Hounds of Love

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-07-08 rating:
Class
I was 18 years old when this album was first released. I bought it, listened to the singles, had a bash at the rest and then sort of forgot about it. It was only when I updated my collection of vinyl to CD's that I re-discovered this brilliant album, about 15 years ago. It is now never far from my stereo.
Speaking in an old fashioned way, the "a-side" (as it was on vinyl) is the one most people will listen to, it has the singles, from the galloping pounding "Running Up That Hill", through the sheer folky string quartet driven brilliance of "Cloudbusting" to the nicely upbeat "The Big Sky". But please try the old "b-side" - The Ninth Wave. A concept album within an album telling the story of a drowning woman, looking back through her life as she struggles in the darkening waters. Each track segues neatly into the next from the hard rock of "Waking the Witch" to the mad Irish reel of the "Jig of Life". The finest moment for me, by far, is the final two tracks. From the grand almost funereal surges of "Hello Earth" everything begins to fade, down and down, into darkness and near silence, and just then, in that moment of stillness, a bright light explodes in with the opening bars of the delightful "The Morning Fog". The chiming classical guitar of John Williams weaves in and out of the mix with Del Palmer's bass, and still sends chills down my spine! But is it death or life the woman encountered? The jury is still out.
Of the added extra tracks on this CD, the 12" re-mix of Cloudbusting is a goody, but please take some time over "Under The Ivy" one of the most beautiful songs Kate has ever written, and was originally the b-side to the single release of "Running up That Hill".
Kate Bush is beautiful and talented, a rarity in the music world these days. Cherish her, and cherish this, her finest album.

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review by: date: 2008-04-18 rating:
Truly madly deeply
I don't often award five stars to an album,unlike some Amazon reviewers who appear to think it is their duty to dish out five stars for all their personal favorites regardless of objectivity.
I will however make an exception here.Hounds of Love is truly one hell of an album !
Despite it now being 23 years old,the album is timeless and the extended version only reinforces its quality. I find it very much in what it now termed the 'Nu-Folk' field in that apart from obvious things like Jig of Life, even the uplifting cloudbusting is very much lifted from the English folk tradition.
Hounds of Love itself has been covered so many times,especially by Indie bands and running up that hill with its shimmering drum beats borrows from the Peter Gabrial school of music composure....get the rhythm and beat established and the music and lyrics will follow.
Brilliant !

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review by: date: 2008-04-10 rating:
Maverick Marvel ( nevertoolate #003 )
2005's 'Ariel' divided the critics.

With such a long gap between 1993's 'The Red Shoes' and her most recent excursion
it was perhaps inevitable that responses would blow both hot and cold.

I still havn't made up my mind nearly three years on.

Ms Bush's inconsistancies have a long history but The Wolf has always kept
a warm space in his heart for life's true mavericks.

With the release in 1985 of 'Hounds Of Love' however we discover what is probably her most coherant and consistant work.

From the pulsing opening bars of 'Running Up That Hill';
though the cinematic landscapes of 'Hounds Of Love' and 'The Big Sky';
via the more reflective 'Mother Stands For Comfort';
to the exstatic, otherworldly march of 'Cloudbusting', we find Ms Bush
utterly confident and in control of all aspects of composition, performance and production.

The song-cycle 'The Ninth Wave' forming the second part of this remarkable
album is a deeply affecting and perceptive series of subjective reflections about sleep and dreaming.
It is the stuff of true nightmares.
The shifting claustrophobic moods of suffocation, fear and uncertainty are brilliantly
and disturbingly evoked in music of dark and elusive subtelty.

As with all truly great music the album retains a timeless, genre-bending, quality.

Her muse was never more sharply honed than this.

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review by: Jim Miles date: 2007-07-16 rating:
A changeable journey of moods, crammed into 40 minutes' music
Starting with a bang, the first five tracks of Kate Bush's fifth studio album are anthemic and catchy, 'Running Up That Hill' embodying a sexual energy greater than merely that alluded to by the lyrics, and the title track 'Hounds of Love' a fast-paced dash, a commentary on a hunt abstracted to an act more spiritual than only the chasing of a fox by hounds, before the regimented, march-like rhythm of 'Cloudbusting' arrives.

The change to lightly accompanied singing with the next few tracks is welcome, particularly in the dangerous and understated sense of fear conveyed by 'Under Ice', foreshadowing a darker tone to come.

The supernatural feel that the album takes on with the eighth track 'Waking the Witch' is disturbing with its demonic utterances and, by the time that the over-the-top and Celtic 'Jig of Life' cuts in, the high mood of the first tracks has been wholly altered to something confusing and nightmarish.

However, this is the point. The album Hounds of Love is a journey, and well captures a sense of mood progression, which the penultimate, dramatic track 'Hello Earth' triumphantly concludes.

The final song, 'The Morning Fog'? That's the come down, of course.


review by: davethorn13 date: 2007-06-11 rating:
Rare quality for the 1980s
Though I prefer to listen to 'The Kick Inside', I can understand why many people feel that this is Kate Bush's best album. Certainly, it is bursting with ideas and is both mightily ambitious and accessible, a difficult combination. The use of stage-setting sound effects and outside voices helps sustain an eerie atmosphere, while the music excels in its own right, assisted by the occasional use of strings to soften the edges. The first half is relatively conventional, home to the album's glorious and diverse hit material, of which my favourite is 'Cloudbusting'. Some touches betray the era. That awful, dead, plastic production, so characteristic of the 1980s, seeps though occasionally, but so much imagination has gone into the writing and arranging that it barely detracts from the overall feel. Rudimentary tribal-like rhythms are
another feature, and serve to give the album a pagan slant.
The more ambitious second half suite doesn't suffer so much from the negative influences, though 'Jig Of Life' is rather obvious. 'Hounds Of Love' is certainly a classic album, with the same gravity as Pink Floyd or Peter Gabriel in their heydays. It's an exaggeration to suggest that it's one of the best fifty albums of all time, never mind the best, but there have been few better releases since.

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