The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Kate Bush · produced by Kate Bush · EMI · twelve tracks on two sides
Mode
Art pop built on drums, Fairlight and voice on one side, and a continuous suite between sleep and waking on the other
Mythos
The night-sea journey: immersion, descent, ordeal by water, the soul’s visit home, the plea of the unborn, the vision from above, return at dawn
Phase
Twelve tracks on two named sides; five discrete songs, four of them singles, then seven parts running into one another
Presentation
Album; side one, Hounds of Love, and side two, The Ninth Wave, released by EMI in September 1985
Register
Drum patterns, Fairlight, strings, balalaika, Irish players, a chorus; one voice from whisper to cry, and voices breaking in from outside
Scale
A couple, a family, a father taken by the state, and one woman’s consciousness at the edge of death, held under sky and sea
Governing Proposition
A pop singer who has built her own studio makes rhythm the leading voice of five songs on one side, and on the other gives a single continuous suite to a woman drowning at night, tried by the water, unheard in her own house, held to life by her family and a self not yet born, and brought to the morning: a voice reaching across divides that cannot be crossed.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a drum pattern and a cello figure played on the Fairlight, and over them a voice pitched between plea and threat. Running Up That Hill is height from its first bar, and it states the record’s first claim: two lovers cannot know each other, because each is locked in a sex, and the wish to “swap our places” is a bargain only God could make. It is a pop single built from rhythm and sampled sound rather than from a band, and it is also a disclosure that can be stated and holds. The day side of the record begins there.
EMI released the album in September 1985, and EMI America in the United States. Kate Bush produced it. After The Dreaming of 1982 had sold less and been heard as difficult, she built her own studio and took about three years over the new record, which was recorded in 1984 and 1985. It reached number one. Four of the five songs on its first side were issued as singles: Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting, the title track and The Big Sky. The second side, a suite, refused the single altogether.
The architecture is two sides under two names. Side one, Hounds of Love, is five discrete songs. Side two, The Ninth Wave, is a suite in seven parts that run into one another, heard as one passage. The record is judged as one album and its sequence is counted once: a day side of songs and a night side of a single night, sky and rain above, then sea and ice. What the first side holds apart the second holds together, and nearly every judgment of the record follows that division, crediting the suite and charging the songs that could change places.
Movement II
Cloudbusting is the summit of the first side and its fullest song. A child watches a father who makes rain, sees him taken by the state, and keeps the adoration beside the loss; the record lets both stand. It builds on strings and a marching drum to a release that is plainly grand, and the military snare under it is part of what the song knows. Mother Stands for Comfort, before it, is the slightest song on the record, a mother’s complicity sung over a fretless bass, and Cloudbusting’s father and son answer it across the side.
The rest of the side renders states more than meanings. The title track is the fear of being caught by love, the hounds as pursuing desire. The Big Sky is wonder, sung in a multi-tracked chorus, and it says one thing at length: its long close is permitted rather than compelled, and cluttered at the end. These songs could change order without loss. Here the form is a container for strong songs, and the subtractive test bites: of the five, The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort are what the record could lose with least loss.
The sound is the swerve. Drums and Fairlight carry the argument of the songs, and balalaika and didgeridoo stand in a chart single; Bush produces dense arrangements and keeps them legible. The departure is real, and the stake was a career that needed a commercial rebound. But it is partly a synthesis: the drum-led Fairlight sound was shared with Peter Gabriel’s records of the same years, and The Dreaming had made the more radical turn first. What the record added was the joining, one artist authoring every element of a mainstream record built from rhythm, sampled sound and texture, and then its second side.
Movement III
The second side begins with a piano and a single voice. And Dream of Sheep is a lullaby sung to someone drowning: a woman in the water at night, a light on her lifejacket, “little light shining”, drifting toward a sleep she must not take. The height has changed kind, from the grandeur of Cloudbusting to an intimacy close enough to touch, and the record has changed form. From here to the end nothing stands apart as a song, and the parts run on into one another.
