50 Words for Snow
Encyclopedia
50 Words for Snow is the tenth studio album by English singer-songwriter Kate Bush
. It is the second album to be released on her own label, Fish People. It is her first all-new studio album since Aerial
from 2005, and marks the first time since 1978 that she has released two new albums in one year.
, was released on 21 November 2011. The album consists of seven songs "set against a backdrop of falling snow" and has a running time of 65 minutes.
A radio edit of the first single "Wild Man
" was played on BBC Radio 2
's Ken Bruce
Show on 10 October. The single, featuring both the radio edit as well as the album version, was released on 11 October. Andy Fairweather Low guest stars on this story of a group of people exploring the Himalayas
who, upon finding evidence of the elusive, mythical Yeti
, out of compassion cover up all traces of its footprints. Priya Elan in the New Musical Express greeted the single with enthusiasm, saying: "For those of us who have been secretly longing for a return to the unflinchingly bizarre and Bush's ability to conjure up strange new worlds, 'Wild Man' is a deep joy."
In an interview with the American radio station KCRW, Bush said that the idea for the album's title song came from thinking about the myth that Eskimos have 50 words for snow. She then decided to make up increasingly fantastical words herself, such as "spangladasha," "anechoic," "blown from Polar fur," and "Robber’s Veil". The album's songs are built around Bush's quietly jazzy piano and Steve Gadd
's drums, and utilize both sung and spoken word vocals in what Classic Rock
's Stephen Dalton
calls "a...supple and experimental affair, with a contemporary chamber pop sound grounded in crisp piano, minimal percussion and light-touch electronics...billowing jazz-rock soundscapes, interwoven with fragmentary narratives delivered in a range of voices from shrill to Laurie Anderson
-style cooing.” Bassist Danny Thompson
also appears on the album.
On the first track, "Snowflake," in a song written specifically to use his still high choir-boy voice, Bush's son Albert sings the role of a falling snowflake in a song expressing the hope of a noisy world soon being hushed by snowfall. "Snowflake" drifts into "Lake Tahoe", where choral singer Stefan Roberts and Bush sing about a rarely seen ghost: a woman who appears in a Victorian gown to call to her dog, Snowflake. Bush explained to fellow musician Jamie Cullum
in an interview on Dutch Radio that she wished to explore using high male voices in contrast to her own, deeper, voice. "Misty" is about a snowman lover who melts away after a night of passion, and after "Wild Man," Elton John
and Bush as eternally divided lovers trade vocals on "Snowed In at Wheeler Street", while actor Stephen Fry
recites the "50 Words for Snow". The quiet love song "Among Angels" finishes the album.
Two stop-motion "Animation Segments" were posted on the Kate Bush Official website and YouTube, one to accompany a 2 minute 25 second section of "Misty" (called "Mistraldespair"), the other to accompany a 2 minute 33 second section of "Wild Man." "Mistraldespair" was directed by Bush and animated by Gary Pureton., while the "Wild Man" segment was created by Finn and Patrick at Brandt Animation. As of 27 November, a third piece, for "Lake Tahoe," is in production.
On 14 November 2011, NPR
played the album in its entirety for the first time. In her accompanying review of the album, NPR music critic Ann Powers
writes: "Each song on Snow grows as if from magic beans from the lush ground of the singer-songwriter's keyboard parts. The music is immersive but spacious, jazz-tinged and lushly electronic – the 53-year-old Bush, a prime inspiration for tech-savvy young auteurs ranging from St. Vincent to hip-hop's Big Boi
, pioneered the use of digital samplers in the 1980s and is still an avid aural manipulator. This time around, drummer Steve Gadd
is her most important interlocutor – the veteran studio player's gentle but firm touch draws the frame around each of her expanding landscapes. But Bush won't be restricted. Like Mitchell
on Don Juan's Restless Daughter
, she takes her time and lets her characters lead." Powers chose 50 words for the new album, describing it as "Powdery fantasia. Contemplative. Winter matins. Playful. Opium reverie. Grounded. Ghost story. Sensual. Artistic recalibration. Unhurried. Drummer's holiday. Quiet. Ode to the white keys. Imaginative. Exploration of the lower register. Floating. Mother-son duet. Solitary. Snowed-in erotica. Collaborative. Joni Mitchell answer record. Inimitable. Supernatural space odyssey. What we'd expect from Kate Bush."
Stephanie Myers on the Australian music site, Music Feeds
, calls the album's songs "hymns" to the season of Winter, and calls Bush "adept at creating slow, gorgeous song-stories that take their time to unfold." She goes on to say that "50 Words for Snow offers Bush at her prime; beyond a collection of songs just for completist fans, it's an album that's more than likely to nab her a new generation of devotees." The Guardian
's Alexis Petridis notes that "For all the subtle beauty of the orchestrations, there's an organic, live feel, the sense of musicians huddled together in a room, not something that's happened on a Bush album before."
