Hypnotic Kate Bush is back with a thunderclap: Before The Dawn is an epic live album celebrating her 2014 comeback concerts 

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 Kate Bush: Before the Dawn

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When Kate Bush made her comeback at the Hammersmith Apollo two years ago, fans hoped her 22-night residency would lead to a resumption of her music career.

Britain’s most influential female singer had even hinted as much. ‘It’s an adventure that’s only just begun,’ she teased.

A UK tour was suggested. There were rumours of Glastonbury. A DVD celebrating the London concerts was mooted . . . but it all came to nothing.

Spectacular: Before the Dawn is a faithful memento of the shows and does reiterate Bush’s status as one of music’s true originals

What we do have, just in time for Christmas, is a triple live album based on that triumphant 2014 return.

Credited to The K Fellowship in a nod to Kate’s impressive backing musicians, including her teenage son Bertie, it’s a faithful memento of the Before The Dawn shows, with no added studio trickery.

The album can’t recapture the full impact of a spectacular, theatrical experience that featured gyrating fish skeletons, ocean waves made from fluttering silk sheets and a dancer who sliced up the stage with a chainsaw, but it does reiterate Bush’s status as one of music’s true originals.

She had approached her first live shows since 1979’s The Tour Of Life with a stickler’s eye for detail.

Her seven-piece band were superbly drilled, but allowed to play with an expressive freedom that saw them glide between rock, soul and jazz.

That extraordinary voice was also in great shape. A little of her upper register has gone — the banshee wail of 1978’s Wuthering Heights is beyond her and that hit was a notable omission from the gigs — but a deeper, huskier tone allows her to add gruff power on the rock numbers and soulful texture to the ballads.

The album is credited to The K Fellowship in a nod to Kate’s impressive backing musicians and the seven-piece band who were superbly drilled for the concerts

Bush is prone to flashes of indulgence. Shorn of the visuals, some pieces sound too long on record, while there are several interludes littered with pretentious playlets. Given her vivid imagination, Kate’s world can be a wacky one, but the ridiculous is overshadowed by the sublime.

Central to the album are two extravagant song cycles: The Ninth Wave and A Sky Of Honey were played live for the first time in London.

The first, from 1985’s Hounds Of Love, is a tempestuous odyssey about a drowning at sea that evolves into a gripping, dark night of the soul saga.

Mixing jazzy improvisation with crunching rockers such as Waking The Witch, it climaxes with the folky Jig Of Life and the acoustic, accordion-led The Morning Fog.

The Ninth Wave contains the show’s one pre-recorded moment: And Dream Of Sheep filmed in a water tank at Pinewood Studios and projected onto a screen. Shivering as she sang, Kate spent so long in the water she reportedly contracted mild hypothermia.

A Sky Of Honey, from 2005’s Aerial, is less stormy. Dominated by soulful, bucolic pieces about a blissful summer’s day, it suffers less from its lack of visual accompaniment and is as satisfying on record as onstage.

Dreamy: Kate Bush is photographed in a water tank in a promotional poster for the 2014 tour

Many of its tracks are long, some close to ten minutes, but the music is majestic: Sunset starts as a fluent jazz rocker before developing into a Latin workout punctuated by Kate’s blood-curdling flamenco yelps.

Performing Hounds Of Love with a throaty roar, she gives glimpses of her younger self, who began her music career in the pubs of South London with The KT Bush Band.

There is also a hypnotic Running Up That Hill (her biggest hit after Wuthering Heights) that is sensual without being salacious.

There is little direct communication with her adoring fans, but after closing the show with a suitably thunderous Cloudbusting, she is clearly overwhelmed: ‘Oh my God, thank you so much. I’ll always remember this.’

She is an artist who lets her music speak for itself and it does so gloriously here: her creative vision has dimmed little over the decades.

• Before The Dawn is out on CD, vinyl and download today.