The title draws on Tennyson’s Arthur, the ninth wave that brings the child ashore, and the suite is built on one of the oldest patterns there is, the night-sea journey. Under Ice is the descent: the body under the frozen surface, the voice treated and made as composition, a terror of enclosure. Every stage that follows carries load, and the particular holds throughout: not a soul in allegory but a woman, a lifejacket, a light, her own mother and brothers, a kitchen. This is myth built, not evoked, and it is the record’s strongest claim on the gate it otherwise misses.
The form is the knowledge. A continuous suite, cut between sleep and waking, with voices breaking in from outside, says what a sequence of songs could not: that the drowning woman’s night is one consciousness drifting in and out of itself. Change the form, and band the seven parts as songs, and the record would stop knowing it. Each part is a stage the night requires; remove one and the passage breaks. The subtractive test, which bites on the first side, finds almost nothing to remove here.
Movement IV
Waking the Witch is the ordeal. Voices call the sleeper from the world above, the call to “wake up” among them, and she cannot answer; then the dream turns to a trial by water, the ducking of a witch, where to sink is to be proved innocent and to float is to be condemned. The drowning woman is tried by the element that is drowning her. It ends in a radio and a helicopter, the rescue overheard from inside. The song reaches terror, and its collage of voices is exact, though in places so dense that the voices blur.
Watching You Without Me is the soul’s visit home. The woman stands in her own house, unseen and unheard, and the voices of the room are mixed past her, so that the listener hears her as the household cannot. Jig of Life follows, the plea of a self not yet born, who holds her to life with a claim on the future; Irish players are set against the Fairlight, and neither turns to pastiche. Family, home and the unborn are the voices that keep her up. The suite discloses a consciousness at the edge of death, held up by love.
That disclosure is a condition, not an atmosphere, and it is credited as one. It is held below the bar because much of the suite is felt more than articulated: the sequence moves the listener through a state that can be named more easily than its meaning can be stated, and the witch trial is a figure of dream rather than a finding about the world that held such trials. With the first side’s two states, wonder and the fear of being caught, that holds the record’s disclosure a tenth short of the gate.
Movement V
Hello Earth is the record’s summit. The view lifts from the water to above the world, and the song opens into a chorus singing low and wordless over the earth seen whole. A woman’s voice reaching across a divide that cannot be crossed is the law of the record, and here the divide is widest: the one above, the earth below. Then The Morning Fog: dawn after the night, and a list of those she will tell she loves. The dawn is given; whether it is real the record leaves open, and the question has not closed.
One law governs both sides. Running Up That Hill and Hello Earth, the two most distant pieces, obey it: lover from lover, child from father, the drowning from home, in a sound world of drum, Fairlight and voice that spans the pop single and the choral elegy. The big sky and the rainmaker of the first side become the sea and the ice of the second. Side one’s songs are bound by sound and theme more than by structure, and two of them sit loosely, but the range is wide and the law holds.
Forty-one years have tested the record. It has stayed in print, remastered under Bush’s supervision, and in 2022 its first track returned to the top of the charts and reached a new generation, though presence is not proof of permanence, and the drum machine and Fairlight presets date parts of the first side to 1985. What it holds is wide: a couple, a family across both sides, the state in one arrest, history in one trial, the sacred, the natural order, the earth seen whole, joined in the suite in one night and one woman. Labour is absent, and the state and history are glimpsed through single figures; within that, the night side holds more than any single song could.
