Kate Bush’s musical output between 1994’s ‘The Red Shoes’, and ‘Director’s Cut’ released earlier this year, has for a huge amount of her fans been more than worthy of happily poring over. I’ve spent really quite notable amounts of time along with many others, trying to persuade those who aren’t as enthusiastic that there’s just as much to love going on in her most recent albums. But admittedly, these albums haven’t had that addictive unpredictability that every Bush album had pre-Red Shoes.
In 1994, she seemed to swerve away from those fantastical, intelligently-naive themes always present prior to this, floating back to Earth with a more worldly sound. Earlier Kate Bush never failed to radiate a madly likeable, but slightly disconcerting feeling of a worse grip on reality developing on every listen, whilst even ‘Director’s Cut’, released just 5 months before this single, and reasonably cited by many as one of her most impressive albums, was just more steady and calm. Despite it glimmering through more throughout that than on anything else she had produced for 16 years, it lacked that magic surreal element associated with her. It only took me a single listen of ‘Wild Man’ though, to be completely sure that that element had fully resurfaced.
On one hand, everything about it shouts out ‘classic Kate Bush song’, with lyrics, to my delight, veering back towards the bizarre, ‘hard to relate to yet somehow familiar’ depths I’ve always loved so much. But on the other, ‘Wild Man’ sounds far more comfortable in 2011 than a lot of songs released this year by young female vocalists heavily influenced by her, switching easily between something like a Hounds Of Love-era sound and an explosive build up full of deep bass and quite epic, sweeping synths. “I can hear you cry/Echoing around the mountain side/You sound lonely”, she sings, her vocals moreishly layered, each of the 4 octaves of her range taking on a different persona as they would in 80s Bush songs.
It’s difficult not to sound dumbly positive about ‘Wild Man’, but it’s everything that’s been secretly yearned for by the most stubbornly loyal Kate Bush fans since the first single from The Red Shoes emerged in the April 1994, making it quite undeniably her strongest single for decades.
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On one hand, everything about it shouts out ‘classic Kate Bush song’, with lyrics, to my delight, veering back towards the bizarre, ‘hard to relate to yet somehow familiar’ depths I’ve always loved so much. But on the other, ‘Wild Man’ sounds far more comfortable in 2011 than a lot of songs released this year by young female vocalists heavily influenced by her, switching easily between something like a Hounds Of Love-era sound and an explosive build up full of deep bass and quite epic, sweeping synths. “I can hear you cry/Echoing around the mountain side/You sound lonely”, she sings, her vocals moreishly layered, each of the 4 octaves of her range taking on a different persona as they would in 80s Bush songs.
