In pop music terms 12 years is more than a lifetime. When Kate Bush released her last album in 1993, The Red Shoes, grunge was at its commercial peak, Kurt Cobain was still alive and a follow up to Nevermind was a distant dream. Since then Britpop, the Spice Girls, big beat and nu-metal have come and have either gone or are trying to reclaim their fading former glories.

But the 12 year wait is now over with the release of Aerial, her eighth album in a 27 year recording career, and her first double album, divided into two sections A Sea of Honey and A Sky of Honey. 

On first listen current single and first track King of the Mountain is a somewhat unremarkable opening; as much as you can be with a song about Elvis delivered over a Japan sounding riff in the verse that moves seamlessly into a ska influenced chorus. 

Second song pi continues in a similar understated vein, telling the tale of a man with an obviously unhealthy fascination for numbers and in particular an infatuation with the calculation of pi, with the lyrics including a recitation of everyone’s favourite circular-related constant to a full 117 decimal places. Missy Higgins this is not. 

The album continues with a serenade for her son, Bertie, a gushing tribute that only his mother could come up with, delivered over an accompaniment of medieval sounding guitars and strings and a chorus that was probably the height of fashion back when Henry VIII was a small boy. You have to feel sorry for the poor lad; he is going to have to live with this for the rest of his life and you can only start to imagine the grief he is going to encounter in his teenage life as a result of this song. 

Mrs Bartolozzi, a sole piano accompanying her ode to the drudgery of domestic life makes way to How to Be Invisible, a likely second single and an upturn in the tempo. Nobody in music does invisible quite like Kate Bush, so no one is better qualified to produce a spell on how to become invisible – Eye of Braille, hem of anorak, stem of wallflower, hair of doormat.

The ever-complicated song subjects continue with the rest of A Sea of Honey, with Joanni, about Joan of Arc and The Coral Room, about the death of her mother.

On first listen it is hard not to feel disappointed with the first side, especially after such a long wait, and knowing that this might be the last we hear from her, or at best another long wait until we do again. However, it definitely grows on further listens, and a realisation that the main weakness is the immediacy of the songs. 

A Sky of Honey is something else however. Opening and closing with the sound of twittering birds, the second disc is probably the most stunning 42 minutes, two seconds that you will hear this year.  There aren’t many artists that would be brave enough to attempt anything quite as adventurous of this, let alone manage to produce something as unique and as engaging.

Starting with dialogue from her son and Kate doing bird impressions, there is another slow piano based start in Prologue before fretless bass and strings join, Kate reverting to Italian to sing about Rome. This then morphs into An Architects Dream, surreally starting with a monologue from Rolf Harris, his second appearance on a Kate Bush album after The Dreaming in 1982, before an even more surreal moment in The Painter’s Link when she decided that letting Rolf sing on one of her records was a good idea. 

It is the last four songs on Aerial where it all comes together, a set of songs that is easily up there with anything she has ever recorded. It’s in these songs that you realise what was largely missing in A Sea of Honey; it’s the backing vocals and harmonies, especially when she harmonises her own voice. 

Sunset, again starts of gently with piano. Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust, then climb into bed and turn to dust, she coos, before a jazzy-sounding double bass is joined by a swath of flamenco guitars and castanets and an increase in the tempo, with the introduction of a typically Kate blend of male and female vocals in the chorus. The jazz vibe continues into the next song, Somewhere in Between.

Nocturn is the standout track, and at 8:34 is her longest song to date. It evokes a trip hop feel, but still manages to sound completely unique.  We stand in the Atlantic, we become panoramic, she sings in that fragile and sensual voice or hers before a stunning set of harmonies throughout the whole last section of the song. This astonishing vocal wall of sound builds up into a euphoric crescendo, segueing seamlessly into Aerial, and a brief quiet coda before it all builds up once again.  What kind of language is this?  she enquires, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.  Manic laughing combines with more bird song, a declaration I want to be up on the roof, I’ve gotta be up on the roof, and a Dave Gilmour sounding guitar solo by her partner, Danny McIntosh, over the outro, which again consists of manic laughing but sampled and arranged to be an instrument. It truly is the most joyous, exhilarating and astounding finale to an album that you will hear all year.

There are traces of Pink Floyd, Brian Eno’s ambient work, Japan/Rain Tree Crow, Massive Attack, Portishead, but ultimately it mostly sounds like a Kate Bush record. She is comparable to no one.

There are very few artists, if any, that could stay out of the limelight for 12 years and maintain the level of interest before making this sort of return. She is undoubtedly one of a kind, but we need her kind more than ever. We live in an age when the highest selling record of the 1990s and so far this decade is by Shania Twain, someone who exemplifies blandness to the point of offensiveness. But how many major record companies are likely to sign a 16 year old girl whose music we will be talking about over 30 years later? Answer: none. Today’s paedo pop princesses and female singer-songwriters-by-numbers will just be small and embarrassing footnotes in the annuls of musical history in 30 years time. Kate Bush’s musical legacy will last forever and Aerial will be a large part of that legacy.