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[Live & On Record]

KRISTIN HERSH:
THROWING MUSE

The biggest surprise at Kristin Hersh’s sold-out show upstairs at the Middle East last Sunday had to be the audience members: most of them didn’t look much older than the first Throwing Muses single, which was released in 1984. So even if she has fallen off the radar in terms of the modern-rock mainstream, she’s still got fans who aren’t in it for a trip down memory lane. And that’s fortunate, because Hersh tends to discard most of her old songs whenever a new album comes out. On Sunday she played only three Throwing Muses songs — three more than she did on tour with Vic Chesnutt last year. Instead, she focused on tunes from her new solo CD, Sunny Border Blue (4AD).

The best of a good lot, the new solo album distills a theme that’s been in Hersh’s writing for the past few years. Most of its characters have strong emotional and chemical addictions, messy relationships, and complicated sex lives. Nothing too unusual in that, but Hersh is an expert at twisting her images to conjure a feeling of abandon: “Your Dirty Answer,” which both opens the album and kicked off the show, treats sex and alcohol as a pair of powerful drugs. She included the old Muses song “Cottonmouth” to show she’s always dealt with those themes, but the focus is sharper in the newer songs. The crowd was reverent enough that a genuinely funny verse from “White Suckers (“You were nice but twisted, that lame old story/We were a match made in purgatory/You didn’t disappoint me totally” — and yes, that’s a love song) went by with barely a giggle.

Hersh still tours without a backing band, though her sound has gotten far less acoustic on disc. The new album builds on a full-band sound through her multiple guitar and keyboard overdubs, with real and programmed drums suggesting an updated Muses sound. It also sports a stronger melodic sense than Hersh’s last couple of solo discs; she’s writing straightforward hooks instead of twisted ones these days. So there’s bound to be something missing on stage, where the songs get stripped back and she tones down her more rocking sensibility. She can deliver some of the dynamics on acoustic guitar (notably the big and ominous chords that open “Sundrops”), but the new songs have nuances that cry out to be explored by a band.

There was no lack of nuance in her vocals, which ran her usual gamut from seductive whisper to banshee wail. Once shy and intense on stage, Hersh is now chatty and intense. On Sunday she revealed her shameful habit of shopping at Wal-Mart, consoled the audience for missing The Simpsons, and admitted that she didn’t understand the additional lyrics that Michael Stipe wrote for “Your Ghost.” But just when she’s got you comfortable, she snaps back into spectral mode for “Delicate Cutters” — an old Muses song whose haunting beauty still cuts deep.

BY BRETT MILANO

Issue Date: March 29 - April 4, 2001