Since Kate Bush disappeared from the pop scene 12 years ago, many observers and even some hardcore fans have been wondering if there was anything left of her storied career. Not many were expecting the double album she releases today, “Aerial” (Columbia), an oblique collection of her trademark ethereal pop.

The singer-songwriter arrived on the British music scene in 1978 dressed in a barely-there leotard, with luscious breasts, huge eyes, wild hair, and a piercing three-octave voice. Discovered by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, she signed with EMI at the age of 16 and quickly had her first single at no. 1 on the British chart – a dramatic adaptation of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” – capturing the imagination of angst-ridden boys and girls.

Over the next decade and a half, Bush cemented her reputation as an enormously gifted musician with a strange ability to synthesize the erotic and literary. She unapologetically expressed the sensuality and strength – and occasional derangement – of women in a way that men could admire. But the songs were never written for men’s benefit or attention.

Bush’s sudden success soured her on celebrity, and she spent much of the 1980s out of the limelight and in the production studio. This earned her the tag of recluse, and the tabloids reported breathlessly (and falsely) about her supposed weight gain, drug addiction, and mental breakdowns. But with the release of each carefully produced album, her reputation grew.

After 1993’s “The Red Shoes,” however, the typical four-year span between outputs stretched to 12. It turns out Bush spent much of the last decade building her family – which accounts for this album’s uncharacteristically hopeful and refreshingly domestic focus.

The tender “Mrs. Bartolozzi” recounts the bittersweet labor of a wife doing loads of laundry. Bush has been noted for her tendency to eroticize lyrics about despair, fear, and confusion, but here she sexualizes domestic chores: “I watched them going ’round and ’round / My blouse wrapping itself around your trousers.”

The first CD, “A Sea of Honey,” contains seven strong cuts ranging from the opening homage to Elvis to a song about an obsessive love of math (in which she counts out 116 decimal places of pi) to a poem about her mother’s death that utilizes images of a sunken ship and a treasured milk jug. “How To Be Invisible” is probably the best of the bunch. The guitars and percussion lope and gallop around a dark undercurrent that ramps up to Bush’s invocation of the invisibility spell: “Eye of braille / Hem of anorak / Stem of wallflower / Hair of doormat.”

“A Sky of Honey,” the second eight track concept CD, analyzes the natural and creative processes that occur during the earth’s daily rotation. Birds chirp and painters paint while guitars and jazz percussion build steadily to the hopeful climax of daybreak. Throughout the whole album, but especially in the second part, the music is deceptively simple. Each distinct instrument is mixed into clean, atmospheric soundscapes.

Which is not to say the album is perfect. Bush is so weird and takes so many risks that she’s bound to miss the mark a few times. She may have a timeless quality, but some of her arrangements seem stuck in the 1980s. Still, the album is her most even and compelling since 1985’s “Hounds of Love,” and her voice sounds sultrier than ever.