Act III · The Twelve
Twelve tracks on two sides, and the subtractive test falls differently on each. Side two passes it almost whole: each of its seven parts is a stage the night requires, the drift into sleep in And Dream of Sheep, the body under the ice, the trial in Waking the Witch, the soul at home unseen, the future self pleading in Jig of Life, the view from above in Hello Earth, the morning. Remove one and the passage breaks. Side one is a set of songs, and the test bites there. Mother Stands for Comfort is the slightest, though its mother’s complicity is answered by the father and son of Cloudbusting, and The Big Sky’s long close is permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The record states more than a mood, and says some of it in sound. Running Up That Hill makes a claim that holds: two lovers cannot know each other because each is locked in a sex, and the wish to “swap our places” is a bargain only God could make. Cloudbusting sees a father taken by the state through a child’s adoring eyes and lets the adoration stand beside the loss. The Ninth Wave discloses a consciousness at the edge of death, held to life by love and the voices of home: a condition, not an atmosphere. It is held below the bar because much of the suite is felt more than articulated, the witch trial is a dream-figure rather than a social finding, and two songs of side one render states more than meanings.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation comes often and in more than one kind. The opening of Running Up That Hill, a drum pattern and a cello figure on the Fairlight under a voice pitched between plea and threat, is height from the first bar. Cloudbusting builds on strings and a marching drum to a release that is plainly grand. On side two the height changes kind: the piano and single voice of And Dream of Sheep, “little light shining”, a lullaby sung to someone drowning; then Hello Earth opening into a chorus sung low and wordless over the world seen from above, the record’s summit. Under Ice and Waking the Witch reach terror. Mother Stands for Comfort and The Big Sky do not rise, and some of the height leans on a sound now heard as of its year.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth is built here, not only evoked. The Ninth Wave is a night-sea journey with every stage carrying load: immersion, descent under ice, ordeal by water in the ducking of the witch, where to sink is to be proved innocent and to float is to be condemned, the soul’s visit home, the plea of the unborn, the vision from above, and return at dawn. The title draws on Tennyson’s Arthur, the wave that brings the child ashore. The particular holds: a woman, a lifejacket, a light, her mother and brothers, a kitchen. Side one adds the rainmaker and his son, the deal with God and the hounds of desire, but as separate songs, and the hounds and the sky are evoked more than built.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The inheritance is Bush’s own and her decade’s. After The Dreaming (1982) sold less and was heard as difficult, she built her own studio, took about three years, and returned with a first side that made rhythm the leading voice of the pop song, drums and Fairlight carrying the argument and balalaika and didgeridoo in a chart single, and a second side given to a continuous suite about a woman drowning, issued at the height of a pop career. The stake was real: a commercial rebound was needed, and side two refused the single. What holds it below the bar is synthesis: the side-long suite was progressive rock’s form, the drum-led Fairlight sound was shared with Peter Gabriel’s records of the same years, and The Dreaming made the more radical turn first.
Score: 8.4 / 10
On side two the form is the knowledge. A continuous suite, cut between sleep and waking, with voices breaking in from outside, the call to wake and then a radio and a helicopter at the end of Waking the Witch, says what a sequence of songs could not: that the drowning woman’s night is one consciousness drifting in and out of itself. Watching You Without Me is sung by someone who cannot be heard, and the voices in the room are mixed past her. The sequence is counted here, once: a day side of songs and a night side of the suite. What holds it from the top is that side one’s strong songs could change order without loss, so half the record’s form is container rather than instrument.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Evidence over forty-one years. The Ninth Wave keeps yielding: the relation of the witch trial to the drowning, of Jig of Life to And Dream of Sheep, of the ice to the sky of side one, and the question whether the woman lives, for the dawn is given and its reality left open. Running Up That Hill reads one way as a love song and another as a song about gender, and was taken up and heard again by a new public in 2022. The figure is held because side one’s songs, apart from the first and Cloudbusting, are exhausted sooner, and much of the return is to the sound rather than to new meaning.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is the pop and rock album of the mid 1980s. The intrinsic force is high: the record showed that one artist, producing herself on a sampling instrument in her own studio, could make a mainstream record whose songs were built from rhythm, sampled sound and texture rather than from band arrangement, and could take a long continuous suite to number one, joined to a woman’s authorship of every element. