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When I rate albums, I often wonder to myself – what is a 10/10? For me, giving an album full marks doesn’t imply perfection, as perfection is often a difficult concept to put in tangible words, but it does imply some level of technical competence that coincides with my personal enjoyment. Not only do I have to think that there are basically no skips on the album, but there also needs to be something audacious or culturally impactful about the album. Therefore, this mythical rating can, realistically speaking, only be given for records released quite a while ago. 

The subject of this article, English musical icon Kate Bush’s fourth studio album The Dreaming, released in September 1982, is maybe a perfect example of my 10/10 rating. Bush is proudly my favorite artist – she is undoubtedly stubborn and unwavering in her artistic vision, but it is also admirable that she achieved commercial and critical success by blazing her own musical path, which I find to be an increasingly amazing feat especially in what seems to be shaping up to be a middling year for music. 

The Dreaming is what I can only describe as a sonic, truly eccentric experience. It is not a particularly palatable album for new fans of Kate Bush and it really, really requires the listener to meet Bush in her most theatrical, dramatic and often surreal headspace. This should be evident from the opening track, the stunning “Sat In Your Lap” that immediately slaps you in the face with the energy that Bush will only build on or vary for the rest of the album. Right after Bush angrily growls the mystical line “Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap”, she contrasts it by screaming the line “Just when I think I’m king” all over whip-like percussion and deranged, choral shrieks. 

Every track is Bush imagining herself as a character in a story or legend, with Bush sharply contrasting her signature soaring vocals with her screeching or growling to emulate the vengeful ghost of Harry Houdini’s wife. You might not always be ready for where the song takes you, but you will undoubtedly be swept up in the inherent motion present in all of Bush’s music. Every track here has an incredibly strong, building rhythm that bends fully to the gravity of Bush’s vocal performance and the story she is telling through her music. 

This is also where I will inject a little bit of genuine critique before I continue to gush about this album – there is very little thematic cohesion in this album. Contrasted with her 1985 album Hounds of Love, also possibly her most well-known record, The Dreaming presents moreso individual concepts that are contained within each track, and with how truly surreal some of the lyrics are, you are sometimes left hoping that she explores some of the feelings that she presents in her songs – like the soaring spirituality of tracks like “Suspended In Gaffa” and “The Dreaming” where Bush paints a feeling of chasing a light or some sort of greater spiritual force that is both overtaking and evading you. 

And yet, I can’t say the lack of thematic cohesion really affects my love of this album at all. For as scattered and overly grandiose that The Dreaming proudly is, it is so unrelenting that it compels me to take it for what it is and allow myself to be swept up in Bush’s unrestrained vision. Even though the album flopped upon release, with many critics at the time just simply not understanding what Bush was trying to do, it – and the rest of Bush’s discography to an extent – has since received a very overdue reappraisal for its influence over the alternative scene, and I for one am happy about all this appreciation for what is a very genuine, personal, and fantastically surreal piece of art. 

Best Track(s): “Suspended In Gaffa”, “Night Of The Swallow”, “The Dreaming”, “There Goes A Tenner”

Rating: 10/10