Part II
It's simply the latest, and some would say oddest, manifestation of the dissatisfaction with the musical constraints of pop which led her to become an early adopter of the world-music sounds, from uilleann pipes to Bulgarian vocal polyphony, that helped give such unique flavour to her music. Even as a teenager, she chose to open her debut album not with the Big Hit Single, but with the evocative lowing tones of humpback whale-song. Does she, I wondered, get easily bored with plain old pop music?
"It depends what you mean, because some of the greatest songs ever written in contemporary music are pop songs," she says. "'Tracks of My Tears', for instance, is for me one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written and performed. In a popular medium, you're going to get loads of stuff that is trite, but there'll also be some really special moments. I am aware that I've been around a long time, and ever since The Dreaming, I've been trying to move away from what I felt was a more straightforward pop-song structure. And particularly with this album, I've pushed it further, in that the song structures have opened up and they're much longer. To me, it's an evolving process, it's just stepped into a different stage."
Her melodies, too, have grown more diffuse on recent albums. These days, Kate Bush is probably more likely to be appreciated by an ECM [Edition of Contemporary Music record label] aficionado than a pop fan.
"Oh! Well, I'll tell you what, I don't mind that. I take that as a compliment!" It seems like she's searching for the less obvious, hunting down stuff that's not in full view.
"A bit like stuff hidden under snow! I love the comparison with ECM, because one of my favourite musicians, Eberhard Weber, was on ECM, and one of my favourite albums ever is his Pendulum [absorbing solo double-bass instrumentals], which I think is extraordinary: he has such a distinctive voice, through his instrument. That's the kind of music I really like to listen to."
Many ECM records occupy the quiet grey area between chamber-jazz and contemporary classical, a space into which Bush's music seems to be moving. Had she, I wondered, ever considered classical composition?
"No, I haven't, really. Though I quite like the idea of emulating classical music in what I do. I'm not able to orchestrate, but I can certainly direct, and give ideas. Although this isn't a classical album at all, in some ways it holds elements of that."
One of the reasons for Bush's long absence from the public eye was her decision to prioritise the obligations of parenthood.
For earlier generations, the pram in the hall was viewed as the enemy of creative promise, and as the silence from her Oxfordshire home grew longer, it certainly appeared that way for her, from the outside at least. And the arrival of her beloved Bertie in 1998 did force her into devising new ways to work, so as to afford her as much time with her son as possible.
"I had to learn how to work in a completely different way, in short snatches of time, which was so not how I'd ever worked before," she says. "I couldn't do it at first, I had to learn how to do it. It was an extremely positive thing, because for the person, as well as the person's work, it's good to experience shaking everything up and doing something completely different. I love being a mother, I think it's the best thing I've ever done, and I personally feel that it's had a very positive effect on my work. I think it's an encouraging force for creativity, it feeds creativity – it did for me, certainly."
It's perhaps understandable that Kate Bush should take so enthusiastically to parenthood, given the enduring fascination with childhood in much of her work. Indeed, in the past she has admitted that even though an adult, she still felt like a little girl in some ways.
"I have a theory that there are still parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age of between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up," she explains. "I think our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we're children, and if you're lucky enough to be treated reasonably well, and can hang onto who you are, you do have that at your core for the rest of your life. I guess that's what I meant, really: it's not that I actually think of myself as a little girl, but she is right in my core."
No, it's Grayson Perry that thinks of himself as a little girl...
"Well, I think he looks delightful, it's really sweet," she laughs. "But if he wasn't that talented, perhaps he wouldn't be so much in the public eye anyway. I like that there's this kind of eccentricity, which can be one of the more loveable sides of the English spirit. More power to him, I say! I think it's great for people to delight in their eccentricity." And indeed, it may be helpful for some artists to retain that childlike spirit to sustain their creativity, at the risk of appearing ridiculous.
"Yes, and also, if you've been lucky enough, as I was, to have a really lovely childhood, there's also a base of trust that you work from. Even though as an adult you have to be cautious – you know you can't go around trusting everything you hear, and so on – but if you have that element of trust it's very good for the creative spirit. Okay, so you're going to get beaten up a bit, but it's so much more preferable to living in a world of suspicion and cynicism, where you're trying to protect yourself all the time. You may get hurt, but you remain open, and then you can trust again."
Kate herself, of course, braved the risk of ridiculousness right from the start of her career, when her willowy, mime-derived performances, theatrical presentation and creative dancing, along with her stratospheric vocal register on "Wuthering Heights", proved a gift for impressionists, who would don fright-wigs, squeak shrilly and wave their hands around spookily in imitation.
"Understandably!" she chuckles, generously. "I think at that point it was all just funny. Everything was hilarious, really. Nobody expected the success – that first album wasn't expected to be successful at all, and that it should be so very successful was a huge shock, and just fun, in a way." Similarly, contrary to the impression most people have, she found performing live great fun.
"I enjoyed being a performer, I enjoyed the tour that I did, it was very exciting. And I enjoyed performing the videos, and hopefully, trying to find creative ways of presenting dance, and trying to make what I hoped looked like little films. But I experienced celebrity with the first hit of success: I could see that was what being famous was, and it wasn't what I'd been working towards. It was sort of fun, but it was taking me away from what I really wanted, which was to be a writer.
"So quite early on, I made the decision that I wanted to spend more time making records than doing promotion, because my desire wasn't to be famous, it was to do something interesting from a music point of view. I suppose I always thought I'd tour again some day, and it just didn't happen, I just went off along this path which led me much more into a studio environment where I became involved in production, and I really started to enjoy working on visual pieces, and gradually I came to prefer standing behind the camera, that's what I get the buzz from."
"The driving force, for me, is my desire to create interesting work. I don't really want to promote myself, I want to promote my work. The work is the interesting bit. I don't think that I'm that interesting."