The timeless appeal of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’

In 1985, Kate Bush released her epic album, “Hounds of Love.” She was 27 years old, at the peak of her creative powers.

It’s been 40 years since “Hounds of Love” first appeared, yet it remains relevant and contemporary. Recently, Australian musician, writer and academic Leah Kardos wrote a book as part of the 33 1/3 music series on outstanding historical records. It’s called “Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love.”

We here at WPR’s “BETA” love Kate Bush’s music and were excited to visit with Kardos to discuss the music.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Steve Gotcher: “Hounds of Love” is Kate Bush’s fifth album. How were the conditions for making this record different from the previous four, and what was the impact on her creative process?

Leah Kardos: That’s a really big question. In my opinion, having her own home studio was the big difference. This was the second record that she had produced herself, but the first one where she had complete control over her environment and the pace of how she worked. She took her time, and she had complete control of everything that was going on. I think it made a big difference in terms of the atmosphere, the tone and the content of the record. It’s very coherent and elegant.

Her reflections on making “Hounds of Love” were that she made most of it by staring out of a window onto the skyscapes and landscapes. And she could see for miles. I think that aspect and perspective filter down into the album itself. But there are so many things that make this album unique. For me, I think it’s her being in control.

SG: “Hounds of Love” was released in 1985, and the first song on the record, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” became a worldwide hit. Thirty-seven years later, with the help of the Netflix sci-fi series “Stranger Things,” the song became an even larger worldwide hit. How do you account for the fantastic appeal of this first song on the record?

LK: I think it’s a fascinating and resonant song. In the book, I play around with some ideas about how maybe it was not just that the music is immaculately produced, interesting and memorable, but also that it speaks to our moment.

We were coming out of the second half of lockdown and COVID-19, and the omicron variant had us returning to lockdown in 2022. When we emerged from that strange, surreal experience that the whole globe shared, the world looked different.

A lot of us were feeling the effects of isolation. I think that the song caught on with a lot of people because they resonated with its message of wanting to connect with other people and wanting to empathize with other people.

But also, the song is kick-ass. Many Gen Z people thought the song was new. They didn’t know it was nearly 40 years old. I think there was a bit of confluence about the aesthetic being on trend again.

SG: The title track, “Hounds of Love,” starts with dialogue from a 1957 horror film, “Night of the Demon.” And then, in the verse, Kate sings, “The hounds of love are hunting me.” I wonder if this is a horror song? Is this a love song? Is it a combination?

LK: I think it’s a song about love. I think it’s a song about the ambiguity of love. And it speaks to somebody wanting to escape the prospect of love, not wanting to be trapped or tied down by it.

She points to childhood fears of being hunted down by something, but she alludes to the fact that you’re hunted down by something you’re afraid of. Still, maybe that thing that’s hunting you down is just a dog that wants to play and lick your face, and so I think it’s a lovely image of romantic desire and how confusing it can be.

I’m unsure if she’s painting it as a horror movie. Maybe she is. She also has another reference to Alfred Hitchcock in the music video. So, pulling all those things to the surface, I think, gives us a little insight into her as a songwriter.

SG: The song “The Big Sky” lightens the mood. But Kate said this one gave her a lot of trouble. What kind of problems did she encounter with this song?

LK: I gathered from my research that the song sounded completely different at one point. She developed an arrangement that didn’t have the same rhythms or the same instrumentation, and it had a totally different vibe. And for whatever reason, they kept playing with it, adding layers, doing stuff to it, and it just wouldn’t gel. It just wouldn’t sound good.

I think the version that we know today is the one that begins with layers of ideas, and after a while, it becomes this big, rambunctious party of jubilant noise. I think that arrangement perhaps came relatively late in the day.

I think she might not have felt delighted with the mix because the original version that came out in 1985 has been superseded in the canon now by the one that’s the single mix, which is the new one that has been put in its place in the reissues. A whole bunch of reissues came out in 2018, and that’s the one that’s there. I think it’s great.

