The Sensual World

This is a step up for Kate Bush. He previous efforts were poor at best, but what she's doing here is actually not terrible. I wouldn't just sit and listen to it, and it still does have a bit of that cheesy 80s quality to it. However, the experimentation is toned down quite a bit, and it doesn't sound as bizarre. It sounds more harmonious, and this is, therefore, not bad music 👍

Idk if Kate Bush is for me. Not bad, but it just went on forever and all sounded the same. 2*

Last night I watched the Sopranos episode where Christopher’s girlfriend was trying to get some band signed onto a label and the sound guy was like “where’s the chorus?” This is what that was like.

Wiki says Kate Bush's next album is called "Aspects of the Sensual World". How Chomskyan!

This feels extremely of its time and extremely Kate Bush, which are not bad things, but make me smile in that way that things that are extremely how they are do. I like that she says sen[s]ual, which is apparently British.

Highlights: 'Love and Anger' (my top 2 emotions), the first part of 'The Fog' that sounds like a 90s RPG 's town music.

I'm starting to have a crisis of faith about the consistency of my ratings. But I think this was solidly "fine".

Kinda boring to me and not a huge fan of her voice. 2/5

Das Album aus dem Jahr 1989 zeigt einmal mehr ihre beeindruckende stimmliche Bandbreite und emotionale Tiefe. Ihre Stimme ist zweifellos das Highlight des Albums und verleiht den Songs eine starke Intensität und Ausdruckskraft. Allerdings können die experimentellen Arrangements des Albums nicht immer überzeugen. Einige Tracks wirken durch die Vielzahl an musikalischen Einflüssen und komplexen Strukturen etwas unrund und überladen. Entschädigt wir der Aöbumhörer am Ende durch das wunderbare Stück „A Womsn Work“

Kate Bush's voice irks me

Songs were crap too, and then I heard a lyric about Hitler and that just sealed the deal for me

2 ⭐️

The first signs of cracks in Kate Bush's body of work become apparent for me with this album. This is the third one on this list, and not everything is equally strong. Fortunately, there are still enough beautiful songs on this CD to enjoy. The opener, "Sensual World," made me think this would be another "Hounds of Love," but alongside "The Fog" (featuring Nigel Kennedy on violin) and "This Woman's Work," it stands out as the absolute highlight of the album. However, I found myself losing interest and focus while listening to the rest of the tracks, which has never happened with her previous albums.

Overall, it's not a bad album, but it is clearly the weakest of the three.

The Good: Kate Bush tells us about a sensual world!!
The Bad: just whispering does not make something sensual…
The Ugly: too much whispering going on…

I recall the first time I heard “This Woman’s Work”, it was, as should be, during that dramatic moment in the He Said / She Said flick, and it always stuck to me as a song that belonged on a soundtrack.
So, decades later, I learn that a whole album was tied neatly around this tune, and that made me wonder what ever happened to the original soundtrack to the movie, as I am sure that it will be more enjoyable to listen to… for me.

I am going to have to dish out 3* to this album, not because it pains me, but because it saddens me...

Not quite as into this as the previous couple but it's still decent. Some cool experimentation with sounds and styles but it feels a bit scattered too as a result.

1989 - what a year for albums.

This Woman's Work is easily the best song from any album we've listened to so far.

I’m at a 5.

This is my first Kate Bush album – obviously, Running Up That Hill was huge a few years ago, but I never really took a deeper dive into her music.

What’s here is one hell of a look at the idea of the human condition and the need for relevancy, comfort, and connection, bedazzled and supplemented with fantastic production work that seems to be the absolute pinnacle of the mid-80s style, refined all the way to this point in 1989. Her vocals are incredible throughout this album, and the lyricism is pretty damn good throughout.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a more effective beat drop in my life than the launch of “Rocket’s Tail” – just a masterclass of how to do that sort of thing and have it work perfectly. It’s one of the many examples of great production work blending with Kate’s vision that are scattered throughout the album, but it hits brilliantly on that track in particular. This Woman’s Work might be one of the most emotional album closers that I’ve ever heard. Seeing the scene it’s paired with adds an incredible layer of depth.

Really, I could keep glowing with praise, but I just felt really touched by this album. It hits a few snags of repetition or empty spots at points, but those get immediately washed away by some great line or a great vocal hit or something crazy in the soundscape. It’s just a really fucking strong album, and a very easy 5 for me.

This isn't really my thing, but I do respect it. It's interesting at least. I really like the moodier elements, and some of the more grandiose moments. So much is forgettable for me though, and it mostly wafts along in the background, with a lot of songs blending into each other.

One of the small number of people for me who need their own scale.

Try as I might...just don't get Kate Bush. 2/5

I truly despise the late 80s, it ruined many things it dared to touch, including many great artists, and while the finale to Kate Bush's "holy trinity" is still a good album, even as someone who isn't the biggest Kate Bush fan can recognize this is the obvious lesser product. It really does start to grab hold of itself by the final couple tracks, and morph itself into something harrowing, with big moments and revolutionary realizations about the world sonically, but most of the album feels like dated, half-baked ballads with synthesized instruments galore. There's little nuggets of something good buried deep down, but it feels more interested in being the people pleaser, and it can leave me feeling bored over its relatively short runtime. It can drag, but those moments of quality do keep you going, and the reward at the end is worth the time, I'd say, but I can't help but feel that all uniqueness, all quirkiness, all charm, is lost here. This feels like an okay enough late 80s pop record, but it doesn't feel like only Bush could've made it, and that left me disappointed. There is a silver lining, and that's that I'm only more excited to listen to her other projects more, and give them a proper time of day once and for all.

I preferred Hounds of Love to this, but this was still good. Favorite songs were Heads We’re Dancing, Rocket’s Tail, and This Woman’s Work.

Oon alkanu lämmetä Kate Bushille, tekee hienoa pop-musaa ja komea äänihän tällä on. 4/5

Gorgeous, Sensual, unique, wonderful.

Lush arrangements combining rich orchestral string & piano sounds with pure 80s whoompy bass, industrial synth, gnarly guitar, and big echoey gated drums tones. She's in Depeche Mode mode here, taking a bit of the edge off her earlier more challenging work for a glossier sound that still retains the darkness and operatic flair. A few songs have a propulsive driving beat pushing verse to chorus to big a climax, building layers and layers of texture and pulsating rhythmic intensity. Others linger in a more structureless slow swelling ambient zone - a bit aimless, but they're effective platforms for her distinctive singing. Alternatingly frail and booming, smokey and piercing, whispered and wailed, the album is all about the vocal performance. It doesn't depend on deliving a central melody, but floating around a mood, rising and falling in and out of the instruments, adorning the songs with short bursts of intensity and signaling shifts in the feeling of the songs. The incredible This Woman's Work is the obvious stand out: the initial sigh is disarming, stripping back the arrangement to piano and some sparkly synth swells lets puts the full spotlight on the forcefully tender vocal and the most memorable combination lyrics/melody on the album.

Favorites: Sensual World, Love and Anger, Heads We're Dancing, Deeper Understanding, This Woman's Work

I do appreciate Kate's voice and lyrics and the music is very unique, but Kate is not music you listen to lightly. Kate is classical literature that you struggle to understand in a good way. She's hard to decipher. I listened to this mostly in my car without access to lyrics and felt like I only caught words here and there. Come home, read the lyrics, and find out one of the only songs I liked was about accidentally dancing with Hitler. I would like to come back to this one and devote more time to it. It's pretty heavy.