as it sounds, but I really like it; possibly thanks to all my seemingly false nostalgic memories of it!^ It’s as comfortable, impractical and familiar as a plate commemorating the coronation on your gran’s dresser and I just love the trembling vocal.  There are nuances, shade and a swelling loneliness here that stop it being too jingoistic.  To quote a fellow Bush fan, she means it maan!

Lesser Lionheart-ed lights are ‘Kashka From Baghdad’, which has a rare poise about it and the oddly music hall ‘Coffee Homeground’, a tale of poisoner and poisonee that I used to hate, but enjoy now – in some ways it is the precursor to those oddities in character on The Dreaming, ‘There Goes A Tenner’ and ‘Suspended In Gaffer’.

Despite some lovely piano ‘Fullhouse’ never quite stays with me and ‘In Search Of Peter Pan’ never quite breaks its home counties shackles for my tastes and for all its poise, it veers towards self-parody.  Nothing jars though, it all glides on downstream in a stately fashion.

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In my view Lionheart suffers from being rushed, from Kate Bush not yet having developed the musical lexicon to push her ideas further out there yet and from following her stupendous debut, like the tail can only trail in the comet’s wake.  Her reply was to come when she seized the reins of production for Never For Ever and never glanced back.

All that said there is a charm to Lionheart because, not in spite of, its imperfections.  For those of us prone to flapping our arms around expressively while we dance she will always be our leader and role model.

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My copy of Lionheart is a slightly beat up original and I love the way the cover photo is poised in that sweet spot between dressing-up box silly and outright phwoarrgggh! Perfectly poised Kate.

1004 Down (the back of the dressing up box).

*as opposed to a wonderful enveloped atmosphere – which is when you pass wind into an envelope, to savour later.

**‘suddenly at the piano’, to be accurate.

^thanks mum!