50 Words For Snow

50 Words For Snow opens an unexpectedly vital new chapter for Kate Bush, simultaneously returning to the strengths of her classic '77-'85 albums and sounding nothing like her previous work. Bush has always had a deft hand with the meditative piano ballad, but this mood-setting album consists of little else. The major exception is the single "Wild Man," which strongly recalls Bush's expansive The Dreaming / Hounds of Love era with its fanciful lyrics about an mountaineering expedition's encounter with an abominable snowman; it also features more drums than the rest of the album combined. That outlier is pointedly situated at the album's midpoint, following a lengthy but gorgeous three-song suite that recalls the haunting minimalism of Talk Talk's Laughing Stock in its evocative stillness. Its culmination, "Misty," is a 13-minute epic that builds in intensity throughout; the fact that the lyrics are about a midnight tryst between a young woman and a snowman (yes, you read that correctly) doesn't deter from the stateliness and beauty of the melody or its arrangement. Another example of Bush's daffy sense of humor comes with the title track, in which Stephen Fry exquisitely declaims 50 wintertime synonyms as Bush's taunting chorus tells him to get on with it. The remaining tracks, Elton John duet "Snowed In At Wheeler Street" and reflective closer "Among Angels," are comparatively second-tier, but their intimacy and delicacy fit the album's cozy midwinter feel.