Music Arcades: Kate: Bush: The Kick Inside

The first thing that struck me about this when I put it on a few days was the sound — every instrument clear and well-separated, not over-polished like Jennifer Warnes, but drawing you in. Full marks to Andrew Powell, who did the arrangements and productions. Though you could argue he was just following the craft ethic of the period (still hanging on, just, despite punk). The era of Baker Street, which was in the charts at the same time as Wuthering Heights, making records that sounded great then on Medium Wave radio or cassette, and still sound great on hi-fi CD now. There are some wince-making 'period details' to the sound, as well. Anyone our age should take the trouble to register at this site for the pleasure of hearing this clip of Radio 1 DJ Tom Browne back-announcing Wuthering Heights' first week at No.1 on the Chart Show, talking over the 1978™ guitar solo — the same electric histrionics as on Baker Street. Then there's Powell's decision to take a solo on Oh To Be in Love on the synthesiser, when it should be a french horn. Yet these are minor quibbles.

The Kick Inside must have been the seventh album I ever owned, on cassette. Shirley Bassey was the first. Abba accounted for the next five. Then this. I fear the Grease soundtrack may have been eighth, followed by A Tonic for the Troops, Street Legal and Some Girls. After that it's a blur.

One of the many drawbacks of getting albums on cassette was that you never got a lyric sheet. That was particularly with this album because frequently I could not work out what Kate was singing, or could not believe that she was singing what it sounded like she was singing. Fortunately the lyrics were printed on the back of the vinyl sleeve (rather than the inner sleeve, as was more common), so I would make a mental note of a phrase I was unsure about, go down to WH Smiths on Commercial Way, Woking, and identify said phrase. Thus I came to identify the "surly lady in tremor" from Saxophone Song and the "om mani padme hum" from Strange Phenomena. It took quite a few visits, to and fro, but I got to know just about the whole album that way.

Those lyrics are something else. All the writing sounds astonishingly confident for someone not yet 20 when the album came out. Mainly in its range of topics — OK, mostly sex, but the range of approaches to sex… I still can't be quite sure whether The Man with the Child in his Eyes is a touching tribute to an ingenuous story teller who just happens to turn up at bedtime, or something more Laura Palmer/Twin Peaks.

The reason I bought the album in the first place came down to the influence of an older woman, Miss Bardsley-Smith. I used to loiter outside her room, just after breakfast, hearing Strange Phenomena through the door. "Every girl knows about the punctual blues." She was 17, I was 12 — well, 13 on the night I told her how I felt, and she left.