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Album Review
by SashaS
17-3-2003
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| Muses/Hersh CDs: double LP by all means |
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Throwing Muses - Kristin Hersh: 'Throwing Muses' - 'The Grotto'
(4AD)
Muses/Hersh: double doze of musical overload
Throwing Muses’ long-standing outlook on standards, traditions and, in particular, marketing is confirmed again with two albums released on the same day. Of course it is expected but, if it weren’t done, these albums would generate double the coverage… Well, we somehow doubt this move, that can’t help sales either, really concerns the lady behind both releases, Kristin Hersh, although it should because Throwing Muses called it a day in 1997 due to the lack of – ‘dead presidents’.
The albums by the reformed band and Hersh’s solo work are strikingly different and yet very similar, just the two sides of the same coin. X-chromosomes and the Y-kind: Hersh brandishes her rock persona for the driven, punkoid sound of the band that is contrasted with an intimate, pensive, darker, quieter self. Creative bipolarity to reflect altering facets of the artist as well as (all) listeners…
The band’s self-titled album was recorded over three weekends in November 2001 and it sounds it: spontaneous, raw, charged, a collective release; it is loud, dirty, busy songs that kick your corpo-punk-lulled arses out of ‘recliner rocking’. Among the 12 tracks there are so many jewels even pigs would have hard time missing: ‘Mercury’, the sonic boom that is ‘Pretty Or Not’, the indie-fury of ‘Civil Disobedience’, the darkly majestic ‘Pandora’s Box’, the colossal burn of ‘Solar Dip’…
There is the cosmic-wide panorama of ‘Epiphany’, the slow build-up to epic-ness of ‘Half Blast’ and the closing aural-collision on ‘Flying’… Livid and uncompromising sound of early T/Muses was certainly down to two ladies fronting the original incarnation and it is great to hear Hersh’s half-sister making appearances on five tracks: Tanya Donelly left the band in 1991 to form The Breeders and then Belly, before working solo.
Thus, the band’s disc presents Hersh’s – with bassist Bernard Georges and drummer Dave Narcizo – wilder, rockier ways, while ‘The Grotto’ is post-parenthood. Just the basic thing called life, once you pile up responsibility on your agenda and the care-free moments of rocking and driving down the global highways to the next gig, making noises and behaving questionably, are all but a collection of fading snapshots.
From the opening ‘Sno Cat’, over ‘Vanishing Twin’ and ‘Vitamins V’, to concluding ‘Ether’, this is a gentle, dreamy, cloud-like creation that is sublime, subtle, somewhat surreal. Screams of ‘Muses’ are hushed to an ‘atmo-whisper’ on ‘The Grotto’ and, oblique at times; this is a monochrome version of the trio’s Technicolor offering, a bookish intimacy versus the public’s theatre-kind consumption.
Exhilaration complimenting contemplation. It’s all in the same life.
‘Throwing Muses’ – 8/10
‘The Grotto’ – 7/10
*
Tour dates:
20 March – Astoria, London
22 March – Ambassador, Dublin
23 March – QMU, Glasgow
SashaS
17-3-2003
Throwing Muses’ album ‘Throwing Muses’ is released 17 March 2003 by 4AD
Kristin Hersh’s album ‘The Grotto’ is released 17 March 2003 by 4AD
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