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record is commonly credited as a model for the self-producing woman auteur in pop, with Björk and Tori Amos often named, Running Up That Hill became a standard and returned to the top of the charts in 2022, and the album is placed high whenever its decade is counted. Part of the sound was shared, and the influence is of example and persona as much as practice.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-one years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, in print since release and remastered under Bush’s supervision. Presence is continuous and wide, and widened again in 2022, when the first track reached a new generation; presence is not proof of permanence. The fabric is charged: the LinnDrum, the Fairlight presets and the gated sound of some tracks are sounds of 1985, and parts of side one are heard as of their decade. Side two is less fixed to its year. It stands level with Housekeeping and The Queen Is Dead, and a tenth below Low.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is high and load-bearing. Bush’s production keeps dense arrangements legible: the drum pattern and Fairlight figure of Running Up That Hill, the strings and military snare of Cloudbusting, a fretless bass under Mother Stands for Comfort, Irish players set against the Fairlight in Jig of Life without either turning to pastiche. Her voice runs from whisper to cry to the multi-tracked chorus of The Big Sky, and the vocal treatment in Under Ice is made as composition. The segues of the suite and the collage of voices in Waking the Witch are exact. The faults are spread: The Big Sky is cluttered and overextended at its close, some timbres are generic for 1985, and Waking the Witch is so dense in places that its voices blur.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements, the drum-driven single Running Up That Hill and the choral chant of Hello Earth. They obey one law: a woman’s voice reaching across a divide that cannot be crossed, lover from lover, child from father, the drowning from home, the earth from the one above it, in a sound world of drum, Fairlight and voice that spans the pop single and the choral elegy. Weather and element join the sides: the big sky and the rainmaker of side one become the sea and the ice of side two. The range is wide and the law holds. Side one’s songs are bound by sound and theme more than by structure, and two of them sit loosely: that holds the figure.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held fully, at its limit, in the suite. The couple is held in Running Up That Hill and the title track; the family in mother, father, son and brothers across both sides; the state in the arrest of the father in Cloudbusting; history in the witch trial; the sacred in the deal with God and the chant; the natural order in sky, rain, sea and ice; the earth seen whole in Hello Earth. The suite integrates several of these in one night and one woman. What holds the figure lowest: labour is absent, the state and history are glimpsed through single figures, and side one lists its orders song by song rather than holding them together.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime and The Made at 8.8, then The Archetypal Deep and The Living Form at 8.7. Height from the first bar of the opening single to the wordless chorus of Hello Earth, a production that keeps dense arrangements legible and makes the voice composition, a night-sea journey built stage by stage around a particular woman, and a continuous suite whose form is the drowning consciousness it describes.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.8: a couple, a family, the state in one arrest, history in one trial, the sacred and the natural order, joined in the suite but listed song by song on the first side, with labour absent. Below the rest, The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 8.4: much of the suite is felt more than stated and the trial is a figure of dream, and the turn joins Gabriel’s sound, progressive rock’s side-long form and the singer’s own earlier and more radical record.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.5 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.7, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Archetypal Deep at 8.7, Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 and The Imperishable at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 and The Swerve at 8.4 fall short, each by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.4, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.8. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate, and by the aggregate, which stands below 9.0.
Basis · the album as first released by EMI in September 1985 (EMI America in the United States), both sides in their original sequence: side one, Hounds of Love, five songs; side two, The Ninth Wave, a suite in seven parts, judged as one suite. Produced by Kate Bush; judged from knowledge of the recording, its making and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The 2018 remasters and the 1997 CD with bonus tracks are not the object, and the bonus tracks are set aside. Songs are cited by title, and lyrics are quoted only in fragments of four words or fewer whose words are certain. Facts that could not be verified, among them the track timings and side lengths, where beyond her own studio the record was made, the names of the players beside Bush, the source of the spoken line that opens the title track, the origin and arranger of the chant in Hello Earth, whether the sleeve quotes Tennyson, whether the first pressing carried a subtitle to Running Up That Hill, and a later staging of the suite, are not given.