Even in the hinterlands of myth, the notion of sex with snowmen seems rather a neglected subject. Hans Christian Andersen tells of a snowman who, promisingly, falls in love, though the object of his affection turns out to be a stove rather than a mortal. One looks in vain for much evidence of an eroticised Frosty in, say, Angela Carter: evidently, such a combination of the twee and the sensuous is too much for most committed fabulists. Kate Bush, however, is not one to shirk that kind of creative challenge. The centrepiece of "50 Words For Snow", her first album of new songs in six years, is a 14-minute love song to a snowman, one made by her own hands and named “Misty”. Logic, at this point, would suggest that the snowman is actually a metaphor for a particularly short-lived lover, or a notably frigid one. The evidence, though, seems to demand a more literal explanation. When she wakes after their “one and only tryst”, he has melted away, leaving wet sheets and “dead leaves, bits of twisted branches” on her pillow. Should ambiguity remain, the album’s front cover dissolves it utterly, a bas-relief, apparently made out of ice, portrays a snowman’s puckered lips touching those of a young girl. It is not the first time Kate Bush has created an image that induces cringes of embarrassment rather than gasps of wonder. “Misty”, though, is extraordinary: a torch song, driven along by the gently kicking jazz of Steve Gadd (drums) and Danny Thompson (bass), that makes nuanced romantic currency out of a truly preposterous idea. “Misty” forms the climax of what we might tentatively call the first movement of "50 Words For Snow"; three piano-led pieces(“Snowflake”, “Lake Tahoe”, “Misty”), 35 minutes in total, that take their cues from “Mrs Bartolozzi” and “A Coral Room” on 2005’s "Aerial", and from the stripped-back and wistful version of “Moments Of Pleasure” on this year’s "Director’s Cut". As that last album of reworkings proved, Bush’s voice is not what it was. Where once it soared and ululated in such an untethered way, now it is often deeper, warmer, evoking a sort of curdled soulfulness. One of the marked poignancies of "50 Words For Snow" is that, while Bush’s subject matter is more evanescent than ever, she addresses it in much more human and earthy tones. Ten and a half minutes into “Misty”, as she details what the snowman has left behind, her voice cracks on “stolen grasses from slumbering lawn”, intensifying the emotional heft of the song so much that its subject matter – to recap: sex with a snowman - is rendered profound rather than ludicrous. “Snowflake” and “Lake Tahoe”, meanwhile, find Bush contracting out some high notes to other singers. On “Snowflake” - narrated, perhaps inevitably, by a falling snowflake - the lead is taken by her son, Albert McIntosh. McIntosh already has quite a recording history, having talked with the birds on "Aerial", been eulogised by his mother on “Bertie”, and appeared in Autotuned form on the "Director’s Cut" version of “Deeper Understanding”. This time, though, his voice is untreated, revealing its uncanny potency; it sounds as if Bush is being rechannelled through the larynx of an ingenuous choirboy. Some of the serious lifting on “Lake Tahoe” is handled by two classical singers, Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood, with their Schubert-like passages alternating with bluesier ones sung by Bush. These are slow, long songs that are given a coherence and momentum by Bush’s piano lines, gracefully reminiscent of Keith Jarrett. From austere and absurd materials, the cumulative effect is remarkable. It would, though, be expecting a little too much for even Bush to sustain such a heightened atmosphere for another half hour. Consequently, the second phase of "50 Words For Snow" is more diverse and less satisfying. “Wildman” is fine, a sensual pursuit of the yeti (though, amidst a scree of esoteric reference, that name is never used) delivered by Bush as a kind of incantatory, whispered rap. The music is a sprung cousin to “Somewhere In Between” from "Aerial", the chorus shared by Andy Fairweather-Low; another musician from a generation, slightly older than Bush, that she has called on throughout her career. That generation, often rather conservative, has magically sounded radical in Bush’s company. Not all dinosaurs, though, can be taught new tricks so easily. “Snowed In At Wheeler Street” charts the progress of two lovers who keep reconnecting at crisis points in history, and features Bush drawn into a stand-off with one of her earliest heroes, Elton John. The backing is nearly ambient, but Bush chronically over-emotes, as if she is straining to match John’s histrionics rather than forcing him to play her more subtle game. The spotlight is also shared on the title track, with Stephen Fry cast as Dr Joseph Yupik (Yupiks being an Eskimo tribe of Siberia and Alaska), goaded by Bush – “Come on Joe, you've got 32 to go!” – into finding 50 synonyms for snow. The droll neologising – “Wenceslasaire”, “spangladasha”, “shnamistoflopp'n”, “Zhivagodamarbletash” – is charming enough, and the soft urgency of the music reiterates the genteel rave influence that crept into the second half of "Aerial". But at the same time, the way the track is predicated on Fry’s reputation as bibliophilic fount of all knowledge seems somehow crass. Given how much of Kate Bush’s appeal is built on an image of her being blissfully disconnected from the real world, it is disappointing to imagine her coming up with the concept while slumped in front of QI on a Friday night. This, then, is the paradox of "50 Words For Snow". Kate Bush has never made a record that seems so ethereally disdainful of convention, of the parameters, themes and expectations of a simple pop song. But at the same time, she has never seemed so normal: a little indulgent to celebrity; acutely aware of how time has brought mortal vulnerability to her voice. "50 Words For Snow" ends with another beautiful and glacial piano song, “Among Angels”, where she identifies seraphim clustered around her subject. It is, perhaps, a blessing and a curse that Kate Bush can no longer be mistaken for one herself.

