I downloaded this album at the weekend.
Its one of those things I've been meaning to do for ages, but never quite got round to it once I heard King of the Mountain a couple of times.
That is a very disappointing single, and to my mind weak and unworthy of Kate, and effectively put me off getting the whole album.
I could hardly have been more mistaken. To my mind, Aerial is everything it was meant to be. Twelve years ago, the Red Shoes was disappointing following her masterpiece - The Sensual World which in my opinion is her best album since The Kick Inside.
The latest offering takes up where Sensual World left off. It is still autumnal, still haunting and still painfully naive in places, but this only adds to its beguiling charm. The album is laden with rich piano, cleverly understated and under played, and coloured with subtle latin rhythms and whimsical, often obscure lyrics. The obsession in the past with heavy persussion has gone (reflecting the departure from her life of longterm partner and drummer Del Palmer) which gives the CD more softness and warmth. There are times when the vocoder has been relied on a little too much, suggesting a lack of confidence on Kate's part as to whether or not she still has "the voice". Undeniably her voice has matured and perhaps lost its catlike edge, but the elfin one is still up there with the most original singers of our generation.
I absolutely love this album and thoroughly recommend it.
At the same time I'm listening to Anne Clark's "Pressure Points" again, now that I have received the 12" of Heaven from Andreas.
She just annoys me. OK, Foxx wrote the music on half the album (inc Heaven) but unfortunately that doesn't make it any good. Her vocal delivery is weak, in fact I would say actually poor, and the lyrics are just rallies against the world that grate on the nerves. She's one of those hard-done-by people with a natural mistrust of just about everything it seems, and that makes infuriating listening.
And by his own admission, Foxx had "lost the plot" in mid-1985. He clearly couldn't care less about this album and is banging about like a maniac on his drum and rhythm machines, venting his spleen no doubt. There's some energetic stuff and its good for a stomp (and a valuable piece of his history and development) but it just doesn't work for me.
There are some elements in here of tracks like Stairway and This Side of Paradise, which are stand-out tracks from his own catalogue of the period. Maybe the difference is that these are his own pieces and he cares more.