"As a last gasp, I am still proud of the ridiculous thing that we made, and I recognize that it could only really have been made in the way that we made it. I’m glad that it exists."

At the longitudinal center of Kate Bush’s discography, Hounds of Love can be seen as the dividing line in her discography up to today, and the seconds it takes to flip the record mark a momentum shift in her artistry.

While it’s nice to be able to collect the work of an iconic band for pennies – and really, you have to get into the arcane world of Japan-only releases etc to spend very much money on the Rollers – they deserve better.

The 21-track Privilege — compiled of the songs from Parenthetical Girls’ five self-release EPs — is a remarkable collection of songs about (among many other things) sex, death, social standing, literature and the process of grieving of your own creation.

On The Dreaming, Bush established several aspects of her work that were to become watchwords of all her future oeuvre: multi-layered instruments and vocals; allusions to history, culture and literature; polyrhythms and changing time signatures; and employment of spoken-word snippets and other non-traditional “instruments.”

The fourth LP by Tortoise came with massive and heightened expectations – and met them head-on. Standards revealed them as continuing to operate in top form and displaying a lot of their gorgeous repertoire of colors.

Listening to Pleasure can be disorienting in the best way; there’s not much else that sounds like it.

She would have better albums ahead, yet for that moment in time Bush managed to create something that is uniquely her own.

Paved the way for Low to widen the definition of their early mission statement without ever losing sight of what made them unique.

Morose lyrics are redeemed by music that can’t help but shine a light through the darkness.