Will Hermes in Rolling Stone
writes: "[50 Words for Snow is] an LP that finds a universe of emotions in its wintery theme – a sort of virtual snowglobe ... the music ... is full of plush, drifty ambience. The vocals sound nothing like the fierce cyberbabe on her 1982 LP The Dreaming
, or the strange angels on Hounds of Love
, but they are no less sublime ... she sounds utterly at home defining her own world. It's an amazing place."
Everything Entertainment Central's Tim David Harvey says: "The album begins with the beautiful fall of a song called 'Snowflake', before getting operatic, strange and even more sublime with 'Lake Tahoe' which is as deep and decedent as the place itself, it's that kind of picturesque music," and goes on to call the album "unique, concise, cohesive classic."
The Quietus
' Joe Kennedy compares 50 Words for Snow to the work of such artists as Michael Nyman
, Brian Eno
, and Scott Walker
, writing "Snow brings about a state of exception in which there's no pressure to exert ourselves on the outside world: instead, it invites contemplativeness and the prioritisation of personal and domestic relationships over professional ones. Bush's habitual provocations to abandon day-to-day concerns while cultivating romantic, internal landscapes have always felt slightly like the work of someone gazing from a window into a blizzard. This, one senses, is her natural territory...Where her past work has often been heavily-layered and breathless, 50 Words for Snow uses negative space to impressive effect; much of the album features little more than voice and flurrying passages of piano which gust across the stave, changing pace and melodic direction as if they're suddenly hitting updrafts."
Other critics take exception to some of Bush's choices, greeting the album with skepticism. Ludovic Hunter-Tilsley in The Financial Times warns that despite "slow eddies of piano chords and gentle percussion … wintry piano, atmospheric orchestral arrangements and an intimate, torch-lit vocal from Bush, who, at 53, has acquired a warm huskiness to her voice … the album wobbles with the hammy Elton John duet “Snowed In at Wheeler St”, and topples over on the title track in which Bush invites Stephen Fry to dream up 50 terms for snow … 50 Words for Snow elucidates its wintry theme with flashes of brilliance but the odd treacherous icy patch too"; Vivoscene's Marin Nelson has trouble with the songs' long running times and Bush's "forced whimsicality"; she declares that "Bush was going for snowy surrealism, but we’re left feeling cold."
Australia's ABC Radio National declared 50 Words for Snow album of the week of 12 November 2011, calling the album "quiet, lush and otherworldly."
Kate Bush
Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
. It is the second album to be released on her own label, Fish People. It is her first all-new studio album since Aerial
Aerial (album)
Aerial is the eighth studio album by British singer-songwriter and musician Kate Bush.-Overview:Aerial is Bush's first double album, and was released after a twelve year absence from the music industry during which Bush devoted her time to family and the rearing of her son, Bertie...
from 2005, and marks the first time since 1978 that she has released two new albums in one year.
Overview
50 Words for Snow, her second album of 2011 after Director's CutDirector's Cut (Kate Bush album)
-Singles:The only single to be released from the album was "Deeper Understanding", originally the sixth track of The Sensual World. Its lyrics describe a relationship between a lonely person and a computer which has replaced human companionship....
, was released on 21 November 2011. The album consists of seven songs "set against a backdrop of falling snow" and has a running time of 65 minutes.
A radio edit of the first single "Wild Man
Wild Man (Kate Bush song)
"Wild Man" is a song by Kate Bush released as the lead single from her tenth studio album 50 Words for Snow. It was released as a digital download single in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2011, and peaked at number 73 on the UK Singles Chart...
" was played on BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
's Ken Bruce
Ken Bruce
Kenneth Robertson Bruce is a British broadcaster known for his programme on BBC Radio 2, which is broadcast on weekdays from 9:30am until 12 noon.-Early life and career:...
Show on 10 October. The single, featuring both the radio edit as well as the album version, was released on 11 October. Andy Fairweather Low guest stars on this story of a group of people exploring the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
who, upon finding evidence of the elusive, mythical Yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
, out of compassion cover up all traces of its footprints. Priya Elan in the New Musical Express greeted the single with enthusiasm, saying: "For those of us who have been secretly longing for a return to the unflinchingly bizarre and Bush's ability to conjure up strange new worlds, 'Wild Man' is a deep joy."
In an interview with the American radio station KCRW, Bush said that the idea for the album's title song came from thinking about the myth that Eskimos have 50 words for snow. She then decided to make up increasingly fantastical words herself, such as "spangladasha," "anechoic," "blown from Polar fur," and "Robber’s Veil". The album's songs are built around Bush's quietly jazzy piano and Steve Gadd
Steve Gadd
Steve Gadd is an American session and studio drummer, notable for his work with popular musicians from a wide range of genres.-Biography:...
