Warm and Soothing (Patreon)

These won't go out this late again. Next week's essay will be much longer. 

Warm and Soothing

According to Bush, “Warm and Soothing” was recorded to see how recording at Abbey Road would work for her. “We went into Studio Two, and really the only way we could tell if it was going to sound good was if I went and did a piano vocal,” she said, before effusing about the experience (“it sounded great”). The trite-and-true model of Bush playing her piano without a backing band or further instrumentation was a solid testing ground for recording at Abbey Road. Bush sounds at ease singing a fairly standard song of hers about the warmth of her old home vanishing into past as she returns to it, poor memories returning and getting buried under unpleasant new ones. “And I’m afraid by the way we grow old, darling,” says Bush. The further away she gets from her childhood in East Wickham, the most anxious her music gets. As the world moves forward, so does she. Nostalgia is a poison, but sometimes a revelatory one.