Running Up That Hill: A Celebration of Kate Bush @ O2 ABC, 20 May
Curated by and featuring solo artist Emma Pollock (formerly of The Delgados), Running Up That Hill: A Celebration of Kate Bush promised to be informal and spontaneous. Also featuring Rachel Sermanni, Kathryn Joseph, Peter Brewis of Field Music, James Graham of The Twilight Sad, Roddy Hart, Sarah Hayes of Admiral Fallow and Karine Polwart, accompanied by a band and string quartet, the collective gift of the musicians involved certainly wasn’t left to serendipity.
The event also ran in Aberdeen last year, presenting the elusive Bush’s songs in a live capacity for her legion of fans. As Pollock says on the night, “It’s hard to tribute her, she hardly ever performs!” It’s a fair statement; Bush last toured in 2014, the first series of live shows since her foremost tour in 1979, and the 22 dates sold out in 15 minutes. We arrive knowing this might be our only chance to hear our long-adored Kate Bush favourites surrounded by an equally awestruck mob.
The atmosphere feels like we’re all celebrating a high priestess, a mythical ruler who we all commune with alone. There's a cosy hush between songs, with the on-stage patter bringing it all back down to Earth. “I heard Kate Bush is mad for tenor guitar,” Karine Polwart riffs as she helms a soaring rendition of Aerial single King of the Mountain. With cello, three female vocalists and a building prog-rock backing band, the cosmic effort to recreate the work of Bush is meticulously done.
“It’s party time”, declares Pollock as we enter the second half and are served the more seminal hits from Bush’s career. Twilight Sad frontman James Graham leads on Running Up That Hill – his vocal managing to swerve the hazard of sounding like the ill-advised Placebo cover from 2003, with Pollock, Joseph and Polwart's fortifying backing vocals helping to present a pounding rendition. We’re also asked by Graham to participate and call out “it’s in the trees”, for which he suggests using a naked Donald Trump as inspo. This quip actually reveals a larger political theme to the night; later Polwart’s commanding, belt-delivered rendition of Breathing catapulted by backing breaths by Joseph and Sermanni turns activist. With an outro monologue on growing up by the Grangemouth Refinery, the song then descends into a reprise of “we’re gonna be survivors”.
Suspended in Gaffa, with its heartbeat drum and punchy vocals from Pollock, brilliantly builds up the party again. Rachel Sermanni’s cover of Never Be Mine is intimate and original, her spellbinding voice officially the best introduction to a noteworthy song we hadn’t heard from the KB canon. You can consider this an explicit request for her cover to be made available to listen to again. Our favourite Kate Bush song, Cloudbusting, is delivered as an ASMR-inducing composition by “the two Kathryns”.
We’re totally indebted to the musicians at this point for bringing the mystery and sensitivity of Kate Bush’s songs to a live venue in Glasgow in 2017. An encore of Wuthering Heights is majestically led by Sermanni to close. It is theatrical, bewitching and unifying, and the night ends with the capacity for magic, thanks to Pollock and co's ability to push the boundaries of the possible.