HOUNDSOFLOVE by Kate

Bush

“WHEN I WAS 18, I had a girlfriend with far more developed music taste than mine. She introduced me to Kate Bush’s sonic leap from her album The Dreaming [1982] to Hounds of Love [1985], which completely blew my mind. I grew up in a household where pop, world music, and jazz were played relentlessly, so I got heavy into the punk scene when I was 17. Everything I listened to had to be punk, industrial, hardcore, goth, or dark wave. I had repressed my affection for pop, and when I heard Hounds of Love for the first time, it unlocked that. I wish I could relive that moment. I remember it vividly—it was the summer of 2002, and we were at my girlfriend’s house. Her parents were on vacation, so we essentially moved in together for two weeks. It was one of those homes on the east side of Columbus where older Black folks lived, and everything was in its perfect place.

Because everything was pristine, we were confined to the record room, which had this horrendous, thick, lime-green carpet. Her parents had an incredible record collection; it covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Summer was ending, and she was going back to college in Boston. It’s strange when you’re young and the end of something precious is near. It’s not a malicious feeling, more kind of mournful. I remember listening to ‘Watching You Without Me’ and looking across the room at this person I’d known since I was 11 years old, thinking, Man, we had a good run. It was my first healthy break-up. She’s doing very well. I saw her last month when I did a reading in Boston, where she still lives, and she came with her partner and her kid.

Hounds of Love and The Dreaming create an arc of companionship, feeding into each other. The Dreaming is a very good album, but you can see that it was a stepping stone for Bush. It felt like an experiment that had gone extremely well—daring but playful. I like lush, electric sounds, large extended notes pushed to the edge of breathlessness, and big, swelling crescendos. She had to make something very good in order to learn how to make something perfect.”