Most proggers regard side two of Hounds of Love as Kate Bush’s greatest work. I love it as well, and I have since I first heard it thirty years ago this coming autumn. Who wouldn’t be moved by the invocation of Tennyson’s Ninth Wave, by Kate as an ice witch, and by the observation of it all from orbit? The entire album, but especially side two, is a thing of beauty.
Equally gorgeous to me, though, is Bush’s 2005 album, Aerial, and, in particular, side two, “An Endless Sky of Honey.”
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic
The stars are caught in our hair
The stars are on our fingers
A veil of diamond dust
Just reach up and touch it
The sky’s above our heads
The sea’s around our legs
In milky, silky water
We swim further and further
–Kate Bush, “Nocturn”
Indeed, let me blunt, it’s not only my favorite Bush song, it’s probably one of my top ten songs of all time. All 42 minutes of it—an examination of the beauties and creativities in one twenty-four hour period.
The song is without a flaw, to be sure, and it’s the interplay of Bush’s ethereal vocals, the adventuresome grand piano, and the tasteful upright bass that makes this song such a gem even with nothing more than a superficial listen. The drumming, too, does much for the music. It’s not varied, it’s consistent in a Lee Harris fashion. In it’s consistency, it allows every other instrument to swirl in a varied menagerie.
But, even more than this, it’s Bush’s use of birdsong that makes this song nothing less than precious in the history of music. If music at its highest reflects the turning of the spheres, as Plato believed, then Bush has mimicked nature with perfection. It’s as though Bush embraced the Natural Law in all of its mysterious rhythms and held the entire delicate thing in a shaft of sunlight, that moment when the twilight sun peers into stained glass revealing not just the spectrum and the mote of light, but the unpredictable oceanic dance of freed dust particles.
Not atypical for prog epics, Bush broke the song in multiple parts: Prelude; Prologue; An Architect’s Dream; The Painter’s Link; Sunset; Aerial Tal; Somewhere in Between; Nocturn; and Aerial. Again, not atypically, there exist no moments of silence between the parts, each part lushly flowing into what follows.
Whose shadow, long and low
Is slipping out of wet clothes?
And changes into the most beautiful iridescent blue
Who knows who wrote that song of Summer
That blackbirds sing at dusk
This is a song of color
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust
Every sleepy light must say goodbye
To the day before it dies
In a sea of honey, a sky of honey
Keep us close to your heart
So if the skies turn dark
We may live on in comets and stars
Who knows who wrote that song of Summer
That blackbirds sing at dusk
This is a song of color
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust
Then climb into bed and turn to dust
–Kate Bush, “Sunset”
If side two of Hounds of Love, “The Ninth Wave,” reached deeply into Celtic myth, disk two of Aerial, an “Endless Sky of Honey,” reifies the thoughts of Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas More, calling upon the rigorous reflection of creation itself.
Nature makes nothing in vain, but only grace perfects nature.
In 2005, Kate Bush was that agent of Grace.
The title of this latest entry, Creation, is not particularly a surprise from Jarrett, who is primarily known for the lack of distinction in his work between creation and performance. But there is a surprise here, as Jarrett departs from his whole-concert-uncut approach. Creation’s movements are selected from several different 2014 concerts, arranged after the fact into a whole. Jarrett thus “had to become a producer,” as he explains 
If you know Jarrett’s work, but have trouble with patience on his longer solo piano outings, I would especially urge you to give Creation a try. The shorter-time format of his recent solo efforts tends to concentrate the development and give food to the impatient appetite, but (to my ears) without sacrificing any of the artisan’s craft and care.
Progarchy 