Aerial
| Kate Bush
Aerial
Aerial is the eighth studio album by the English singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush, released in 2005, twelve years after her 1993 album The Red Shoes. It is her only double album to date. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Legendary singer's first new LP in 12 years is a 2xCD record that illuminating her love for her son, her life, and everything from Elvis to the joy of washing clothes to the digits in pi-- all backed by suitably low-key backdrop of piano, a pastel rhythm section, and her own lush pallet of vocal textures.
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The Guardian
You catch a faint whiff of Pink Floyd and her old mentor Dave Gilmour on the title track, but otherwise it sounds like nothing other than Bush's own back catalogue. It is filled with things only Kate Bush would do.
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Sputnik Music
Hounds Of Love is, after all, one of the greatest albums of all time in my eyes, so to say Aerial even competes with it is a compliment in itself; to say it comes close to matching it is high praise indeed.
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Telegraph
Fifty per cent perfect, then, and fifty per cent abysmal, Aerial is not so much a curate's egg as a cardinal's omelette.
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Slant Magazine
Much like Stevie Nicks’s Trouble In Shangri-La, Aerial sounds dateless.
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BBC Music
Concept albums are not everyone's cup of tea - but this is a masterpiece.
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Pop Matters
Twelve years is a long time, but Bush's latest shows that she's still one of the most unique artists out there.
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musicOMH
Like all ambitious double albums, Aeriel is not without its flaws, but even Bush’s moments of failure are much more interesting than those of her contemporaries. And when Aeriel works, which it does for the vast majority of the album, it sounds sweeter and more beautiful than anything else on earth. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take her another 12 years to make the next one.
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Drowned in Sound
Some may argue that the album's lack of change from previous material represents a lack of effort but Aerial is timeless. It doesn't dwell in a certain space of the timeline of music, it nestles in a perpindicular direction, possibly in a seperate dimension construced in isolation on the fringe of insanity. Maybe some questions shouldnt be asked, or at least answered.
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AllMusic
For everyone else, those who purchased much of Bush's earlier catalog because of its depth, quality, and vision, Aerial will sound exactly like what it is, a new Kate Bush record: full of her obsessions, lushly romantic paeans to things mundane and cosmic, and her ability to add dimension and transfer emotion though song.
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Uncut
Following a 12-year hiatus during which she became a mother, Bush returns with this spacious, organic double album. The second disc traces the arc of a summer’s day, each song threaded with birdsong.
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NME
‘Aerial’ is a happy album that celebrates Bush’s son on the Tudor folk of ‘Bertie’ and her late mum on the delicate ‘A Coral Room’. Musical phrases repeat throughout, creating the feeling of a suite that swoops from the heart-stopping hooks of ‘Prologue’ to the Balearic funk of ‘Nocturn’. She even makes listing the components of Pi sound sensuous.
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Fear of Albums
Aerial is a double album, and similar to Hounds of Love, contains two distinct halves. Disc one, entitled “A Sea of Honey,” is a series of unrelated tunes. Disc two, which is called “A Sky of Honey,” is made up of one long song that spans a single summer day. While the album probably doesn’t deserve its ridiculous running length, it is nice to see Bush back in the music game.
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BBC America
“Aerial” is a peak in a career of peaks, with a mountainous visual depiction of a sound file (more peaks) on the cover. It was reassuring to note the wayward instinct still ran strong in her work, not least in the song “π”: the only pop song to attempt a musical rendition of the mathematical construct π, to 150 decimal places. Apparently she got some of it wrong, the rebel.
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The 405
Staged as the third and final act of Before The Dawn, it's easy to see why Kate wanted to perform A Sky of Honey in its entirety. The concept, the music and the thematic flow of the suite worked well as a performance piece and made for a bright counterpart to the dark and moody The Ninth Wave, which came before it. Happy birthday, Aerial. Here's hoping Kate gives you a new sibling in the not too distant future.
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The Solute Record Club
Kate Bush came back into the music world with one of the strongest albums in her entire career, only not beating out Hounds of Love and The Dreaming in my book (and I don’t know how much of this is nostalgia driven).
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Stereogum
The double-disc Aerial is appropriately insular and earthy, blending bits of Renaissance Faire folk, piano balladry, and flamenco into extended aural sighs. A Sea of Honey is the more visceral (and engaging) of the two discs, with Bush's arresting Elvis daydream "King of the Mountain" and the oddly sensual "Mrs. Bartolozzi," which boasts a bizarre sexual metaphor (clothes twisting erotically in a washing machine) that only Bush could sell successfully.
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Don Ignacio
[Aerial is] a whopping double album and both discs are a treat. The structure is strikingly similar to The Hounds of Love. Disc one, titled A Sea of Honey, contains what could be "pop singles," and disc two, titled A Sky of Honey is a very interesting concept album thematically tied to "birdsong."
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
Its often subtle, but Aerial is full of beautiful and graceful ideas, and constitutes a very impressive comeback for Bush after years away from the limelight; it’s easily her strongest album since The Hounds of Love.
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A 1000 Mistakes
Overall as a . . . whole album I just love it the best out of all her albums, or I just simply enjoy it the very best from the beginning to the end. I can’t wait to hear that new live album at the end of month too.
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but she's a girl
Both discs, but particularly 'A Sky of Honey' are joyful and somehow serene. If you can imagine experiencing the most perfect day outside, surrounded by nature, that's how it makes you feel. If this album is any indication, Kate Bush is now a very happy woman, and it shows in her music. Personally, I think that 'Aerial' is her best work since 'Hounds of Love', and since I think that is one of the best albums ever, that's high praise.
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