Running Up That Hill
Kate Bush
Hounds of Love
EMI : 1985
[Listen] [Buy]
Running Up That Hill
Chromatics
Night Drive
Italians Do It Better : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]
I regressed again.
I've put away a lot of the old jams, and been searching for something new, something to keep the taste in my mouth and the hunger strong. As such, I've been pulling for the stranger side of music.
Hours spent in my re-appropriated bedroom at the family house, hunched over my laptop, streaming the early experiments with electronic music. Some needlessly-obtuse Stockhausen in the days after his death. The search for modern dance music. The desire to plough through prog rock catalogs so I can try and chart the artistic progression, the evolution of style through sound.
I apologize if this all makes no sense, or if it sounds horribly pompous. It's late at night where I am, I've had a lot to drink, and I've been running through the synth-heavy, Italo and Italo-inspired area of my hard drive.
---
It's bigger than you might think; when I spin at home, I find myself reaching for the more outrageous end of my collection, the stuff packed with synths, vocoders. Huge, extravagant sound. Music with drum machines, looped 80s riffs, bright, shimmering vocals and little in the way of organic instrumentation. It comes across better, mixes better from time to time. Stylistically, it's off the map. It's almost childlike, playful. The optimistic chord changes and patterns, coupled with simple beats that chug along and inspire movement.
The other end of the spectrum was hit well in the late-80s by a lot of female vocalists, who took advantage of minor chords and the deeper bass notes that synths could produce, thus turning the bright into darkness, moodiness, introspection, mystery, intrigue.
This music was the stuff that made the cop movie so successful during that same era: a doe-eyed rookie or a world-weary veteran gets dragged into the smoky world of the seductress, with her soulful stare and her capacity to fight through heartbreak and break hearts anew.
---
Kate Bush had it down pat; in her heyday, you felt like you knew everything and nothing about her at the same time. That piercing voice, wild streak, and her deeply personal lyrics, all of them contributing to the mystique.
"Running up That Hill" was surely her peak. Odd, oblique words hiding a rather obvious sentiment, the wish that men and women could swap places for just long enough to gain a deeper understanding of the other side.
And yet, it comes packaged in this cloudy, haunting swirl of sound. The pounding drum beat appears almost immediately, each "snare" hit echoed out so the rhythm is persistent. The beat is attacked almost as quickly by that sour three-note keyboard/synth riff, catching the listener off guard. It doesn't seem to gel with Bush's sharp vocals, and yet when matched against the faint background keyboard chords that cloak each verse, it makes more sense. We're now lost in that same world of confusion that she fell into, and thus we're equally enthralled.
We reach that conclusion right in the middle of the song, at [2:52] when the bridge hits. The volume increases across the board, Bush's singing becomes more aggressive and impassioned. She's drawn us into her web, and the bridge forms the emotional and aural apex, her chance to strike. Her words reverberate, and the instrumentation follows suit, producing the great crescendo at the end of her plea. Sure, the song reverts to some kind of normalcy some 30 seconds later, but the point has been made. She knows it, and we know it too.
By contrast, the recent Chromatics release, a sparsely-arranged, slick electronic album, takes a different stance on the same tune. Stripping away the layers of murk and mist that shrouded Ms. Moss, the trio put the keyboards at the front, doubling the 80s echo of the drums with brief flickers of guitar and letting their version of Kate Moss, Ruth Radalet, bring a softer vocal sound to the same jagged words. Her voice not as versatile, yet still evocative, Radalet takes a straight approach to her take-off. The keyboard riff is the first thing to touch down after his sweet intro, and the familiar marching beat follows suit quickly.
It hits its emotional checkpoints in a different way; Kate Bush took the road less hopeful, whereas Chromatics embrace the dancier, more optimistic interpretation of the source material, choosing to swathe Radelet's vocals in thick layers of synth and rhythm.
---
I have no idea where I was going with this when I started, and I still have little in the way of insight. Yet, in listening to the odder corners of my collection, I'm finding fresh appreciation. It's important to be able to do that.
[UPDATE: Yeah, I know MOKB did a covers project regarding this song back in November. I still wanted to have my word on the subject, and our approaches couldn't be more different. It's well worth a look just to hear the evolution of this song over the years.]
