Kate Bush – Lionheart [180g Vinyl LP]

Kate Bush – Lionheart [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: FP2LP
• Barcode: 5057998268610
• Genre: Art Pop / Progressive Pop / Baroque Pop
• Label: Fish People / EMI / Parlophone
• Originally Released: 10 November 1978
• Reissue Released: 20 November 2023
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Lionheart is Kate Bush's second studio album, released on 10 November 1978 on EMI — just nine months after the phenomenal commercial and critical success of her debut The Kick Inside. The speed of its making is central to the album's history: EMI, eager to capitalise on Bush's breakthrough, pushed for a rapid follow-up, and the sessions were completed at Super Bear Studios in Berre-les-Alpes on the French Riviera — the only Kate Bush album recorded entirely outside the UK — in a compressed timeframe that she has since spoken about with characteristic candour. "Considering how quickly we made it," she said in 1989, "it's a bloody good album, but I'm not really happy with it." The album peaked at number six on the UK Albums Chart — her only album not to reach the top five — and has been certified Platinum by the BPI for sales of over 300,000, spending 36 weeks on the chart. Subsequent reassessment by critics and fans has been far kinder than the original reviews, and several tracks are now regarded as among her finest early work.

Produced, like The Kick Inside, by Andrew Powell, and featuring a cast of musicians that included Pilot members Ian Bairnson (guitar) and David Paton (bass/vocals), the album's most significant introduction is Del Palmer — playing bass here for the first time on a Bush record, beginning an association that would continue through every subsequent album until 50 Words for Snow (2011) and encompassing a long-term personal relationship throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Of the album's ten tracks, only three — "Symphony in Blue", "Full House" and "Coffee Homeground" — were newly composed for the sessions; the remainder were reworked from Bush's teenage compositions, several of which had been considered for The Kick Inside. The album takes its title from "Oh England My Lionheart", the closing track of Side One — an extraordinary piece of baroque nostalgia, a fantasy of wartime England addressed directly to the country itself, with strings arranged by Powell and Bush's piano carrying the melody in a single sustained performance of quiet desolation.

The album's other stand-out tracks are equally distinctive. "Wow" — released as the second single in March 1979 and reaching number fourteen in the UK, becoming one of Bush's signature songs — is a glittering, theatrically knowing commentary on show business and the music industry; "Hammer Horror" (the lead single) draws on Hammer Films and the stage production of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame for a piece of high gothic drama; "Kashka from Baghdad" — written as a teenager — is a hushed, twilight character study of two mysterious neighbours, and is among the most atmospherically complete pieces on the record. "In the Warm Room" and "Symphony in Blue" demonstrate that even in a rushed session Bush's melodic instincts were unerring.

This 2023 Fish People reissue — released by Kate Bush's own label as part of her first comprehensive catalogue refresh since the 2018 box sets, prompted in part by a new generation of listeners discovering her music via Stranger Things and the global re-charting of "Running Up That Hill" in 2022 — presents the album freshly cut from the 2018 remasters, with new lacquers cut by mastering engineer Bernie Grundman under the oversight of James Guthrie, pressed on 180 gram black vinyl at the renowned Record Industry plant in the Netherlands. The record is presented in a replica sleeve with new Fish People label designs and protected in a resealable poly-bag liner with a Fish People Reissue sticker. One of the finest-sounding editions of this album currently available.

Tracklist

Side One

1. Symphony in Blue
2. In Search of Peter Pan
3. Wow
4. Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake
5. Oh England My Lionheart

Side Two

1. Fullhouse
2. In the Warm Room
3. Kashka from Baghdad
4. Coffee Homeground
5. Hammer Horror

Credits

• Kate Bush – Vocals, Piano, Producer (with Andrew Powell)
• Andrew Powell – Producer, Orchestral Arrangements
• Ian Bairnson – Guitar
• David Paton – Bass, Backing Vocals
• Del Palmer – Bass
• Stuart Elliott – Drums
• Alan Murphy – Guitar
• Charlie Morgan – Drums
• Bernie Grundman – Lacquer Cutting (2023 reissue)
• James Guthrie – Remastering Oversight (2023 reissue)
• Label – Fish People / EMI / Parlophone