Hounds of Love
| Kate Bush
Hounds of Love
Hounds of Love is the fifth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush, released by EMI Records on 16 September 1985. It was a commercial success and marked a return to the public eye for Bush after the relatively poor sales of her previous album, 1982's The Dreaming. The album's lead single, "Running Up That Hill", became one of Bush's biggest hits. The album's first side produced three further successful singles, "Cloudbusting", "Hounds of Love", and "The Big Sky". -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
With her self-produced fifth album, Kate Bush became a total auteur, embracing the possibilities of digital sampling synthesizers and creating a perfect marriage of technique and exploration.
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The Conversation
The album is an artistic statement, a swag of songs greater than the sum of its parts. In a new series, our authors nominate their favourites.
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AllMusic
Kate Bush's strongest album to date also marked her breakthrough into the American charts, and yielded a set of dazzling videos as well as an enviable body of hits, spearheaded by "Running Up That Hill," her biggest single since "Wuthering Heights."
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NME
Yes it was definitely “high art”, but it was entirely graspable in its pitch of human emotions and depth of feeling. Bush would go on to make more brilliant music, but she would never top this wondrous marriage of conceptual ingenuity and pop nous.
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XS Noize
[Hounds of Love] has been cited by numerous musical publications and artists as a trailblazing and influential work that had echoed throughout many artists’ creations over the past 31 years. Many have tried to imitate the album in sound and themes but none have surpassed the brilliance of Bush’s glorious work.
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Sputnik Music
Bush’s finesse, her creativity, are really what makes this album so incredible. “Hounds of Love” is odd, it’s emotional it ranges from being vigorous to being drowsy – but that’s what makes it a timeless classic.
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Classic Pop Magazine
Although Side One of the album (Hounds Of Love) comprised some remarkable, cutting-edge, intelligent pop songs (and kept EMI satisfied by producing a string of hit singles in Cloudbusting, the title track and The Big Sky), it was Side Two (The Ninth Wave) that marked her out as someone truly at the pinnacle of their creativity.
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The Guardian
Hounds of Love is not an album you can snatch a few songs from, but must be listened to as a whole for it to reveal its motivation and majesty.
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Album of the Year
Kate Bush's vocals are impeccable, and put over the sweet, dreamy instrumentals which were 100% produced by her, the final result is a sensationally beautiful album.
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Bowers & Wilkins
Hounds Of Love . . . was a statement of independency. Oozing quality and hits: Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), Cloudbusting and the title track, the album shows polish but also acts as a well of ideas of an often left-field variety that acted as a perfect fillip to other, contemporary, mainstream releases of that year from the likes of Phil Collins, Howard Jones, Whitney Houston and The Thompson Twins.
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Spin
With her famously elusive nature, propensity for literary lyrics, enchanting — often unearthly — vocals, and overall air of theatricality, Kate Bush pushed the boundaries of ’80s pop music, influencing countless would-be contemporaries (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Marina and the Diamonds).
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KEXP
If Kate Bush is an artist who needs no introduction - and she certainly shouldn't in these parts - then Hounds of Love is probably the reason why. With over three decades of hindsight, this album seems to be almost universally beloved, and it contains at least a couple songs that people like me - who like her just fine but are by no means Kate Bush scholars - think of as soon as you say the words "Kate Bush."
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Audioxide
Very few albums evoke the sense of mystery and wonder like Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. The music is beautifully dramatic; like a howling wind moving ferociously through a magical landscape.
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Don Ignacio
All in all, this is another masterpiece. Furthermore, reviewing this album has only made me want to gladly continue to blast "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" out of my car stereo until my ears bleed.
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Turner Classic Movies
Kate's 1985 album The Hounds Of Love was more than just exceptional however; one could certainly use that accolade in describing her four previous and all subsequent records, but Hounds Of Love was exquisite - for many quite simply the best album ever made!
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Fear of Albums
One half pop perfection, one half ambitious concept album, Hounds of Love is a marriage of Kate Bush’s artistic abilities. Side A features some really catchy, yet deep tunes. Side B, a musical suite titled “The Ninth Wave,” is about a person drifting alone in the sea at night. It’s all wonderfully composed and lushly produced, and showcases Bush at the peak of her career.
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Backseat Mafia
Hounds Of Love was a bang up to date re-establishment of everything that had made her great in the first place.
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Independent
Hounds of Love [was] the peak of her creative and commercial success. Four hit singles, all making good use of the Fairlight and backed by stunning videos, emerged from the album, the first of which was “Running Up That Hill”, her biggest hit since “Wuthering Heights”.