SG: The album turns dark with the song “Mother Stands for Comfort,” about a mother who goes as far as she can to protect an evil child. And it also kind of evokes an image of Norman Bates. You mentioned Alfred Hitchcock before. What’s your take on this song?

LK: When I sat down to look at the whole thing and consider what was going on as an entire piece, the song came alive for me. And indeed, the theme of motherhood and the maternal instinct.

It coheres with the themes of children growing up and facing challenges, as well as parents, mothers and fathers. It speaks to love and the unconditional nature of maternal love, and of course, that’s the linchpin that links directly to the other side of the album, “Jig of Life,” where a mother travels through time and space to protect her own. These themes are powerful. I think they resonate with each other.

The music, my God, is just amazing. The bending bass. It’s like this constantly bending, gurning feeling. It’s like an unbreakable rubbery, intense sort of force that’s in direct polyphony with her singing. The whole thing is like squirming, but it’s also kind of safe. Then you’ve got these sound effects, like gunshots, breaking glass, or clattering pots and pans breaking in. It’s just a fantastic construction.

SG: “Cloudbusting” tells the story of Cosmic Orgone engineer Wilhelm Reich and his son, Peter, and it inspired a short film starring Kate as Peter and Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm. Is this song about something that happened, or is this story all made up?

LK: I’ve read the book — this is Peter Reich’s book, “Book of Dreams” — and a lot of it’s written like a dream. It’s written from childhood memories that lapse between what reads like fantasy or dreamscape into reality, and it’s then going back in time and remembering his childhood through dreams. I presume that is what he remembers. But of course, he remembers many things that today we would consider magical or a bit dubious. He remembers the cloudbuster working and making it rain.

SG: Side two of “Hounds of Love” features a suite of music. It’s an entirely different beast than side one in my mind. It features seven pieces titled “The Ninth Wave.” In the suite, we go from someone floating in ice-cold water to someone trapped under the ice. Then this person wakes up, there’s a witch trial and there’s a ghost. How do all of these songs on “The Ninth Wave” fit together?

LK: When you describe it like that, it does sound crazy. The key to understanding it is that this woman is lost at sea and edging in and out of consciousness. She’s trying to stay awake because she realizes if she falls asleep, she might drown or she might have nightmares.

But then, of course, when she does edge into sleep, or she lapses into sleep, that’s when the nightmares come. She has these experiences of dreaming about skating on the ice and encountering herself trapped under the ice. She has a dream where people are telling her to wake up because someone’s here to see her. And she’s then subjected to a horrific witch trial. She has experience of being between life and death and death and watching her family wondering where she is.

Then she has another quite psychedelic experience where she comes from the future and comes to visit herself in the present time to say you have to survive and be strong. Then she’s reflected up in space like space is a mirror, and she’s looking back down on earth and seeing the storm come and seeing herself in danger and can’t do anything to help it but also looking at the whole earth as a small insignificant thing and everyone’s troubles are small and insignificant.

At that point, you think, oh, she’s done for. Then there is this mysterious coda where she’s falling like a stone, and maybe she’s drowned and she’s dead and falling to the bottom of the ocean, or she’s falling to the shore.

But whatever it is, it’s a happy ending either way because she’s come out the other side, and she understands. She says, “I love you better now.” It’s the idea that she’s gone through a trial and come out the other end enlightened. She’s experienced catharsis, and that’s the narrative arc. But it’s all happened in her mind. It’s a psychological drama.

SG: It’s rare for an album to stand up to the test of time like “Hounds of Love” has. Amazingly, it’s 40 years later, and we’re still discussing it. What makes this record in your mind so timeless?

LK: Well, it’s really, really, really good. It’s just really good. And I think that helps, doesn’t it? All the songs are great and there are no duds. I know that some people don’t listen to the second side as often as they do the first, but as a continuing listening experience, it’s so rewarding because she’s embedded so much detail into it.

I sat down to write this book thinking, wow, I know this album inside out. But I learned that the closer you listen, the more it gives you. And albums like this reward you when you pay attention continually over the years. It is a fantastic achievement for an artist to create something so rich and deep that it will continue rewarding people who engage with it for decades.