We stan the boundless enchantment of Hounds of Love, and like that one The Sensual World is one of the best packages of music we’ve ever heard. This one takes a decidedly more streamlined approach, and makes up for that sense of direction with wild, innovative ideas realized with turns of disarming beauty, indescribable heights alike to the earmarks of her definitive work a few years before.

Tracks move intuitively. Bouts of choppy abruptness eventually become tight structures of clashing cycles. “Heads We’re Dancing” has a malleable texture, almost loose (not to mention its bonkers story), but its progression of sounds and peculiar repetition make a simple sense. This goes for every other track, not short on surprises but ever turning toward the correct next step. What really makes this piece a microcosm for the album is that it completely earns its cinematic drop-off. 

“Rocket’s Tail (For Rocket)” consolidates some of her new sounds and proceeds to go nuts in a pretty uncomplicated way. This white-knuckle burn is critical and powerful (and my favorite track on the album if anyone’s asking). 

Sometimes it’s the perfect piano-led pop grooves of “Reaching Out” and “This Woman’s Work” that are really what’s special, but then there are the tracks which forge new aesthetics. I’d believe it if Grimes, Laurel Halo, FKA Twigs, and probably a number of other vital auteurs studied this album closely. The synthetic swell on “This Woman’s Work” wouldn’t sound a bit out of place in Sophie’s catalogue. 

There are tangible storybook turns in sound, smooth introductions of new worlds, purposeful beats and distant pictures. “Deeper Understanding” represents an evolution in Bush’s wordless ethereal vocal waves, this time with an eerie perfection that’s not enough like a robot and too much like a spirit. Bush is clairvoyant.