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The Student Playlist
Hounds Of Love was the point at which Bush subverted the public’s impression of her, overthrowing the major label system for her own ends, taking complete control of her identity just at the point at which people had thought that she had lost it. The four excellent music videos for its singles also helped put across how much expressive and confident she was this time around.
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
Hounds of Love brilliantly balances Bush’s weirdness with commercial appeal, and stands as the peak of her strong discography.
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Starling
However strange or scary this [the second half of the album] might be (what about the weird Celtic arrangements in 'Jig Of Life'? the whacky sci-fi references of 'Hello Earth?'), the album ends just perfectly with a well-made 'awakening' - the little ditty 'The Morning Fog', which has the protagonist shaking off all the nightmares and returning back to the optimism and all the loving of the first half.
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The Solute Record Club
Hounds of Love is the some of the best pop music ever committed to tape, and whilst my tastes have changed enough in the last few years to believe that The Dreaming is probably the best Kate Bush album, Hounds of Love to me is the best Kate Bush album.
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Audiophile Audition
[Hounds of Love] combined an experimental edge with her mainstream intuition, contained four chart-topping singles and several hit videos, and expanded her international audience . . . the album was a labor of love for Bush and continues to resonate with listeners and fellow musicians.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
Hounds Of Love' really is one of the greatest things in popular music. Several utterly lovely sketches send you into something approaching a blissful trance and then 'Jig Of Life' explodes out of the speakers and links everything back to reality, to dancing and to theatre.
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Quora
[Hounds of Love is] a brilliant piece of music, really weird and deeply evocative. Among many other things, she’s mixing her own voice with deeply distorted voices, piano strings with synthesizers, Gregorian chant, Irish jig, samples of astronauts, and many other elements. And somehow it all holds together.
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Gawker
Thirty years ago today, one of the finest (and wildest) pop albums of all time was released. Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love is almost perfect (for true perfection, see the Kate Bush album that preceded it, 1982’s The Dreaming) and sounds as forward-thinking as it did on September 16, 1985 (granted, it could use a remastering).
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Alternative Classix
The album - the first produced completely by Bush herself - is a masterpiece in the sense that it is both commercially viable and musically experimental. It is an album of two parts, the first half containing a series of singles, including the wildly successful "Running Up that Hill (A Deal With God)", "Cloudbusting" and the album's title track.
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New Music Ear
It wasn't until I bought [Hounds of Love] that I explored the back catalogue of this unusual, experimental and reclusive star. It was more uptempo than the previous singles and got more frantic as it went on, verging on Pop Rock. Great stuff.
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The 405
Thirty years on, The Ninth Wave and the poppier hit singles that ease you into its parent album remain a stellar career high in Kate Bush' s nigh-on-perfect discography. Moreover, Hounds of Love refuses to age and continues to be poignant and engaging.
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South China Morning Post
Hounds of Love . . . would comprise what [Bush] called two LPs in one - an A-side of catchy radio-friendly hits-in-the-making and a B-side mini-concept album called The Ninth Wave. Side one spawned hits in Running, the quirky The Big Sky and the title track. For sheer emotional power, however, the album's centrepiece was the second single and for many critics the album's standout track: Cloudbusting.
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Music Musings and Such
[Hounds of Love] is an album that remains of the ‘80s very best: In fact, it is one of the greatest-ever albums to grace the music world. Whilst Kate Bush has never produced finer moment, you have to wonder: How many other artists have matched the majesty and beauty of Hounds of Love? It is a timeless album that can suit ever mood and moment.
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London Review of Books
If anything sounds like music made in the first disarming glow of Ecstasy, an MDMA honeymoon album, it’s Hounds of Love, from 1985.
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Stereogum
[Hounds of Love is] a "break-out" album in every sense of the word, offering her most concentrated blast of sensual hooks and polished production.
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WNUR
In all, I think Hounds of Love is one of those albums that has some songs that just aren’t attractive to a particular listener. However, considering how well it was created, Bush’s amazing vocals, and just how big of a mark it left in pop and the music industry as a whole, it’s impossible to write this album off as anything but a work of art.
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Classical Album Sundays
‘Hounds Of Love’ is an extraordinary record in many ways. It was on this album that Kate, an artist who had struggled to contain her wilful genius in constricting pop songs, was able to so masterfully balance a universal sensibility and her more experimental whims, and it resulted in her most successful album, a mega hit in 1985 and today one of popular music’s most evergreen classics, No.1 in the UK (now double platinum) and a smash in the States at the time of release.
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