| Concert
Review March 21, 1995
by Eric Weisbard |
|
When Kristin Hersh leads Throwing Muses, its what she doesn't do that scares you. Drummer David Narcizo wastes himself rolling his wrists far past any basic beat, and bassist Bernard Georges dances around wearing that exaggerated look of contentment cool-daddy bassists so often have. (A tour-imported keyboardist works harmlessly, and often inaudibly, off in a corner.) But Hersh holds still. Her guitar-playing rips, straight and muscular, through Narcizo and Georges's postpunk Zep arabesques, yet she never puts her body into the playing; her fingers move the smallest bit. For those legendarily powerful vocals, Hersh will get a rumble going in her throat--the sort of raspy, saliva-draining husk that promises an instant sore throat if you try it yourself--then simply croon. If the song demands more, she pries her mouth open a little wider, approximating the scream that never comes. Her eyes look off the crowd, at some nonexistent place, as if she has stage-fright. But they're amazing eyes--stagnant pools, dead lightbulbs. The stage eyes of a pro. Hersh has been around long enough to understand that manic, over-the-edge antics are old hat. It's borderline catatonia that's really frightening.1986's Throwing Muses is a classic because Hersh's teen babblings were as rationally false, poetically suspect, and emotionally true as any adolescent temper tantrum. These days, far from the rubber room, she leaves it as "I need a little poison," a line from "Bright Yellow Gun," the hit from the new Muses album University. The insanity isnt unleashed, its simply evoked--as on "Pearl," from 1992s Red Heaven--or parceled out. Hersh played seven songs before talking to the crowd, letting anthemic tunes such as "Furious," "Shimmer," and "Counting Backwards" speak for themselves. Right around "Bright Yellow Gun," she began flirting with the new audience University has brought, telling a goofy story about how "Pearl Jam stole our car, so we stole theirs. Their car was really clean and not punky at all. But worth a lot more money than ours." Then came the one song from Throwing Muses, "Vicky's Box," and Hunkpapa's "Mania," a touch of the rabid for her most committed admirers. The polished and measured "Two Step" from The Real Ramona was easily as impressive. The contained Kristin Hersh may actually be the better Kristin Hersh. Thanks to John Greene for sending me the article in the first place. |