The Dreaming, released in 1982 through EMI in the UK and EMI America Records in the US, is the fourth studio album by English art pop musician Kate Bush.
A dramatic departure from the Baroque Pop of her earlier work, this record marks a shift into far more aggressive and experimental territory, informed heavily by both Bush's prior work with Peter Gabriel on his similarly dark, percussive third album and her growing enthusiasm for the Fairlight CMI digital sampler and the flexibility it offered in composing and performing. Her previous album, Never for Ever, had already made use of the device to a minor degree, but here Bush embraced it wholeheartedly, so much so that for the first time she elected to produce an album entirely on her own.
At the same time, Bush had also grown frustrated with public perception of her as a ditzy airhead who got by mainly on her looks. The darker and more disjointed tone of the album thus doubled as an attempt to break out of this mold and demonstrate a greater level of artistic range than on her previous three records. Tellingly, her choice of opening track and leadoff single was "Sat in Your Lap", a more abstract and percussive piece that belied the airy tone of her earlier releases.
Upon release, the album significantly undersold in the UK compared to its predecessors. While it went to No. 3 on the UK Albums chart, its total sales only amounted to a silver BPI certification compared to the platinum status of The Kick Inside & Lionheart and the gold of Never for Ever. In the United States meanwhile, where Bush had struggled to crack the market, it was a much different story, becoming her first album to chart there (peaking at No. 157 on the Billboard 200) and receiving substantial airplay on College Radio and MTV, both of which would serve as important outlets for Alternative Rock throughout the decade. MTV had been playing Bush's videos since its debut the year prior. In the wake of this, EMI would reissue The Kick Inside and Lionheart in America, issue a self-titled EP, and belatedly release Never for Ever there as well. The Dreaming was supported by five singles: "Sat in Your Lap", "The Dreaming", "There Goes a Tenner", "Suspended in Gaffa", and "Night of the Swallow".
Bush herself would come to regard The Dreaming as something of an Old Shame, feeling she had pushed the experimentation a bit too far to the point of alienating listeners, but in recent years it has been vindicated for its creativity and is considered amongst her finest records.
Tracklist:
Side 1- "Sat in Your Lap" (3:29)
- "There Goes a Tenner" (3:24)
- "Pull Out the Pin" (5:26)
- "Suspended in Gaffa" (3:54)
- "Leave It Open" (3:20)
Side 2
- "The Dreaming" (4:41)
- "Night of the Swallow" (5:22)
- "All the Love" (4:29)
- "Houdini" (3:48)
- "Get Out of My House" (5:25)
See the light ram through the tropes in the land:
- Animal Motifs:
- "Night of the Swallow", as the name implies, relies heavily on songbird imagery.
- "Get Out of My House" uses mules as a metaphor for stubbornness, to the point of opening and closing with a series of donkey brays.
- Artistic License – History: The real Harry Houdini died of peritonitis after being punched in the stomach by a fan. The song however depicts him drowning during a stage act, since that makes for a more dramatic ending.
- As the Good Book Says...: "Suspended in Gaffa" makes frequent references to the Beatitudes in The Four Gospels, including the plank in the hypocrite's eye and the camel passing through the eye of a needle, tying in with the lyrics about a religious revelation.
- Bank Robbery: "There Goes A Tenner" is about a botched attempt to blow up a bank vault.
- Book Ends: "Get Out of My House" begins and ends with imitations of a braying donkey.
- Breather Episode: "There Goes a Tenner" is a bouncy comedy song about a botched bank heist slotted in an otherwise dark and aggressive album, specifically fitting between the percussive "Sat in Your Lap" and the brooding "Pull Out the Pin".
- Brief Accent Imitation: Bush affects a Cockney accent in "There Goes a Tenner" and an Australian one in "The Dreaming", tying in with the respective Victorian and Australian settings.
- The Caper: "There Goes A Tenner" is about an elaborate attempt to blow up a bank vault that goes wrong.
- Concept Video: The music video for "There Goes a Tenner" depicts a bank robbery, following the song's lyrics directly.
- Cover Drop: The cover art, depicting Bush engaging in Sleight of Tongue, might be brushed off as a standard display of her artistic quirkiness in passing, but listen to the album and reach "Houdini", and the nature of the image becomes clear: "with a kiss, I'd pass the key." Just to hammer the point in, the rear sleeve outright quotes the line.
- Crazy Is Cool: Invoked in "Leave It Open", which portrays weirdness as an overtly positive trait and asks the listener to "let [it] in" to arm themself against their harmful side.
- Creator Couple: Houdini and Rosabelle are an in-universe one in "Houdini", which depicts the latter as being the former's stage assistant and a crucial element of his act.
- Darker and Edgier: Bush was no stranger to covering intense subjects, but The Dreaming makes the dark content far more overt, with a more aggressive sound and little to no Lyrical Dissonance.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The album art is mostly sepia monochrome, with just a few splashes of gold.
- Downer Ending: The album closes with "Get Out of My House", an enraged ghost story heavily inspired by The Shining.
- Dunce Cap: Bush sports one on the cover of the "Sat in Your Lap" single release, wearing it on occasion in the song's music video as well.
- Ethereal White Dress: Bush dons one on the cover of the "Sat in Your Lap" single and wears it throughout the video.
- Everything Is an Instrument: "The Dreaming" features multiple breaks of Bush rhythmically panting. The track and the album as a whole also frequently toss in samples of vehicle noises and screeches.
