Kate Bush always exploited technological advancement. In 1979, from just coathangers and Blu-Tack, the trailblazing British pop auteur pioneered the head mic for her vanguard Tour of Life. Her subsequent albums made her one of the earliest adopters of the Fairlight synthesizer that would define the ’80s. Before the Dawn, then, is a surprising throwback: the unexpurgated live album, a document of her 2014 live shows, her first in 35 years. There are no retakes or overdubs bar a few atmospheric FX. No apps, no virtual reality, no interactivity. She’s also said there won’t be a DVD, which is surprising given the show’s spectacular theatrics, conceived by the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a host of designers, puppeteers, and illusionists. The show, and this release, aren’t credited to Kate Bush but the KT Fellowship, in recognition of the vast ensemble effort. Yet in shucking off half the production, this hefty 155-minute, three-disc set (one per “act”) is also the best way that Before the Dawn could have been preserved, allowing it to tell its own story uninhibited by the busy staging.
I went to a show towards the end of the 22-date run, and was overwhelmed by how physically moving it was to see Bush in real life, since for most of mine she’s only existed in videos and BBC clip-show documentaries. The staging didn’t always have the same impact. The sublime Act One, as close to a greatest hits as we got, was stripped back—just Bush at the piano backed by her crack band.
In Act Two, Bush realized her long-held desire to dramatize “The Ninth Wave,” the conceptual B-side of 1985’s Hounds of Love, which documents a woman’s dark night of the soul as she fights for life while lost at sea. While her “husband” and real-life son Bertie McIntosh blithely carried on with domestic life inside a tiny, sloping living room set, a video depicted Bush stranded in dark, choppy waters (now released as the “And Dream of Sheep” video). Moments later, the real Bush reappeared on stage to fight sinister “fish people” who carried her body off through the aisles. The whirring blades and desperate search lights of a rescue helicopter descended from the Hammersmith Apollo’s ceiling, illuminating and buffeting the crowd. Despite some hammy dialogue, it was staggering, and in sharp contrast to Act Three, which focused on Aerial’s second side, “A Sky of Honey.” McIntosh played a landscape painter from ye olden times while a life-size marionette of a jointed-doll simpered around the stage, embracing Bush, who looked on in raptures. At 75 minutes long, it was a sickly, trying accompaniment to one of the subtler achievements in her catalogue.