Hounds of Love

Production

Following the disappointing sales of Bush's fourth album, The Dreaming, EMI was concerned about sales largely due to the long time period it took to produce the album. "I finished my last album, did the promotion, then found myself in a kind of limbo," she later explained. "It took me four or five months to be able even to write again. It's very difficult when you've been working for years, doing one album after another. You need fresh things to stimulate you. That's why I decided to take a bit of the summer out and spend time with my boyfriend and with my family and friends, just relaxing. Not being Kate Bush the singer; just being myself." In the summer of 1983, Bush built her own 48-track studio in the barn behind her family home which she could use any time she liked.

Bush began recording demos for Hounds of Love in January 1984. Rather than re-record music, she took the demos and enhanced them during the recording sessions. After five months, she began overdubbing and mixing the album in a process that took a year. The recording sessions included use of the Fairlight CMI synthesiser, piano, traditional Irish instruments, and layered vocals. The chorale in "Hello Earth" is a segment from the traditional Georgian song "Tsintskaro," performed by the Richard Hickox Singers. The lines "It's in the trees! It's coming!" from the beginning of the title track are sampled from a seance scene from the 1957 British horror film Night of the Demon, spoken by actor Reginald Beckwith.

The album was produced as two suites - side one being "Hounds of Love" and side two a seven-track concept piece, "The Ninth Wave". Bush described it as being "about a person who is alone in the water for the night. It's about their past, present and future coming to keep them awake, to stop them drowning, to stop them going to sleep until the morning comes."

Release and promotion

On 5 August 1985 Bush performed the new single "Running Up That Hill" on Terry Wogan's BBC1 chat show Wogan. The single entered the UK singles chart at number 9 and ultimately peaked at number 3, becoming Bush's second highest charting single (after her chart-topping debut single "Wuthering Heights").

The album launch party was held at the London Planetarium on 5 September 1985, which was the first occasion that Bush and Palmer officially appeared in public as a couple. The invited guests were treated to a playback of the entire album while watching a laser show inside the Planetarium. Hounds of Love was released 16 September 1985 by EMI Records on vinyl, XDR cassette and compact disc formats. It entered the UK album chart at number one, knocking Madonna's Like a Virgin from the top position. The album marked Bush's breakthrough into the American charts with the Top 40 hit "Running Up That Hill". The album also yielded a set of videos, one of which was "Cloudbusting", directed by Julian Doyle, and co-starring Donald Sutherland. The video—like the song—was inspired by the life of psychologist Wilhelm Reich.

On 16 June 1997 a remastered version of the album was issued on CD as part of EMI's "First Centenary" reissue series. The "EMI First Centenary" edition included six bonus tracks: 12" mixes of "The Big Sky" and "Running Up That Hill", and the B-sides "Under The Ivy", "Burning Bridge", "My Lagan Love", and "Be Kind To My Mistakes", the last of which was written for Nicolas Roeg's 1986 film Castaway and plays during the opening scene.

In 2010, Audio Fidelity reissued Hounds of Love on vinyl with new remastering by Steve Hoffman.

A 10" pink vinyl record with four songs taken from the album ("The Big Sky", "Cloudbusting", "Watching You Without Me" and "Jig of Life") was released by Audio Fidelity (catalogue number AFZEP 001) on 16 April 2011 for Record Store Day 2011, limited to 1000 copies worldwide.

29 years later, in the 2014 Before the Dawn concerts, Bush performed live all of the album's tracks for the first time, except The Big Sky and Mother Stands for Comfort. Running Up That Hill was performed at the concert, however, it was first performed in 1987 as part of The Secret Policeman's Third Ball benefit show for Amnesty International.

Critical reception

In the UK most reviews of the album at the time of its release were overwhelmingly positive. In a five-star review Sounds called Hounds of Love "dramatic, moving and wildly, unashamedly, beautifully romantic", before going on to state, "If I were allowed to swear, I'd say that Hounds of Love is f***ing brilliant, but me mum won't let me". NME said, "Hounds of Love is definitely weird. It's not an album for the suicidal or mums and dads. The violence of The Dreaming has turned into despair, confusion and fear – primarily of love, a subject that remains central to Bush's songwriting." The review then went on to scorn the idea that by signing to EMI Records as a teenager, Bush had allowed herself to be moulded in their corporate image, suggesting that on the contrary, it had enabled her to use the system for her own devices: "Our Kate's a genius, the rarest solo artist this country's ever produced. She makes sceptics dance to her tune. The company's daughter has truly screwed the system and produced the best album of the year doing it." Melody Maker was more reserved, saying, "Here she has learned you can have control without sacrificing passion and it's the heavyweight rhythm department aided and abetted by some overly fussy arrangements that get the better of her". It was particularly disappointed by "The Ninth Wave" suite on the second side of the record, feeling that "she makes huge demands on her listener and the theme is too confused and the execution too laborious and stilted to carry real weight as a complete entity".

In the USA reaction to the record was mixed. Awarding the record the title of "platter du jour" (i.e. album of the month), Spin observed that "with traces of classical, operatic, tribal and twisted pop styles, Kate creates music that observes no boundaries of musical structure or inner expression". The review noted "while her eclecticism is welcomed and rewarded in her homeland her genius is still ignored here – a situation that is truly a shame for an artist so adventurous and naturally theatrical", and hoped that "this album might gain her some well-deserved recognition from the American mainstream". However, Rolling Stone, in their first ever review of a Kate Bush record, was unimpressed: "The Mistress of Mysticism has woven another album that both dazzles and bores. Like the Beatles on their later albums, Bush is not concerned about having to perform the music live, and her orchestrations swell to the limits of technology. But unlike the Beatles, Bush often overdecorates her songs with exotica ... There's no arguing that Bush is extraordinarily talented, but as with Jonathan Richman, rock's other eternal kid, her vision will seem silly to those who believe children should be seen and not heard." The New York Times characterized the album's music as "slightly precious, calculated female art rock" and called Bush "a real master of instrumental textures," while The Independent called Hounds "a prog-pop masque of an album." Pitchfork Media gave the album a score of 10/10. Spin called it an "art-pop classic."

Accolades

The album was placed at number 10 in the NME critics' list of the best albums of 1985.

In 1998 Q magazine readers voted Hounds of Love the 48th greatest album of all time, while in 2000 the same magazine placed it at number 20 in its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever" and the third "Greatest Album of All-Time by a Female Artist" in 2002. In 2006, Q placed the album at number 4 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". In January 2006, NME named it the 41st best British album of all time. The 19th edition of British Hit Singles & Albums, published by Guinness in May 2006, included a list of the Top 100 albums of all time, as voted by readers of the book and NME readers, which placed Hounds of Love at number 70. In 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the album should be given consideration when listing albums released between 1978 and 1988 that have stood the test of time while remaining influential and enjoyable to this day. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at No. 10 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". NME placed Hounds of Love 48th on their "500 Greatest Albums of All-Time" list.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Kate Bush.

The original 1985 cassette release included the 12" single version of "Running Up That Hill" at the end of side one. The 2011 Fish People re-release contains the "Special Single Mix" version of "The Big Sky", as opposed to the original album version.