- Evil Colonialist: The Title Track, a Protest Song decrying the treatment of Aboriginal Australians, is narrated by a white Aussie who proudly brags about how "the civilized keep alive the territorial war [and] erase the race that claim the place and say we dig for ore." The narrator even casually mentions remorselessly running over Aboriginal people who wander into the road.
- Face on the Cover: Specifically a photo of Bush and her then-boyfriend Del Palmer acting out a scene from "Houdini".
- Fading into the Next Song: The Title Track segues directly into "Night of the Swallow".
- Get Out!: The title lyric of "Get Out of My House" is sung in this tone, growing increasingly anguished as the song progresses.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- "There Goes a Tenner" depicts a plot to blow up a bank vault going awry when the explosives are over-rigged, leaving the robbers covered in rubble while the money scatters away in the breeze.
- "Houdini" sees the title character die in a botched stage act.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: "The Dreaming", fitting its lyrics about the plight of Aboriginal Australians, ends with an Aborigine-language spoken passage, taken from the Aborigine-language song "Airplane! Airplane!"
- Grief Song: "All the Love" is narrated by a woman coping with the death of a loved one.
- Haunted House: "Get Out of My House" is set in one, inspired by the Overlook Hotel.
- Indecipherable Lyrics: The utterances of "we let the weirdness in" at the end of "Leave It Open" are distorted to the point of incomprehensibility; Bush played the original recording backwards, did her best to imitate the sounds she heard, and then played the resulting recording backwards for the final song.
- In the Style of: "Sat in Your Lap" is influenced by occasional collaborator Peter Gabriel's emphasis on percussion and rhythm in his solo work of that era, most prominently exemplified by the booming, frantic drumbeat that opens the track.
- Kids Rock: "All the Love" features choruses sung by choirboy Richard Thornton.
- Large Ham: Bush's Vocal Evolution here allows her to embrace this trope wholeheartedly, making greater use of vocal roars throughout the album that tie in with the overall increase in sonic aggression.
- New Sound Album: Aggressively percussive experimental rock, a sharp turn from an artist that, up until this point, was known for airy Baroque Pop.
- "Not So Different" Remark: "Pull Out The Pin" is about a a Viet Cong soldier encountering an American counterpart, upon which he states that "I see little life, see little wife, he strike a violence up in me," indicating his realization that the two of them are more similar to one another than either of them first suspected.
- One-Man Song: "Houdini"
- Protest Song: "The Dreaming" loosely brings light to the plight of Aboriginal Australians.
- Shout-Out:
- The album and its Title Track takes their name from a religio-cultural worldview in Aboriginal Australian Myths.
- "The Dreaming" ends with a quote from the Aborigine-language song "Airplane! Airplane!"
- "Houdini" is about, well, Harry Houdini.
- Paul Hardiman's donkey brays in "Get Out of My House" are credited as "Eeyore".
- Sleight of Tongue: "Houdini" depicts the title character and his wife doing this as part of his stage act; this moment is also depicted on the album cover.
- Special Guest: Copiously so.
- Geoff Downes of The Buggles, Yes, and (by the time of the album's release) Asia programmed the sampled trumpets on "Sat in Your Lap".
- Rainbow and Dio bassist Jimmy Bain plays bass on "Sat in Your Lap", Leave It Open", and "Get Out of My House".
- Greenslade keyboardist Dave Lawson plays Synclavier on "There Goes a Tenner" and "Suspended in Gaffa".
- Pink Floyd guitarist and co-vocalist David Gilmour sings backup on "Pull Out the Pin"; Gilmour was the one who originally discovered Bush.
- Ian Bairnson of The Alan Parsons Project, another longtime contributor going back to her debut, plays acoustic guitar on "Leave It Open".
- Entertainer Rolf Harris plays digeridoo on the Title Track. As Harris made no vocal contribution, his parts were preserved on the 2018 remaster, released after his conviction for child sexual abuse (his vocal parts on Aerial, by comparison, were replaced by Bush's son Bertie).
- Famed animal impersonator Percy Edwards performs all the animal sounds on the Title Track.
- Chieftains fiddler Seán Keane plays the fiddle on "Night of the Swallow".
- Splash of Color: Bush's gold eyeliner, the gold key in her mouth, and the gold name logotype pop out from the otherwise sepia cover art.
- Spoken Word in Music: "Houdini" features a brief cry of "Rosabelle, believe!" from the title character.
- Summon Backup Dancers: Bush does this partway through the music video for "The Dreaming".
- Surreal Music Video:
- "Sat in Your Lap" features Bush wearing an Ethereal White Dress and a Dunce Cap, roller-skating, jesters, and guys dressed as minotaurs. Also, the part where Kate stares unnervingly into the camera while she sings the bridge.
- The music video for "The Dreaming" mostly consists of Bush dancing and singing outdoors in the Australian outback at night.
- Title Track: "The Dreaming"
- Vocal Evolution: Bush's voice lowers dramatically on this album, tying in with the more aggressive sound and informing her vocal performances on later albums.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "Get Out of My House" is a loose reinterpretation of The Shining. Sources vary as to whether it's based on the book, the movie, or both, though the donkey brays at the end do audibly parallel Jack Torrance's animalistic bellows of Danny's name in the climax of the film (which doesn't appear in the novel).
- Word Salad Title: "Suspended in Gaffa" (i.e. gaffer tape); "There Goes a Tenner" (i.e. a bank note).
- The X of Y: "Night of the Swallow"
