Album of the Week, July 4, 2026
Though Kate Bush wasn’t touring (she legendarily eschewed live performances aside from the occasional TV appearance from the conclusion of her 1979 “Tour of Life” for the next 35 years), she was keeping busy following the one-two hit of Hounds of Love and her appearance on Peter Gabriel’s So. She released her first greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, in 1986, featuring a re-recorded version of “Wuthering Heights” and a new single, “Experiment IV.” Though she was quiet in her official releases, she recorded the original version of “This Woman’s Work” for the 1988 John Hughes romantic comedy She’s Having a Baby while in the studio, off and on, working on her next album. It was finally released on October 16, 1989, having gestated in studio session stretching from September 1987 to July 1989.
In addition to some of her stalwart musicians like Del Palmer, her brother Paddy Bush, Alan Murphy (who died three days after the album’s release), bassist Eberhard Weber, and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore, there were some notable additional musicians who lent the album a unique color. These included Uilleann pipes from Irish musician Davy Spillane (Moving Hearts), bassist Mick Karn (Japan), orchestral arrangements from Michael Kamen, the Balanescu Quartet performing string quartet arrangements by Michael Nyman, and most of all the Bulgarian vocal ensemble Trio Bulgarka.
We begin with the title track, which is a song that almost didn’t happen. “The Sensual World” was originally Kate’s take on Molly Bloom’s famous interior monologue from James Joyce’s Ulysses, and actually set text from the novel, until the estate complained and she was forced to write new words to the track. (In 2011 on her album Director’s Cut, on which she re-recorded many of the tracks from this album and her follow-up, she was able with permission from the estate to present the original version of the track, now titled “Flower of the Mountain.”) The song itself leans into its title, with Bush using both her broadening lower range and a breathily erotic tone over a rich sonic tapestry that includes church bells, fiddle, bouzouki, whips(!), and Spillane’s brilliant Uilleann pipes. Through it all she presents a vision of a heroine experiencing the sensations of being in the physical world for the first time, stepping off the page to experience sensations and, especially, pleasure. The setting is typically brilliant for Kate; this character, formerly trapped in the two dimensional world of the book, expresses herself almost entirely on a single tone throughout the verse, only varying in pitch when rising to an earthy blues note on the repeated blue note of “ooh, yes” and in the chorus. It’s a bewitching, nearly hypnotic effect. I’ve been known to listen to it on repeat from time to time.
“Love and Anger” is another magnificent Kate uptempo song, with high energy courtesy the tight rhythm section of Stuart Elliott on drums and John Giblin on bass, a soulful piano line, backing vocals from the Trio Bulgarka (a Bulgarian folk group who had performed on the pivotal 1970s albums Les Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Volume Two and on Balkana: the Music of Bulgaria) and a wicked guitar line from Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.1 It’s all in service of a movingly mature lyric about a relationship on the rocks due to the inability of the participants to communicate about where their emotional millstones lie. The track also features one of my all-time favorite hummed parts in any song. Again, Track 2 on Kate albums is where she puts the bangers.
“The Fog,” by contrast, is a return to the world of The Ninth Wave, in which the narrator fears dissolution and loss of identity as she contemplates stepping away from her family (Kate’s father Dr. Robert Bush speaks on this track) into the water, which seems life threatening but is only waist deep. In the song, there is a deep ambivalence about the water: is it the unknown? Is it the deep and somehow threatening love of another, one who threatens to disappear, to slip into the fog? The lyrics are vulnerable and beautiful, and are given an exquisite string instrumental with enfant terrible violinist Nigel Kennedy and a taut guitar solo from Alan Murphy.
“Reaching Out” is a tenderly maternal ballad, with added emotional heft from the choral accompaniment by the Trio Bulgarka and strings arranged by composer Michael Nyman and performed by the Balanescu Quartet. (In my symphonic performance experience, we call that “luxury casting.”) Kate’s vocals on the soaring chorus are magnificent, though the verses are a bit wooly —“See how the child reaches out instinctively/to feel how fire will feel” invokes a different reaction in me than what she presumably intended.
