Andy Fairweather Low guest stars on this story of a group of people exploring the Himalayas who, upon finding evidence of the elusive, mythical Yeti, out of compassion cover up all traces of its footprints.

Priya Elan in the New Musical Express greeted the single with enthusiasm, saying: "For those of us who have been secretly longing for a return to the unflinchingly bizarre and Bush's ability to conjure up strange new worlds, 'Wild Man' is a deep joy.

[11] The album's songs are built around Bush's quietly jazzy piano and Steve Gadd's drums (she had just started working with him and praised his "brilliant drumming"[11]), and utilize both sung and spoken word vocals in what Classic Rock's Stephen Dalton calls "a...supple and experimental affair, with a contemporary chamber pop sound grounded in crisp piano, minimal percussion and light-touch electronics...billowing jazz-rock soundscapes, interwoven with fragmentary narratives delivered in a range of voices from shrill to Laurie Anderson-style cooing.

[14][15] "Lake Tahoe" features choral singers Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood joining Bush in a song about a rarely seen ghost: a woman who appears in a Victorian gown to call to her dog, Snowflake.

Running at 5:01, the piece is a black-and-white shadow puppet animation that NPR's Dan Raby calls "...beautiful in its simplicity – emphasizing small subtle movements over big extravagance...

In 2015, a remixed version of "Wild Man" was included on The Art of Peace − Songs for Tibet II compilation album celebrating the 80th birthday of the Dalai Lama.

In her accompanying review of the album, NPR music critic Ann Powers writes: "Each song on Snow grows as if from magic beans from the lush ground of the singer-songwriter's keyboard parts.

The music is immersive but spacious, jazz-tinged and lushly electronic – the 53-year-old Bush, a prime inspiration for tech-savvy young auteurs ranging from St. Vincent to hip-hop's Big Boi, pioneered the use of digital samplers in the 1980s and is still an avid aural manipulator.

This time around, drummer Steve Gadd is her most important interlocutor – the veteran studio player's gentle but firm touch draws the frame around each of her expanding landscapes.

The Guardian's Alexis Petridis notes that "For all the subtle beauty of the orchestrations, there's an organic, live feel, the sense of musicians huddled together in a room, not something that's happened on a Bush album before.

"[38] Will Hermes in Rolling Stone writes: "[50 Words for Snow is] an LP that finds a universe of emotions in its wintery theme – a sort of virtual snowglobe ... the music ... is full of plush, drifty ambience.

This, one senses, is her natural territory...Where her past work has often been heavily-layered and breathless, 50 Words for Snow uses negative space to impressive effect; much of the album features little more than voice and flurrying passages of piano which gust across the stave, changing pace and melodic direction as if they're suddenly hitting updrafts.

She also made her first public appearance after 10 years, picking the South Bank Sky Arts Award in the Pop category for 50 Words for Snow, beating fellow nominees Adele, for 21 and PJ Harvey, for Let England Shake.