Artistic collaborations are a bit of a mixed bag for me. Clearly Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney making Say Say Say was a black day in my book (though not as black as it might have been in the seventies), BUT it did mean that there were not two separate solo Jackson and McCartney slabs of torture on the shelves. That said when two musical acts collaborate the result can often be exponentially worse than just their ordinary solo output. Think of the collaboration between Queen, David Bowie and Vanilla Ice to see what I mean.
That said even I was surprised to discover that prog pop, washing machine orgasming, all-round musical loony Kate Bush had decided to collaborate with ten year old band Ash (that is the age of the members of Ash). It did not seem to fit her usual method of evil operation, collaborating with a pop-punk band. But I suppose when Charlotte Hatherley left there was a hole for a nusto lady, and Ash got the whole Snickers. Which may explain why their work as a band sounds absolutely nothing like either Kate Bush’s solo work or Ash’s yawnomatic punky workouts (how can you really be a pop punk group with a fat drummer anyway).
Case in point: Foundations. Look at this lyric and tell me what is wrong:
Then I’ll use that voice that you find annoyin’ and say something like
“yeah, intelligent input, darlin’, why don’t you just have another beer then?”
That’s right it suggests that Kate Bush has a voice that DOESN’T sound annoying. If that was the case, why doesn’t she bloody use it? No, I have heard a lot of horrible Kate Bush records, some in which she puts on hilarious accents, or even does an Elvis impression. And all of these “voices” sound as bad as each other.
Just look at Wuthering Heights – of course Heathcliffe knew it was you, no-one else would stand on the top of a moor and screech like that. Who can forget in Cloudbusting when she “just knew that something good is going to happen”. Initially I thought she was referring to the end of the song, but unfortunately that just hasten along the shower of shit that was the Utah Saints to loop this asinine untruth over and over again. So whilst Kate’n’Ash sound markedly different to both sets of solo careers, the key point is that this attempt to make some sub-Lily Allen twelve year old stream of consciousness tosh shows that no matter how terrible something is, there is always the capacity to do something worse!