's drums, and utilize both sung and spoken word vocals in what Classic Rock
Classic Rock (magazine)
Classic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of...
's Stephen Dalton
Stephen Dalton
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Gary George Dalton, KCB, BSc, FRAeS, RAF is the current Chief of the Air Staff and professional head of the Royal Air Force.-RAF career:...
calls "a...supple and experimental affair, with a contemporary chamber pop sound grounded in crisp piano, minimal percussion and light-touch electronics...billowing jazz-rock soundscapes, interwoven with fragmentary narratives delivered in a range of voices from shrill to Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
-style cooing.” Bassist Danny Thompson
Danny Thompson
Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
also appears on the album.
On the first track, "Snowflake," in a song written specifically to use his still high choir-boy voice, Bush's son Albert sings the role of a falling snowflake in a song expressing the hope of a noisy world soon being hushed by snowfall. "Snowflake" drifts into "Lake Tahoe", where choral singer Stefan Roberts and Bush sing about a rarely seen ghost: a woman who appears in a Victorian gown to call to her dog, Snowflake. Bush explained to fellow musician Jamie Cullum
Jamie Cullum
Jamie Cullum is an English pop and jazz-pop singer-songwriter. Though he is primarily a vocalist/pianist he also accompanies himself on other instruments including guitar and drums. Since April 2010, he has been presenting a weekly jazz show on BBC Radio 2, broadcast on Tuesdays from 19:00.- Early...
in an interview on Dutch Radio that she wished to explore using high male voices in contrast to her own, deeper, voice. "Misty" is about a snowman lover who melts away after a night of passion, and after "Wild Man," Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
and Bush as eternally divided lovers trade vocals on "Snowed In at Wheeler Street", while actor Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
recites the "50 Words for Snow". The quiet love song "Among Angels" finishes the album.
Two stop-motion "Animation Segments" were posted on the Kate Bush Official website and YouTube, one to accompany a 2 minute 25 second section of "Misty" (called "Mistraldespair"), the other to accompany a 2 minute 33 second section of "Wild Man." "Mistraldespair" was directed by Bush and animated by Gary Pureton., while the "Wild Man" segment was created by Finn and Patrick at Brandt Animation. As of 27 November, a third piece, for "Lake Tahoe," is in production.
Reception
50 Words For Snow received general acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 87, based on 32 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". On 27 November, 50 Words for Snow entered the UK album charts at #5, making Bush the first female recording artist to have an album of all new material in the top five during each of the last five decades.On 14 November 2011, NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
played the album in its entirety for the first time. In her accompanying review of the album, NPR music critic Ann Powers
Ann Powers
Ann Powers is an American writer and pop music critic.Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s...
writes: "Each song on Snow grows as if from magic beans from the lush ground of the singer-songwriter's keyboard parts. The music is immersive but spacious, jazz-tinged and lushly electronic – the 53-year-old Bush, a prime inspiration for tech-savvy young auteurs ranging from St. Vincent to hip-hop's Big Boi
Big Boi
Antwan André Patton , better known by his stage name Big Boi, is an American rapper, song-writer, record producer and actor, best known for being a member of American hip hop duo OutKast alongside André 3000. His work in the duo has produced six studio albums. During the duo's hiatus, he and André...
, pioneered the use of digital samplers in the 1980s and is still an avid aural manipulator. This time around, drummer Steve Gadd
Steve Gadd
Steve Gadd is an American session and studio drummer, notable for his work with popular musicians from a wide range of genres.-Biography:...
is her most important interlocutor – the veteran studio player's gentle but firm touch draws the frame around each of her expanding landscapes. But Bush won't be restricted. Like Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
on Don Juan's Restless Daughter
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a 1977 double album by the folk/pop/rock musician Joni Mitchell. It is unusual for its experimental style, expanding even further on the jazz fusion sound of Mitchell's Hejira from the year before...
, she takes her time and lets her characters lead." Powers chose 50 words for the new album, describing it as "Powdery fantasia. Contemplative. Winter matins. Playful. Opium reverie. Grounded. Ghost story. Sensual. Artistic recalibration. Unhurried. Drummer's holiday. Quiet. Ode to the white keys. Imaginative. Exploration of the lower register. Floating. Mother-son duet. Solitary. Snowed-in erotica. Collaborative. Joni Mitchell answer record. Inimitable. Supernatural space odyssey. What we'd expect from Kate Bush."
Stephanie Myers on the Australian music site, Music Feeds
Music Feeds
Music Feeds is a free bi-weekly digital music and lifestyle magazine established in 2008 and based in Sydney, Australia. It is distributed electronically every second Tuesday, with additional material posted on the website regularly....
