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Nov 29, 2011100One of the year's most imaginative albums.
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Nov 21, 2011100Bush is still making music that intrudes and abducts.
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Nov 21, 2011100The result is a lush, immersive work which is sonically more homogeneous than her earlier albums.
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Nov 21, 2011100To the relief of anyone who carries a torch for the reclusive genius, it's a beauty.
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Nov 17, 201110050 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having.
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Nov 17, 201191It's all gorgeous.
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Nov 21, 201190These tracks are sparse but airtight, haunting but unrelentingly gorgeous, both logical successors to the stunning second half of Aerial and completely unlike anything she's done.
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Nov 21, 201190While looking for 50 Words For Snow, she has found 50 other original ways to express herself effortlessly, creating another intriguing piece of work.
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Nov 21, 20119050 Words for Snow is undoubtedly whimsical, but it's played and arranged so exquisitely that even the most po-faced should be able to acknowledge the scale of its achievement.
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Nov 16, 201190Whatever the case, 50 Words...demands to be listened to as a whole.
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Nov 15, 201190It's absorbing and enchanting without having to resort to formulaic song structures, pop thrills or radio-friendly catchiness.
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Nov 14, 201190She's brilliant, sometimes inspired, and this tenth studio album finds her gifts undiminished.
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Nov 21, 201188With all seven of the songs clocking in at six to 10 minutes each, Bush takes her time, but the songs aren't built of different parts; it's more like mounting meditations on one theme.
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Nov 21, 201185Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space--not so much innocent as open to imagination--that never gets old.
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Nov 15, 201185It's a linguistic lesson you never asked for, or even wanted, but also one you'll never forget.
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Jan 10, 201280Sounds miraculously unburdened by its conceptual weight.[Dec. 2011 p. 90]
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Dec 15, 201180There is only one real slip - Stephen Fry's mood shattering appearance on the title track. [Dec. 2001 p. 123]
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Dec 8, 201180A remarkably delicate, often meandering (though never purposeless) song cycle revolving around snow, imagination and longing, set to rich, spiraling piano compositions and deep open spaces.
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Nov 30, 201180Once again, Kate's found a new sound world to operate in and made an effortlessly great album that works both as a conceptually cohesive whole and as a set of standlone songs as warm and comforting as a roaring fire.
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Nov 28, 201180It's human connection despite the odds that has been at the heart of Bush's music from the beginning. With 50 Words for Snow, she casts the theme in a bolder and bleaker light than ever before.
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Nov 23, 201180While it shares sheer ambition with Scott Walker's The Drift and PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, it sounds like neither; Bush's album is equally startling because its will toward the mysterious and elliptical is balanced by its beguiling accessibility.
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Nov 23, 201180From austere, absurd materials, the cumulative effect is remarkable. [Dec 2011, p.76]
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Nov 21, 201180It's the work of a mature and serious artist, who has made a unique and lasting contribution to pop, and this album will continue her reputation.
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Nov 15, 201180The album only really reaches the heights Bush has set for herself when she appears centre stage.
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Nov 22, 201175Her first full-length of new material since 2005, 50 Words is by far the subtlest and least immediately accessible she's ever made.
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Nov 21, 201175The singer does a lot of luxuriating on her 10th album; 50 Words for Snow spreads seven songs over 65 leisurely minutes, her multi-octave voice and piano mostly at the forefront.
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Nov 28, 201170To hope for a "Running Up That Hill" or a "Wuthering Heights" would be to miss the point, and the subtle pleasures – there's enough people walking the ways Kate cleared 30 years ago. Follow her footprints off the beaten path, and you'll find some weird winter wonders.
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Nov 22, 201170At times, piano, strings, bass, and drums carefully follow Bush like members of her court through a series of meditations that move like falling snow, which she sometimes refers to directly or metaphorically within the lyrics.
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Nov 22, 201170Those cameos [Elton john & Stephen Fry] aren't exactly intrusive, but they do weigh down an album that's otherwise content to drift as gently as the snow in question.
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Nov 21, 201170The music has a bare-trees feel that dovetails with the wintry theme. There's plenty of orchestration, but it's all framing and backdrop for Bush's piano and voice.
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Nov 21, 20117050 Words for Snow is a success not only because it's so challengingly bold and peculiar, but because it repackages Bush's usual idiosyncrasies in an entirely new form.
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Nov 21, 201170The overall dark, diaphanous sound here almost oversells the title, but it's impossible not to get lost in the drift.
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Nov 22, 201166Bush's return to recorded music is unexpected, sometimes distancing, weird and obdurate.
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Dec 8, 201160The mood is subdued, the backing spare, meditative, but--as we've become used to with Bush--lacking in any adventurousness of spirit, at points, you could even describe it as late night jazz club tasteful. [Dec 2011, p.52]
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Nov 21, 201160This album is rather better when it is winking at you, rather than seeking to cryogenically preserve emotion.