Something pleasant to come home to...

We've been awful, we know - and we've also lost track of the amount of times we've not posted for ages and then apologised to you all as if you actually care (please care) - but we've been on holiday (in New York, darling) so natch it's been a tad difficult to keep track of the comings and goings of Popworld and then to transmit our wonderful and remarkable opinions to the big wide world right here. In other words, Kate Bush has released details of her next album and we did a big panty pudding when we found out.

Here's the sitch. Director's Cut, released earlier this year to enormous critical acclaim (from us, anyway), was a complete Kate Bush first*; a retrospective re-visit to tracks from two previous albums. Some of the 2011 incarnations were wondrous and illuminating, some were good but no improvement on the original, and some were horrendous ("Rubberband Girl" can start drinking sweet ice tea in our shade right now k?). Some complained that as great as this was, it was no new material. While we usually may have agreed, luckily Kate had mentioned in more than a few interviews that alongside recording new versions of the tracks from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, she had been writing brand new material ever since Aerial's release in 2005. There were also rumours that we might even hear the music this year, yet we (quite wisely) decided not to place too much hope in such a dream after the stop and start ordeal fans went through leading up to Aerial, with every other interview given between 1993 and 2003 announcing the album would be out that year. Well, it seems she's making up for lost time because 2011 will see the first time Kate has put out two albums since her debut and sophomore efforts in 1978. Lucky us.

What has been leaked so far leads us to form an impression of not quite a holiday album, but neither a straight up album release either - 50 Words for Snow will be released in November and will feature seven new songs "set against snow" which sounds wondrous and magical and unimaginably exciting but still... is this a holiday album or not? We need a clarification. Regardless of such a fact, this news is more than we could ever have wished for; we would've happily seen the rest of 2011 (and maybe even 2012) through without a new release after the incredible piece of work that Director's Cut was, but it genuinely does seem that Kate perhaps burnt herself with such a long period between The Red Shoes and Aerial. As many have already said before us (oh-KAY we promise not to post so sporadically again, we are moving cities you know!) this is Kate's most productive period since the early 80s and one we were absolutely revelling in.

PS the artwork's a bit pants though, right? Maybe it's a grower...

* Technically, the first KB production of this kind was the 1985 re-visit to "Wuthering Heights", complete with much less aggravating vocals.