rpk@goldhill.COM (11/10/89)
The first time I heard the album, I found parts of it almost too painful to listen to, at least lyrically, as I was in the throes of defining a relationship to a woman who I felt very strongly about, and it wasn't easy going. Many of the songs of TSW tend to emphasise a chasm between male and female, or rather male and female approaches to relationships. This theme is fairly explicit in ``Never Be Mine'' and ``Reaching Out.'' Kate found my bullseye for me. TSW is a less twitchy and restless album, more resigned to certain mysteries of love; I think that, for a lot of men, we'd rather think that we know it all and that we can act on our emotions the way we ``should,'' in some rational manner when in fact sometimes we can't draw those conclusions, we can't make certain emotional situations conform to a models appropriate for the observed world. Maybe that's the flip side of the dichotomy of which the sensual world is one half. Anyway, perhaps male listeners aren't so keen on accepting how intractable (from a rational/analytic view) the whole love mess can be. They know it, but they don't want to be told about it, even by a talented goddess figure. In contrast, ``Rocket's Tail'' and ``Deeper Understanding'' are more like the old Kate, although the male adolescent (and I'm not using those words in a perjorative way, mind you) and female tendencies are more integrated than on _The Dreaming_. None of Kate's work is so thin that important components of her being aren't going to show through.