The Red Shoes/director’s Cut
(reissues, 1993, 2011) 8/10, 8/10 Newly reissued, two sister albums strike up a dialogue across the decades.
OTHE STATE51 CONSPIRACY/FISH PEOPLE
NCE an archetypal old-school majorlabel star, Kate Bush is now the world’s most improbable indie artist. Having regained full ownership of her back catalogue, Bush launched her own Fish People label in 2011, releasing remastered versions of her full set of studio albums ve years ago. Through a new distribution deal with London-based independent outt The State51 Conspiracy, these remasters are now back in deluxe repackages, including handsome coloured vinyl pressings. These “indie” editions cover every Bush album from The Dreaming onwards. Owing to dierent rights agreements in the UK, her rst three will only be available as US imports.
Coincidentally, these latest reissues also coincide with the 30th anniversary of The Red Shoes. It’s still an outlier in Bush’s canon, but also an admirably ambitious move into mature adult-pop terrain – and certainly more of an exotic oddity than its patchy reputation suggests. Overstued with guest players from Prince to Eric Clapton, Nigel Kennedy to Je Beck, Bush’s seventh was a lushly produced, sprawling epic that drew inspiration both from the magical 1948 Powell & Pressburger ballet lm of the same name and the macabre Hans Christian Andersen story that inspired it.
Bush even directed a 45-minute lm to accompany the album, The Line, The Cross And The Curve, a promo-video collection framed within a fanciful fairy tale co-starring Miranda Richardson and Lindsay Kemp.
Many of the songs obliquely addressed a turbulent period for the singer, including the death of her mother Hannah, the end of her long relationship with bass player and sound engineer Del Palmer, and her new marriage to guitarist Danny Mcintosh. Both Palmer and Mcintosh play on the album.
The Red Shoes arrived in November 1993 to respectable chart success but unusually muted reviews for an artist accustomed to being routinely branded a genius. The shi towards uncharacteristically straight poprock arrangements, embraced by
Bush for a planned live tour that never happened, and the clinical, digital-heavy production were key criticisms. For some, the album was an uneasy mix of muddled literary folly and musically bland compromise, stepping o the page into the sensible world.
It seems Bush herself concurred with these negative takes. Indeed, she later remixed and re-recorded the bulk of The Red Shoes in warmer, less cluttered, emphatically analogue arrangements on her 2011 album Director’s Cut. In interviews, the singer claimed she was “trying too hard” with the original’s “edgy” digital audioscapes. Winningly, she also dismissed her accompanying lm as “a load of old bollocks”.
Played back to back today, The Red Shoes and Director’s Cut make for an interesting dialogue. Indeed, Bush’s improvements have not all aged gracefully. The original album’s lead single “Rubberband Girl”, a hymn to resilience that bounds along on a chugging locomotive rhythm, is not quite vintage Bush but still a pretty solid eort. In stark contrast, the rootsy 2011 remake is a mullet-haired, saloon-bar blues-rocker, easily one of Bush’s worst ever decisions.
In fairness, most tracks are transformed for the better. Like the tearful heartbreak ballad “And So Is Love”, a shimmering Talk Talk-ish confection in its original form, the wounded cry of a 35-year-old
make his natural habitat, but the chamber pop of “Joely” charms more convincingly.
Extras: 6/10. An unreleased track and live versions don’t add a huge amount to a record that’s nonetheless worth rediscovering.
JOHNNY MARR Spirit Power: The Best Of Johnny Marr
8/10
BMG
Solo decade summarised
Johnny Marr migrated between bands for a quarter-century aer The Smiths, his genius restless and subsidiary, but has made up for lost time since 2013 with four solo albums. This is, he says, “daytime music”, dodging middleaged ballads and introspection for rousing urban utopian sounds. Perfect single “New Town Velocity” was the breakthrough, sharing his autobiography Set The Boy Free’s ambitious teenage soul. “Leave school for poetry”, he sings, his inclusive, conding vocal leaving no-one behind. “The Messenger” denes his solo persona, “Spirit Power And Soul” his rallying cries for enduring youth, class and attitude. Synth-washed eco-protest “Armatopia” quotes Bryan Ferry’s “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall” cover, while Chic guitar and dirty motorik serve “Easy Money”’s big dumb chorus. “The Answer”, with its clamorous guitar and ¥uttering beat, is the best of two new songs. Marr’s regular band ensures a sometimes too consistent if potent palette, despite diligently varied hooks and ri s, like a more electro-minded Keith. Extras: 6/10. Five stripped, spacious demos and mixes.
THE MOVE Shazam
(reissue, 1970) CHERRY RED
7/10
From pop heroes to prog wannabes
OASIS The Masterplan
(reissue, 1998) BIG BROTHER 8/10
Brothers’ ipside goldmine remastered
Noel Gallagher not only followed The Smiths’ and The Beatles’ examples of quality B-sides, but casually proered an apparent surfeit of inspiration which made future Fabs-like evolution seem credible. That hope was blown before this peak-time shadow-album, but it collects some of Noel’s most confessional, experimental, Liamentwined music. “Some Might Say”’s No 1 triumph was rammed home by its superior B-sides “Acquiesce”, coalescing from chaos into a steamrolling stomp, and the acoustic “Talk Tonight”, with Noel far from cocksure “7,000 miles from home” following a tour bust-up. “The Swamp Song”’s harmonica cacophony and “I Am The Walrus” are live freakouts, the latter patenting Liam’s Lennon-rotten fusion. There’s ambiguous alienation from Burnage roots, as “Rockin’ Chair”’s yearning lyrics are carried by Liam’s clean, pure high notes. Oasis still soar with sky-scraping ambition, backed by the community invoked by “Stay Young”: “We’re unstoppable, because we know just what we are”.
Extras: 5/10. Coloured vinyl.
TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS Mojo
(reissue, 2010) WARNER
6/10