Little shrew
50 Words for Snow and other Kate Bush stories, Part 1
Oddfinds is a series about the records, bands, songs, or even shops, labels and other pieces of the musical ecology that are literally ‘odd finds’. Stories, pieces of vinyl, CDs, or online sounds found in digital corners. From my point of view, an oddfind is good – very good.
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Note: This post, about Kate Bush and her album, 50 Words For Snow, starts with Little Shrew, a short and moving film about the effects of war. On her website story about the making of the film, Kate Bush writes: “I would like to ask that if you watch the animation, please make a donation to War Child, or to another charity that aids children in war.” I’d like to echo her suggestion. So, if you enjoy this article and other posts on Ziggy’s Lament since March this year when I started it, please support War Child. You can find out more about the charity and the War Child music label in the notes at the bottom of this piece.
Oddfinds #7.1
50 Words for Snow and other Kate Bush stories: part 1
A child in her eyes
I can’t remember where I first came across Kate Bush’s extraordinary album, 50 Words for Snow, but it’s just been reissued alongside a touching little film, Little Shrew (see above) based on a shortened version of the opening track, Snowflake, so I thought I’d do a little digging around the album, its legacy and some the odd moments in my long-term off and on relationship with the legendary Ms Bush and her music.
For many in my generation, Kate Bush was a key figure. She did something unique back in 1978 with Wuthering Heights; in terms of the song, the videos, the voice. In those post-punk and disco days (both the BeeGees and Boomtown Rats were among top 10 sales in the UK, and Patti Smith’s Because the Night also came out that year) Kate Bush was an oddity – and seen as an eccentric. Back then, who sang pop songs about classical 19th century novels? Who did dreamy interpretive dance videos to them? Who does that now, never mind nearly 50 years ago?
Back then, she was bit like Bjork is today – people either loved or hated her music. For some it was overblown and pretentious; for others, something unique and groundbreaking. A Marmite artist, then, maybe the original one! I can remember not liking the single Wuthering Heights much, but I did recognised the courage and originality in her performance, and would have defended her against the philistines who would mock and criticise (like my parents and, on the opposite pole, those post punks and pseudo-rebels who were too cool for school!).
In truth, I did enjoy her first album, The Kick Inside, which contains some great songs. Listening back, all the songs are familiar, but my favourite song then (and which still stands up all these years later) was The Man With the Child In His Eyes – a short, simple, moving love song, with a bit of a twist. I even bought the sheet music for it – though searching around, I can’t seem to find it now. It’s probably gone the way of a lot of ephemera from back in those days. It is amazing that she was only 19 when she released that album; a young woman doing serious, original music was an oddity back then – she was a feminist trailblazer, even if she didn’t set out to be one!
Kate Bush was born in the same year as me, so her music and her life has run parallel. However, though I originally liked The Kick Inside (and still, it turns out, know most of the words!), I didn't really follow up by engaging with her other early albums. As now, there was so much music out there to listen to and buy, and I tend to move on quickly. It’s been like for me with a lot of artists and bands. I’m not a music journalist, so I haven’t always followed the rabbit holes, threads and connections that every artist temptingly opens up (I seem to be making up for it now, though!!).
As the years passed, it was impossible not to recognise her extraordinary songwriting ability as her voice matured and became an instrument to convey the emotions and imagery that her songs contained. Ten years after her debut, she released The Sensual World, the next album of hers I bought. There’s an obvious maturity, still an inventiveness about the songs, but its probably not an album I know like The Kick Inside, or love, like the album that sparked this piece, 50 Words For Snow.
Not every artist is fortunate, or talented enough, to produce a work of genius – a classic – something that people listen to and say “Wow!”. Kate Bush has produced lots of great songs in her career and, some would argue, more than one classic album, but for me the record that blew me away with its concept and how it comes together was a record sixty five minutes long with only seven tracks – all around and about snow.
Fifty words For Snow
In the space between CDs and the second coming of vinyl lies a period when much of the music I bought was downloaded from subscription services. It was the time that began with Napster, evolved into iTunes and iPods, then into the Spotify algorithms that feed out bland genre imitations the longer your listening session go on.
I still liked owning the music so I would browse mp3s like I used to browse record shops, and did find some great music along the way. Of course, it wasn't the same as having a CD or record in my hand with the sleeve notes and artwork, but it seemed a relatively inexpensive way of finding and buying new music. When streaming services came along, this made this purchased digital music seem obsolete, and I found my way back to the physical product eventually – where it all started, I suppose.
