Hounds of Love |
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Released: September 16, 1985 Peak: 30 US, 13 UK, 7 CN, 6 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.21 US, 1.0 UK, 3.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: alternative rock |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks)
Total Running Time: 47:33 |
Rating: 4.266 out of 5.00 (average of 18 ratings)
Quotable:“Epic electro-pop that tackled big issues of life and death and God with gripping drama and intensity.” – Barney Hoskyns, Amazon.comAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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The Breakthrough:“Before Hounds of Love, Kate Bush’s previous albums demonstrated that she was certainly a brilliant and daring songwriter.” CQ However, her “pioneering avant-pop had been of an acquired taste, resulting in a few runaway hits but comparatively modest commercial performance.” PM“Bruised by the battering administered to 1982’s The Dreaming, Kate Bush retreated to the studio.” RD She emerged with “an epic as bonkers as its predecessor but with greater songs (and much bigger sales).” RD “It seemed as if the globe suddenly acquired that taste all at once.” PM It is “one of the greatest examples of an artist enjoying Top 40 success while luxuriating in her own eccentricities.” RS500 She “proved that prog could be catchy, feminine and memorable.” PM It was her “strongest album to date” AM and her most commercially successful. “Few women have expanded the vocabulary of rock as bewitchingly as Kate Bush; among male stars, only Prince may have taken as many risks.” AZ The Experimentation:It was ““no less experimental from a production standpoint than its predecessors” WK but it did see her “reining in the kookier aspects of The Dreaming, channeling them into epic electro-pop that tackled big issues of life and death and God with gripping drama and intensity.” AZ “The singer-songwriter’s fifth album is a repository of deeply felt wisdom and extended artistic expression, allied to technical innovation and a very British sense of pop music as being the most pleasurable of creative experiments.” CMIt is “an album that’s both emotionally charged and sonically bold.” OH “Bush layers her songs with the complexity of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and sensual lyrics.” RV “The degree of progression in her music is remarkable and not driven by fashion or style-hopping. It is always in an integral relationship with her music’s emotional core.” TB Self-Produced:“By the time she began working on Hounds of Love, Bush controlled her publishing and management companies and had built her own studio in a barn behind her family’s farm house.” CM It was entirely self-produced. “It’s a musical achievement and a testament to Bush’s unprecedented dedication to crafting an album until it’s ready.” CQ She “wasn’t going to wear the threat of an oversized recording bill wielded by the record company as justification for prematurely releasing a record.” CM “The results are spellbinding, the layered instruments recalling the Beatles at their most ornate, but also displaying an exquisite timbrel range, bringing out the richness of the individual instruments.” AMThe “Accessible” Songs:“Hounds of Love is an exaltation to light and darkness.” CQ “She muses about Freudian psychology, career challenges, love and family, dreaming sheep, and waking witches.” RS500 “It’s a practice in walking the tightrope between pop and experimental music.” CQ“Just look at the titular track: The music and Bush’s passionate voice are wild with trembling beauty amidst dark beats, threatening strings, and lyrics that are both affectionate and sinister, with a chorus backed by vocals mimicking baying hounds. The song shouldn’t work, but it does. One listen and you’re running through the woods, terrified but exhilarated, chased by a passion that leaves your heart soaring.” CQ That song and four others make up the first side of the album, which is comprised of “‘accessible’ pop songs, including the four singles” WK with “Killing Joke bassist Youth making the rockingest contribution on The Big Sky.” RD There’s also “the string-driven, magically pretty” AZ and “cinematic Cloudbusting.” OH It is “a grown son’s memories of his father inspired by the renegade psychiatrist William Reich.” CM That was also one of the album’s “dazzling videos.” AM It was directed by Julian Doyle, and co-starred Donald Sutherland and also inspired by Reich. WK
Most notable is “her masterpiece Running up That Hill,” RV “one of the most sensual recordings ever made” AM and “one of the great singles of the ‘80s.” AZ It is “a powerfully melancholic tale of communication failure between lovers.” TB “The bold, galloping drum rhythm…never lets up, with thunderous fills that punctuate the closing section.” TB Of course, the song also had one of the most astonishing resurgences when, in 2022, it was used in an episode of the Netflix series Stranger Things. It showed that “the song and album have a time-defying appeal that keeps Kate Bush’s name at the forefront of all things weird.” PM The Ninth Wave:The second side is called “The Ninth Wave,” a title taken from the Tennyson poem The Coming of Arthur. RD It is “an epic ‘story suite’” RS500 of “inter-connected pieces” TB “moving from goth terror to sci-fi abstraction to dark rustic revelry.” RS500 It is “based on the memories and hallucinations” TB of “a woman floats in the water, through day and night and, as she weakens, her mind wanders.” CM She finds herself “lapsing into a nightmare, encountering a witch-finder, imagining a loved one at home, and being visited by her future self before being rescued.” RD“The setting skips between intricately assembled passages – discordant art-rock on Waking the Witch [and] biting Celtic folk on Jig of Life,” CM which “showed that Bush is one of the few pop artists who can flirt with Celtic mysticism without sounding twee or trite.” AZ There are “ambient sound collages on Watching You Without Me” CM in which she “imagines life for those she loves without her.” CM “Bush uses samples and vocals played in reverse to synthesized sounds and folk instrumentation.” WK “The passing that comes to bear on Hello Earth culminates with a sense of rebirth on the glistening The Morning Fog.” CM “Her most ambitious piece, it gave ample opportunity to make use of the exotic sounds of her brother Paddy’s collection of unusual instruments, as well as Pink Floyd inspired sound effects.” TB Its Legacy:“In 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the album should be given consideration when listing albums…that have stood the test of time while remaining influential and enjoyable to this day.” WK It is a “visionary masterpiece, blending art pop, progressive rock, and experimental sounds.” OH It “is a musical tapestry and a visionary album” CQ that “has inspired an expansive breadth of modern artists, from Coldplay to Big Boi.” CQ“It’s no wonder Björk, Florence Welch, and Mitski are just a few of the artists who’ve been swept up in Bush’s sensual world.” RS500 “Kate Bush's introspective, empowering lyrics helped set in motion the careers of Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan.” RV “Without her example things might have been very different for all the rebellious women who came through in the 1990s, such as Bjork, Alanis Morissette, and Tori Amos.” TB Notes:A 1997 reissue added second versions of “The Big Sky” and “Running Up That Hill” and added the tracks “Be Kind to My Mistakes,” “Under the Ivy,” “Burning Bridge,” and “My Lagan Love.” |
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First posted 11/16/2010; last updated 10/3/2026. |
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