Kate Bush´s best song?
Alejandro De Luna
If there´s something that Kate Bush can achieve like very few artists, is to recreate passages of entire contemplation and ephemeral soul-searching moments. When Kate´s disturbing vocal range is accompanied by her delicacy on piano that rips your guts, then something unique happens. And if in top of that, we add Kate´s thoughtful literary references, surreal eccentricity, and an uncommon approach to life on her lyrics, then magic comes out of the speakers.
KATE BUSH RETURNS TO STAGE AFTER 35 YEARS
If you listen to her impressive and extensive discography, is hard to choose in which direction to go. So many different evocative emotions of love and loss, death and life, and the fanciful against the “reasonable” and mundane. With that in mind, it seems impossible to choose one single track that defines Kate Bush´s soul and pursuit as an artist, but if we enter into utopias, then “A Coral Room” (2005) is the way to go. It was hard to leave behind “Top Of The City” (1993) or the magic moments in Hounds Of Love (1985), but “A Coral Room” is just one of the most beautiful and personal songs ever written from one of most honest and unique artists in the last 35 years.
In “A Coral Room” – from her essential album Aerial – Kate Bush appears at her most vulnerable. Beyond her disturbing physical beauty and unquestionable genius, here we have just her memories, obsessions, fears, and a straight punch towards the mundane and transitory. This track works as a methapor that hides on memories, the outrageous passing of time, and the tricks that nostalgia plays in our head. Melancholic allusions towards ‘fisherman nets’, ‘a city covered in webs’, ‘the spider of time’, ‘planes crashing down’ while ‘boats flying above’ and her ‘mother with a little brown jug’, masterfully tell the unconventional story of a track inspired by her mother´s death and packed with so much sadness that in moments, could easily put Billie Holiday´s version of “Gloomy Sunday” in shame.
What its outstanding in this track is Kate´s ability to transfer you to an state of pure contemplation and nostalgia with an unusual narrative. There´s no simplistic lyrics here or a conventional approach. Like good things in art, the interpretation depends on your retrospection and in the personal meaning of the artwork, and of that Kate Bush´s a crackerjack. It´s a spooky track full of mystery that would need a whole life to interpret correctly. Then the ‘spider of time’ appears, the memories come; the good and the bad things with a piano that judges you and a disturbing voice that makes you reflect on what you been through.
There’s a city, draped in net
Fisherman net
And in the half light, in the half light
It looks like every tower
Is covered in webs
Moving and glistening and rocking
It’s babies in rhythm
As the spider of time is climbing
Over the ruins
There were hundreds of people living here
Sails at the windows
And the planes came crashing down
And many a pilot drowned
And the speed boats flying above
Put your hand over the side of the boat
What do you feel?
My mother and her little brown jug
It held her milk
And now it holds our memories
I can hear her singing
“Little brown jug don’t I love thee”
“Little brown jug don’t I love thee”
Ho ho ho, hee hee hee
I hear her laughing
She is standing in the kitchen
As we come in the back door
See it fall
See it fall
Oh little spider climbing out of a broken jug
And the pieces will lay there a while
In a house draped in net
In a room filled with coral
Sails at the window
Forests of masts
Put your hand over the side of the boat
Put your hand over the side of the boat
What do you feel?
