5. Kate BushHounds Of Love

I got into Kate Bush really late actually, not until I was in my 30s, but this is such a happy late discovery for me. I think it’s a perfect record. When I watched some footage about how she made it, how she was so hands-on on the faders, produced all her music herself, it was really inspiring to me to see that it wasn’t just some guy at the helm of her amazingly groundbreaking style, it was her. Side B is slightly better, I like all the catchy pop songs, but this is a real album.

I think at first I thought that the vocal acrobatics were too much, I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but I didn’t like the theatrics of it. At that time I was into stuff like Townes Van Zandt, really earthy music where there aren’t a lot of acrobatics. But then I changed. At first I was like ‘what the fuck is this?!’ it was so frenetic! Because I’m an anxious and highly-strung person I think I often gravitate to mellow stuff because it just relaxes me. Kate Bush was like watching a strobe light.