George Clooney’s fourth film as director takes place across a handful of tense days during a primary election in Ohio, where governor Mike Morris (Clooney) is a hair’s-breadth away from securing the Democratic party nomination to stand for office... THE IDES OF MARCH **** DIRECTED BY George Clooney STARRING George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman OPENS OCTOBER 28 // CERT 15 // 100 MINS George Clooney’s fourth film as director takes place across a handful of tense days during a primary election in Ohio, where governor Mike Morris (Clooney) is a hair’s-breadth away from securing the Democratic party nomination to stand for office. Morris works the front of house with smooth, statesmanly charm; he’s a confident TV performer, a glad hander of voters, the consummate master of the sound bite. It’s easy to see Clooney playing up to his own reputation as a liberal activist: the veteran of G8 summits, anti-war marches and a vocal campaigner against the Darfur conflict. Clooney’s often said he’ll never run for President – “Drank too much, did too many drugs,” he once told Uncut – so this, perhaps, is the closest we’ll get to seeing him take a run at the White House. You can see echoes here of another film about politicians, starring another poster boy for the liberal left: Robert Redford’s The Candidate. As good as Morris is at pressing flesh, this is a really backroom yarn, set in sweaty campaign offices and airless hotel suites, and much of the film’s drama coming from the hurly burly of spin, compromises and dark arts deployed to secure Morris’ victory. The mood is one of highly-caffeinated paranoia. Everyone is locked into what news the next round of opinion polls will bring; each live TV debate carries an endless capacity for error, embarrassment and fuck-up. It’s here Clooney – with his director’s cap on – introduces us to Morris’ team, and particularly his “brain’s trust”, campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the veteran of six previous primaries, and up-and-coming press secretary Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling). On the other side, there’s Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), a rival campaign manager. There’s some great macho posturing between Zara and Duffy, like two crusty old rhinos locking horns down at the waterhole. The Ides Of March is adapted from a stage play, Farragut North, by Beau Willimon, based on his experiences working as an intern on Democrat Howard Dean’s 2004 primary campaign. In many respects, what we see on screen is hardly breaking news: politics is a mucky business with plenty of “negative shit” thrown around. Really, who knew? Stephen leaks online a rumour about a rival candidate having shares in a Liberian diamond mine: “I don’t care if it’s true,” he says, “I just want to hear him deny it.” Clooney has explored similar ideas before with K Street (2003) – a topical satire set among Washington’s lobbyists and politicians that he co-produced for HBO with Steven Soderbergh. While The Ides Of March at first resembles K Street’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans, the film detours into territory more familiar from Clooney’s cherished political thrillers from the 1960s and Seventies. The story turns on a late night phone call Stephen intercepts that threatens to thrown Morris’ campaign out of whack. It only gets worse, and before long Stephen’s got a corpse on his hands. Stephen appears here as a distant cousin to the alienated heroes who features in those thrillers Clooney loves. “This is the big league,” he’s told. “When you fuck up, you lose the right to play.” It’s Gosling’s second great performance in as many months, after his lead role in Drive. Gosling is a composed, self-contained actor, which stood him in good stead for playing a character as impassive as the Driver. It works well here, too, as Gosling internalises the growing conflict between Stephen’s ambitions and his ideological crisis. It’s right and proper to commend the high-end cast Clooney’s assembled here – everyone gets at least one meaty scene to play. But this is Gosling’s moment. It feels like we’re watching an actor at a tipping point in his career, about to make the jump from talked-about cult favourite (his best work is still in smaller films like Drive, Half Nelson and Blue Valentine) to talked-about movie star. It’s an exciting time.