A long winded way of getting there, but 50 Words For Snow was one of those digital albums that I bought and downloaded almost on the day it was released in late 2011. I loved it from the first moment I heard it, and it’s became an all time favourite of mine. It was one of those albums that isn’t supposed to be a Christmas album but is really (like the lovely In Winter from The Unthanks, released this week – see the bonus at the bottom of this post).1
50 Words For Snow is just not a jingle-jangle, deck-the-halls type thing that tries to sound like all the old Christmas songs. It’s a glorious suite of winter music that evokes Christmas for those who want it evoked, but stands up, in its own right, as a classic album for those who would rather not be tinselled to death at this time of year. It actually doesn’t have an explicitly Christmas song on there (there is one mention in the lyrics of Snowflake), but it feels as if it should have: there are snowflakes, and snowmen, and angels, and heavily laid tables, and star-crossed lovers and hints of the season. And there is a deeply human (and more-than-human) melancholy to the album too.
There’s a winter duet to rival Fairytale of New York in Kate Bush’s beautiful collaboration with Elton John, Snowed In At Wheeler Street. On Snowed in… the almost-but-never-quite-lovers, travel through time and tragedy, tipping into New York – like Sean and Kirsty’s bickering, drunken sots – but then on and back through time and to Paris, Rome, London and beyond. It’s a deeply romantic song – what the word ‘soulmate’ might actually mean and feel like. Kate Bush herself described it as: “like two old souls that keep on meeting up”. And it ends plaintively with them calling to each other: “I don’t want to lose you again. Oh no, not again. Not again!”
Strangely, I didn't know that the male voice on the song was Elton John (that’s why sleeve notes are so helpful!), until I picked up a vinyl copy of the album a few years later – which is a story in itself…
A few years ago, before lockdown, a friend of mine, Andy, decided with his then partner, Sophie, to sell up, live in a van and travel with their two hounds around the UK and beyond. They had lots of adventures, and there’s not the time or space to recount these here. Suffice to say that Andy is a massive music fan and was a vinyl aficionado. He had a very interesting and extensive collection – mainly because when most people started to buy CDs in the 90’s and 2000s and vinyl sales dwindled, Andy kept buying records. The result was that a number of his albums were pretty valuable. To downsize and contribute towards funding the trip, he put up his whole collection for sale, sending out spreadsheets to friends and taking the bulk of the records to record fairs in North Wales where he lived. I was both excited and aghast! He obviously loved this collection and selling it must have been a massive and difficult decision to make.
There was one particular line on the spreadsheet that I had my eye on: a vinyl pressing of Counting Crows’ 1993 debut, August And Everything After, an album I’d had loved since it came out.2 However, it was out of my price range. Only a few years later, in the wake of the vinyl revival, this album has been reissued, on vinyl of course; back then – around 2018 or so – an original vinyl version was as rare and expensive as golden hens teeth. So that wasn’t going to happen! However, Andy also had a copy of the aforementioned 50 Words For Snow on his list. It wasn’t cheap, but it was affordable. I wanted to support Andy’s van-life fund and I’d loved the album in its digital incarnation, so I bought it.
It’s a beautiful thing – in a way that perhaps only vinyl records can be – the two discs are thick and heavy; the pressing giving a depth to the music which I hadn't experienced listening to the mp3 version. The piano work is bassy and close in – intimate – like it’s being played in the room with me. The gatefold cover and the full size booklet make it a thing to cherish. And, in short, it was the record that got me hooked on buying vinyl again.
Misty (not to be confused with Hot Frosty!)
When this record first came out in 2011, the strange, wonderful world of Netflix and Hallmark Christmas movies didn’t exist (oh, to return to those days, for that reason only!).
This year however, as the record is rereleased in a beautiful new ‘Polar edition’ vinyl package, has also seen the release of Hot Frosty, a film that, by all accounts, marks the nadir in the already breathtakingly low watermark in this genre. It’s about a ‘hot’ snowman who comes to life and gets together with the widowed heroine (the snowman is played by Dustin Milligan, who was the ‘hot vet’ in the wonderful series, Schitts Creek, so maybe he’s being ‘hot’ typecast, or needs the money or something…).
Of course, I haven’t watched this movie myself, but I do have a contact who risks her sanity and reputation by watching these Christmas movies – just for the purposes of cinematic research, of course. Hot Frosty is, in my contact’s view, unwatchable, though, in fairness, other reviewers have incomprehensibly judged it more favourably, or as falling into the ‘so bad it’s almost good’ category.
What this has to do with Kate Bush is pretty tangential, but when her Snow… album first came out there were eyebrows raised about Misty, the third track on the album, which is… well, a woman singing about shagging a snowman. It sounds like it could be as naff as Hot Frosty, but somehow it isn’t. It is a little bit filthy and suggestive, but somehow never feels tawdry. It’s a romantic song that pulls you right in, until you remember what it’s actually about!:
I can feel him melting in my hand. Melting in my hand.
It could be a dream, of course, but what a dream (and anyway, she’s not sleepy). Either way, when she wakes on Sunday morning, Misty has gone:
The sheets are soaking and on my pillow: Dead leaves, bits of twisted branches and frozen garden, crushed and stolen grasses from slumbering lawn.