, calls the album's songs "hymns" to the season of Winter, and calls Bush "adept at creating slow, gorgeous song-stories that take their time to unfold." She goes on to say that "50 Words for Snow offers Bush at her prime; beyond a collection of songs just for completist fans, it's an album that's more than likely to nab her a new generation of devotees." The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
's Alexis Petridis notes that "For all the subtle beauty of the orchestrations, there's an organic, live feel, the sense of musicians huddled together in a room, not something that's happened on a Bush album before."
Will Hermes in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
writes: "[50 Words for Snow is] an LP that finds a universe of emotions in its wintery theme – a sort of virtual snowglobe ... the music ... is full of plush, drifty ambience. The vocals sound nothing like the fierce cyberbabe on her 1982 LP The Dreaming
The Dreaming (album)
-Personnel:*Stewart Arnold: vocals, background vocals*Jimmy Bain: bass*Ian Bairnson: acoustic guitar, vocals, background vocals*John Barrett: assistant engineer*Brian Bath: electric guitar*Haydn Bendall: engineer...
, or the strange angels on Hounds of Love
Hounds of Love
Hounds of Love is a 1985 album by the British singer Kate Bush. It was Bush's fifth studio album, and her second no. 1. It has since been certified Double Platinum in the UK...
, but they are no less sublime ... she sounds utterly at home defining her own world. It's an amazing place."
Everything Entertainment Central's Tim David Harvey says: "The album begins with the beautiful fall of a song called 'Snowflake', before getting operatic, strange and even more sublime with 'Lake Tahoe' which is as deep and decedent as the place itself, it's that kind of picturesque music," and goes on to call the album "unique, concise, cohesive classic."
The Quietus
The Quietus
The Quietus is a British online rock music and pop culture magazine, focusing on arts news, reviews, and features. The site is an editorially independent publication led by John Doran and a group of freelance journalists and critics, some of whom have worked for other media outlets...
' Joe Kennedy compares 50 Words for Snow to the work of such artists as Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, and Scott Walker
Scott Walker (singer)
Scott Walker, born Noel Scott Engel on January 9, 1943 is an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and the former lead singer of The Walker Brothers. Despite being American born, Walker's chart success has largely come in the United Kingdom, where his first four solo albums...
, writing "Snow brings about a state of exception in which there's no pressure to exert ourselves on the outside world: instead, it invites contemplativeness and the prioritisation of personal and domestic relationships over professional ones. Bush's habitual provocations to abandon day-to-day concerns while cultivating romantic, internal landscapes have always felt slightly like the work of someone gazing from a window into a blizzard. This, one senses, is her natural territory...Where her past work has often been heavily-layered and breathless, 50 Words for Snow uses negative space to impressive effect; much of the album features little more than voice and flurrying passages of piano which gust across the stave, changing pace and melodic direction as if they're suddenly hitting updrafts."
Other critics take exception to some of Bush's choices, greeting the album with skepticism. Ludovic Hunter-Tilsley in The Financial Times warns that despite "slow eddies of piano chords and gentle percussion … wintry piano, atmospheric orchestral arrangements and an intimate, torch-lit vocal from Bush, who, at 53, has acquired a warm huskiness to her voice … the album wobbles with the hammy Elton John duet “Snowed In at Wheeler St”, and topples over on the title track in which Bush invites Stephen Fry to dream up 50 terms for snow … 50 Words for Snow elucidates its wintry theme with flashes of brilliance but the odd treacherous icy patch too"; Vivoscene's Marin Nelson has trouble with the songs' long running times and Bush's "forced whimsicality"; she declares that "Bush was going for snowy surrealism, but we’re left feeling cold."
Australia's ABC Radio National declared 50 Words for Snow album of the week of 12 November 2011, calling the album "quiet, lush and otherworldly."
Track listing
Personnel
- Kate BushKate BushKate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
– vocals, pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal... - Steve GaddSteve GaddSteve Gadd is an American session and studio drummer, notable for his work with popular musicians from a wide range of genres.-Biography:...
– drums - Danny ThompsonDanny ThompsonDaniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
– bassBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick.... - Albert Bush – vocals on track 1
- Stefan Roberts - vocals on track 2
- Elton JohnElton JohnSir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
- vocals on track 5 - Stephen FryStephen FryStephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
- vocals on track 6
Charts
| Chart (2011) | Position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
22 |
| Austrian Albums Chart | 26 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
10 |
| Finnish Albums Chart | 8 |
| Irish Albums Chart | 12 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart | 39 |
| Norwegian Albums Chart | 18 |
| Swiss Albums Chart | 12 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
5 |