Throwing Muses
Throwing Muses
[4AD; 2003]
Rating: 8.2
Does Kristin Hersh have the most terrifying voice in rock? Many singers embrace higher drama or shred
their vocal cords with icier shrieks, but there's an eerie steadiness in Hersh's voice-- an enthrallment
that goes deeper than the mere sound of her singing, part crow, part Wicked Witch of the West and part
vengeful alternative rock icon. Of all the artists who've invoked the cliché of losing control to their
inspiration, Hersh is one of the few to make it convincing; she delivers her most harrowing lyrics with
a delicate serenity, and her simplest with a frightening, reeling delirium.
Her voice and surreal images were the key to the success of Throwing Muses,
before the group disbanded. Hersh didn't want to break up the Muses, the band she's led since
high school: It ended in the mid-90s for financial, not creative reasons. And that's the only way to
explain how, when some funding came through, they could reform and cut a new album that sounds like they'd
never been apart. Often, critics give a veteran band extra credit when they reunite-- props that were
perhaps due long ago and never offered, or just bonus points for not having dropped dead in their autumn
years. I can't think of many albums that need fewer crutches than this one. Without rivaling University
or The Real Ramona, it's different from, yet far rawer than, anything since their debut.
Fans will suck up the nostalgia as Hersh brings back not just her last rhythm section (Bernard Georges on
bass and mainstay David Narcizo on drums), but also founding Muse Tanya Donelly, who adds seraphic harmony
vocals. After several years of sporadic collaborations they jumped into the project without even rehearsing:
They cut the album in just three weekends with minimal overdubs, giving it a clean and "live" sound that
sticks solidly to an unembellished power trio. There are no acoustic tracks, no slow or atmospheric ballads
(like University's "Crabtown")-- nothing but torrential, skidding, hard rock, right from the almost
anthemic first track, "Mercury", which cuts through different ways of opening the throttle before it wrenches
into the chorus.
With such a consistent sound the songs bleed into each other, but Hersh's writing is still intriguingly
unpredictable. Some of the songs are catchy almost after the fact-- like the perfect riff and matter-of-fact
weirdness of her delivery on "Portia", or the erupting chorus on "Pretty or Not". Others sound like they
were Frankensteined together from the verse, chorus and bridge of completely different songs and smoothed
out by the guitars: You've got the mood change from dark to ecstatic on "Half Blast"-- if Donelly had written
any songs here, this would be the one-- or the way "Solar Dip" jerks between time signatures. And that's not
to ignore the grinding dirges like "Speed and Sleep" that just pound themselves into a dark hole.
Throwing Muses skip the production polish that brightened up albums like University, but they've
found the perfect sweetener in Donelly's backing vocals. As limited as her contribution may be-- she
sticks to backup and only sings on half the songs-- her lines are melodically gorgeous, high and pure
against Hersh's lower, somewhat raspy vocals. But her presence alone isn't what makes this so joyous.
Throwing Muses are the counterpart-- or maybe the antidote-- to the driven, enraptured solitude of her
solo material; they deliver a release and an excitement that's been missing from her work for years. Their
reunion is heavy, driven stuff-- as inherently inexplicable as the best, darkest Muses work-- but it's also
ecstatic. This band has seized an opportunity that may never strike for them again, and they're celebrating
it as though there were no tomorrow.
-Chris Dahlen, March 7th, 2003