Aerial

Her first album in twelve years was a double: disc one is called A Sea of Honey and disc two A Sky of Honey. It reached number three in the UK and number 48 in the US, and its single King of the Mountain reached number four in the UK. The song pi has her singing the digits of the number pi.

It entered the UK chart on 13 November 2005 with first-week sales of 91,473 and charted in 22 countries. Disc one is a set of unrelated songs, including King of the Mountain, Bertie, an ode to her son Albert McIntosh performed with period instruments, and Joanni, about Joan of Arc. In pi she sings the number to its 78th decimal place, then from the 101st to the 137th. A Coral Room, for piano and voice, concerns the loss of her mother. Disc two is a single piece covering one summer day, from the dawn chorus to the next sunrise, and opens with her son saying that the day is full of birds. In Aerial Tal she imitates birdsong.

King of the Mountain was first played on BBC Radio 2 on 21 September 2005 and released for download on 27 September. It refers to Elvis Presley and Citizen Kane, and it was her first top-five hit in twenty years. Its second track was a Marvin Gaye cover, Sexual Healing, recorded in 1994 and not on an album until the compilation The Other Sides in 2018. Michael Kamen arranged the strings, played by the London Metropolitan Orchestra, in one of his last projects before his death in 2003. Guests include Peter Erskine, Eberhard Weber, Lol Creme and Gary Brooker.

Reception and later editions

Bush was nominated for two BRIT Awards in January 2006, for best British female solo artist and best British album. Mojo named it the third best album of 2005. The Times's Rob Chapman praised the closing run of Somewhere in Between, Nocturn and Aerial as the most joyous finale you would hear all year, while Pitchfork's Dominique Leone, in a mixed 2005 review, found the arrangements understated and preferred pi and Mrs. Bartolozzi to Bertie and Joanni.

On the first release, Rolf Harris played didgeridoo and sang on An Architect's Dream and The Painter's Link. After his 2014 conviction his vocals were replaced on the 2018 remaster by new recordings from her son. The album was reissued on her own Fish People label in 2011, and in 2014 she played King of the Mountain, Joanni and all of A Sky of Honey live for the first time at Before the Dawn.