Review – Baby Bushka

It’s sad to see an essential Edinburgh venue threatened with possible closure after Summerhall Management Limited was served with a “winding up petition by HMRC”.

it is also dispiriting that suggestions have been made that the building or parts of it could be turned into student accommodation. Summerhall has been an essential venue providing many memorable gigs in recent years.

This gig was no different with the return of Baby Bushka whose appearance in the capital attracted an audience of veteran fans. The line-up has changed over the years. Talented front-woman Natasha Kozaily (Boss Bush) masterminds a Kate Bush experience that manages to combine the subject’s theatricality and music successfully. One minute she is summoning the scary flying monster from the Experiment IV promo video, released shortly before Halloween in 1986, or the band dresses up as wolves during a galloping Hounds of Love.

Kozaily is also a storyteller, relating the story of late band member Nina Leilani Harding who died tragically in a car crash in 2020. She told one story concerning a grumpy front-row audience member in York who couldn’t resist Harding reaching out to him during a dramatic performance of This Woman’s Work.

They ramped up the drama for Ran Tan Waltz concerning a stay-at-home father and his absent wife. The band muster the idiosyncratic subjects of the Bush songbook while acting out versions that nod to Kate’s various television, promo and live performances while sometimes adding a little bit extra comic value in the case of her 1982 single There Goes A Tenner.

Baby Bushka is one of several acts that have toured the Kate Bush catalogue during the singer’s absence since a run of shows in 2014. I saw Kate’s show in October of that year at the Hammersmith Apollo not realising it would be her last.

It’s also another goodbye to Baby Bushka on this farewell tour. It’s been seven years with some incredible highs and lows. The late Nina Leilani Harding’s 2018 performance of This Woman’s Work at the Mash House in Edinburgh will linger long in the memory of anyone who saw it.