For some reason I thought that this was the last studio album that Bush produced before going into retirement, but there are a few after, some spread out up until 2011, so perhaps it’s the last one (chronologically) of hers that I owned.
Soundwise it’s a much more ethereal album than previous offerings (on this list at least). While there are a few tracks that sound like the kind of thing Bush and Peter Gabriel were making at the start of the decade (for instance Love And Anger and Reaching Out), woven throughout the album are the sounds of the uillean pipes, David Gilmour’s guitar, delicate orchestral strings, and the Bulgarian folk singing of the Bulgarka Trio. These lend the tracks a touch of exoticism. I don’t know if I was just in the right frame of mind for it, but the start of each track felt to me like the beginning of another adventure – although the tracks have a thematic continuity, they don’t sound repetitive, and although some are more delicate than others, they don’t sound too ephemeral and fey.
There’s a loose theme running through the album of human touch. The opening (title) track The Sensual World has an erotic undercurrent to it (taking inspiration from James Joyce’s Ulysses), standing in stark contrast to the loneliness and desperation of A Deeper Understanding, a track that predicts AI partners with the narrator seeking computerized companionship. Parental love is the theme of The Fog, with some spoken words from Bush’s father, a track both about growing up and overcoming fears, about continuing to need parental support even as one grows independent.
Bush’s penchant for strange subjects continues – Heads We’re Dancing is a track where a woman dances with a charming stranger only to discover that he’s Hitler (you'd think the moustache would be a giveaway), while Rocket’s Tail (a pun on Rocket’s *Tale* perhaps) sees a woman turn herself into a human firework (to, we can infer, fatal consequences) because the man she is with expresses a poetic sentiment about fireworks – a cautionary fable, perhaps, about trying to change yourself too much to impress somebody.
Probably the most famous track on this album, partly because it was part of the soundtrack for a film (She’s Having A Baby) is This Woman’s Work, a track told from the point of view of a nervous husband awaiting the outcome of a complication while his wife is giving birth. Like Bush’s best tracks from The Kick Inside, it’s a simple arrangement, and quite short and, perhaps because it linked to a Hollywood film, skirts up against mawkish sentimentality more than her other tracks. But it did make me realise that Bush’s songs do tend to display a lot of empathy for the male perspective. Unlike tracks by other female artists where men are either Mr Right or Mr Wrong, are strong and silent or boyishly foolish, Bush allows her male characters to feel emotion, to have fears and doubts, and to care. Even when couples are arguing (Between A Man And A Woman) there’s a fairness to the perspective. There’s a quiet confident kindness that shines through in her father’s cameo that stands at pleasant odds against the brash macho posturing of gangsta rap and hair metal, and a nice reminder that there are other possible expressions of masculinity.
I don’t think I listened to this one all that much back when I owned it, partly because of the limitations of my audio equipment that blunted some of the subtlety, but this feels like a really mature and developed album for her, a bit more understated than The Hounds Of Love, but better for it.
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