Beloved by fans – a group which doesn’t include me – The Dreaming competes with Hounds of Love for Kate Bush’s best album. Matt Lindsay supplies context, information, quick flashes of insight:
Discussions on post punk tend to focus on the myriad possibilities up and coming bands were negotiating as punk’s narrow rule book was torn up and rewritten. However, it was equally galvanic to the more maverick pre-punk vanguard. Stateside, the most famous example of this was Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (1979), a ‘career suicide’ double that managed to incorporate a lo-fi rumble into its sprawling four sides while never remaining slavishly deferential to the dogmas of 76. Spiky, outré hybrids abounded, often from the most implausible sources. Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs was considered part of a trilogy with collaborator Robert Fripp’s other works, Exposure and Peter Gabriel II (aka Scratch). It was this bizarre mix of angular musical anarchy with pre-punk muso chops that Gabriel typified on III. When reviewing a somewhat similar record, Bowie’s Lodger, Jon Savage coined the term ‘avant-AOR.’ It is perhaps this tag that best describes the kind of music Bush would go on to construct.
