KATE BUSH Aerial EMI ****

With the possible exception of Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better, Aerial is surely the most highly anticipated album of 2005. Indeed, the level of expectation is immense, although the level of hype (it's has been declared "a masterpiece by all who have heard it", trumpets the press release, three weeks prior to the official release) comes inevitably from the record company, and not the highly reclusive Kate Bush. Yet the mere fact of this being Bush's first album in more than 12 years is surely enough to generate interest beyond the casual listener.

The first question to ask, though, is not whether Aerial is any good, but whether anyone under the age of 30 will be remotely interested. The second question is whether Kate Bush still has what it takes to entice, intrigue and mystify. The answer to both is an emphatic yes - this has more sonic smarts and intelligence than most of the sharpest current musical operators you can think of.

Divided across two CDs (A Sea of Honey and A Sky of Honey), disc one is equal measures domesticated, maternal memoir (Bertie, Mrs Bartolozzi), mystery-of-pop (King of the Mountain, How to Be Invisible, Joanni), and expected sequences of very bold musical experiments and arrangements (Pi, A Coral Room). If CD 1 is virtually flawless, inventive contemporary pop, then CD 2 is altogether more ambitious - a soundscape suite formulated around recurring motifs of light, day, night and sunrise. It ebbs and flows like a mixture of early Pink Floyd (circa Ummagumma/ Atom Heart Mother) and Bush's own masterpiece, Hounds of Love.

An album with not a hint of the conventional about it, Aerial is a record made by a person whose values have shifted with age and experience, and which are suitably reflected. It doesn't work all the time, but when it does it's a triumph of warmth, depth and clarity.