There have been other snowman encounters in music and culture, of course, not least The Snowman itself – the bitter sweet encounter between the little boy and the snowman who takes him of nocturnal adventures, only to end as a melted pile of snow – a remnant – in the morning.3 Kate Bush’s song feels more like an adult version of that film than anything to do with a Netflix Christmas. It shares something of the loss and yearning of the Raymond Briggs book and film, but the ending is precarious and much more disturbing, it’s a dark piece with the words:
If you're out there, I'm coming out on the ledge. I'm going out on the ledge.
It’s a masterpiece though… something probably only Kate Bush (or, more recently, Bjork) would even have attempted. Her vocal is beautiful and understated, in a way that she would probably never have attempted earlier in her career. Her piano playing is deep and rhythmic, driving the song through its thirteen minutes, so it never feels too long. It’s a performance of musical and vocal assurance… definitely, out on the ledge…
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I’ll find you.
I’ll end this first part of this piece with my response to the first track on the album, Snowflake. The track has been rereleased this month as the soundtrack of a short film, Little Shrew. This is a shorter version than the one that begins the 2011 album, which is nearly 10 minutes long – preparing us for a hypnotic musical journey of only seven tracks in an album that lasts over an hour. The Little Shrew version was produced in support of the charity War Child (of which more below in the notes if you’re inclined to dig further). 4
The song - in both its forms - starts sounding very Kate Bush, though the main vocal is by her son, Angus Macintosh, and the piano line sets the tone for the whole album, with stark repetitive riffs and melodies, and minimal instrumentation. Kate Bush calls the chorus lines, encouraging the snowflake in amongst the noise and clamour of the world and, more explicitly in the film version, of war. Both versions are poignant and affecting, and the film has shocking moments - like when the shrew crawls out of the pocket of a dead soldier, and gets caught in a devastating bombing raid. There is violence – real and implied – and yet the music continues on, quiet and insistent, like life I suppose.
The original longer version is more of a musical phenomenon – I guess that might be obvious – but the story is still beautiful and affecting. This duet between the snowflake son, and his mother as narrator might just be one of the saddest and loveliest ten minutes in popular music. The snowflake soars, marvels and what he sees in the world, gets lost and scared in the world, and yet the mother’s encouraging voice is insistent, repetitive and loving:
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
The snowflake sings:
We’re over a forest It's midnight at Christmas.
And again she encourages him:
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
Att the end, he whispers:
Be ready to catch me...
And then he is home, caught in a final electronic swirl and the album’s magic sets us up for something very, very special and very, very different.
Look out for part 2 of this post, featuring more reflections on Kate Bush and 50 Words For Snow, and the odd rabbit hole or two to go down as you might expect…
Notes and bonuses
Bonus Not-a-Christmas-Album-But-Probably-Is: The Unthanks: In Winter. The Unthanks have been one of my favourite bands for a decade and more. They always come up with something interesting and different - be it a live covers album of Anohni and Robert Wyatt songs; a tribute to Nick Drake’s mother, Molly; versions of traditional Northern England folk standards and original jazz-infused albums like Mount The Air. And this – not a Christmas record (according to Becky and Rachel Unthank on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/reel/1510611687008226), but it is really…
In Winter is as beautiful a record as you’d expect from this band, and a worthy companion to 50 Words For Snow. Here’s River River from their new album:
Bonus Merry Christmas track: Counting Crows singer, Adam Duritz has one of the great voices in rock and pop music. it’s what got me so hooked into August And Everything After and subsequent albums. I don’t always like Christmas songs, but Duritz singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from last year is damn near irresistible. You’re welcome…
Bonus did-you-know-about-David-Bowie-in-the-Snowman? video: I didn't. I must have seen this film loads of times with children and grandchildren over the years, but had missed the fact that Bowie (who seemed to get everywhere!) introduced the original version of the film! It’s a shame they took him out of subsequent showings, because, well its great to see David Bowie in anything:
Charity of the season: War Child: In their own words, “We help keep children safe and support them to heal, learn and thrive. We understand their needs, respect and stand up for their rights, and put them at the centre of everything we do – because just one child caught up in conflict is one child too many.”. War Child Records “is an independent label set up to harness the power of recorded music to change the lives of children affected by conflict.”
Back in 1995, I bought their first War Child compilation album, Help, which has one of the best track listing of any compilation, charity or not. You can find and explore it here: https://www.warchild.org.uk/get-involved/music/war-child-records/help
Bang up to date, and Kate Bush’s latest project is her short film Little Shrew, which she produced as a response to the effects of war on children. On her website she asks for donations to War Child, and I’d repeat her appeal, if you’d like to make a seasonal donation in response to this piece: https://www.katebush.com/news_article/meet-little-shrew/