“Heads We’re Dancing” is something entirely different. Driven by a propulsive synth line, and a shaggy dog story about a woman in 1939 who is asked by a stranger to dance, and who realizes in the morning that she was dancing with Adolf Hitler. The whole thing is a brilliant excuse for more Alan Murphy, some brilliant bass from Japan’s Mick Karn, and one of the all-time great “doo doo doo” choruses. Indeed, with each song on the first side, Kate seems to lean further into a sexily minimalist groove. (The darkly chromatic string parts, by the way, are arranged by Michael Kamen, who was by now almost a decade into his film-score career.)
Opening Side 2, “Deeper Understanding” tells the story of a narrator who disappears further and further into a rapport with a computer, until they forget to eat or sleep. Supposedly inspired by a documentary about Stephen Hawking, it’s been noted that there may be an autobiographical element here as well, as the Fairlight CMI also loads programs and has a button marked “Execute,” and Kate spent many months in front of it producing the album… Trio Bulgarka put flesh and blood on the digital heartbeat of the track with a hair-raising solo line and a resonant chorale at the end.
“Between a Man and a Woman” returns to the theme of a difficult relationship, with a twist: here Bush’s narrator warns the listener not to intervene in the “pendulum swing/between a man and a woman.” The track feels to have grown from the same roots as “Heads We’re Dancing”, as though there was one long jam session that birthed them both. By contrast, “Never Be Mine” is something new, driven by Eberhard Weber’s slinky bass and a vision of the narrator confronting the smoke from the burning stubble in a cornfield and stating “This is where I want to be,” as she burns off the last bits of her connection to an ex-lover so that she can plant the seeds of something new. Trio Bulgarka provide a moment out of time here as well, singing in ringing harmony to the departing lover as Davy Spillane provides a sympathetic tone in the pipes.
Trio Bulgarka get their ultimate shot at brilliance, going full out on “Rocket’s Tail” as the narrator calls the listener’s wistful desire to be a rocket in space “the saddest thing I’d ever seen,” then herself seizes the moment and flies into space. Bush, the Bulgarians, Stuart Elliott, John Giblin and David Gilmour are all going full out, seizing the electric moment, and then contentedly burning out into silence. It’s breathtaking.
Into the sudden silence steps “This Woman’s Work,” performed by Bush accompanying herself on piano with Michael Kamen’s orchestral arrangement. The lyric is Bush’s most deeply heartwrenching, as she sings from the point of view of a man forced to watch his wife fight for her life in childbirth as he confronts his regrets for things left unsaid and undone. It’s an astonishing, bravura performance, all the more amazing for its made-to-order origins in “She’s Having a Baby.”
I think there’s something about the records that come out when you’re in high school that have a special glow about them. While objectively Hounds of Love is an album of high brilliance, somehow it’s the emotional center of The Sensual World that keeps drawing me back; even if I only found it at the very end of my senior year, it’s still dug deep into that primal memory. And who is to say that the high concept of Hounds of Love is really superior to the personal depths of The Sensual World? It’s ultimately a triumph either way, an album that laughs, sobs, and takes steps out into a multidimensional landscape of heart and mind.
Kate wasn’t ready to burn out like a rocket just yet, and we’ll hear more from her. But first we’ll hear from another Peter Gabriel collaborator’s 1989 release and its own unexpectedly emotional moments.
You can listen to this week’s album here:
BONUS: Following the release of The Sensual World, Kate gave a rare long-form interview that was aired as The Sensual World of Kate Bush:
BONUS BONUS: An even rarer live performance by Kate from this late period, this version of “This Woman’s Work” from the Wogan television program is moving:
BONUS BONUS BONUS: While there are fewer covers of the songs from this album than of some of Kate’s other songs, the version of “Love and Anger” by Nada Surf on their covers album If I Had a Hi-Fi gets me every time. Though the audio is imperfect, this live cover from the Bowery Ballroom in 2010 is somehow even better than their studio version:
Footnotes
- One of several session appearances in 1989 for Gilmour; the others were Warren Zevon’s Transverse City and “We Got Married” on Paul McCartney’s great Flowers in the Dirt. ↩︎