Before The Dawn

This album has been added to 1 public list:

• 

  Favorite Live Albums

  Matthew

  The single best live album I’ve ever heard. Mixing, mastering, production, and of course Kate Bush’s performance, are all so perfectly executed. And what a performance she gives us.

  The audience goes bonkers when she first appears, and they’re pin-drop quiet during the dramatic moments that demand close attention. The three act structure works perfectly and shines a bright spotlight on two quite deserving song cycles, The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love and A Sky of Honey from Aerial.

  The climax of The Ninth Wave, “Hello Earth,” is arguably also the peak of the live album in its entirety. Play it at maximum volume. “Watching storms start to form over America. Can’t do anything…” turned out to be an even more prescient lyric than when originally released. Before the Dawn was recorded during her 2014 run of performances and released in November 2016, just ahead of the beginning of the Trump presidency and its desecration of all things that make America, America. The interspersed dirge is an uncanny foreboding foreshadowing of the next four years in the U.S.

  Standout performances also include “Lily” from The Red Shoes, “Never be Mine” from The Sensual World, “Prologue” from Aerial as a sweeping invocation and invitation (“Over here… Ring it! Shake it down! Bring it on! Let it in! …Will you come with us?”), “Joanni” from Aerial, and “And Dream of Sheep” which was shown as a prerecorded video-her diction and delivery are so impeccable it’s hard to fathom how she sang it being immersed in water.

  This album is an artistic triumph captured and preserved. Never a dull moment, meticulous and immersive, it’s the first and probably only live album that makes me feel like I’m in the audience sitting next to Annie Lennox and Björk and Peter Gabriel (all confirmed to have attended).

  It’s also a bit sad to listen to as I had a pipe dream about traveling to London to attend one of the performances (which all sold out in moments). Not actually going is one of my big regrets.