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From
Melody
Maker OK, yeah, of course Kristin
Hersh and I talk about kids. It's got nothing to do with being broody.
It's just part of what you expect when you chat to a forthright,
husky-voiced and clear-eyed woman who not only has actual live children
on display during our interview, but whose Throwing Muses helped mother
an entire bloodline of American indie rock over the last decade. And who, to countless women, but also a large subset of men, is one of
those, erm, Great Mystical Womb-Goddesses whose rock iconoclasm is
always praised with words like "febrile" and
"fertile" and "intuitive".
And whose solo albums admittedly, have alluringly ethereal names:
"Hips And Makers", Hersh's much adored first effort, or
"Strange Angels", its successor and Kristin's first post-Muses
release. Still.
Stick with us for the hidden surprise in the Hersh family cereal
box. Babies and women and
(throwing) music: Kristin Harsh has strange angles on all of them. TAKE
the
kids, for a start. Ryder,
who's watching cartoons, is six. Wyatt,
who's waiting to be fed, is one. And
"Strange Angels", who's just been released, is... well, I'm
afraid Kristin's finding her newest bundle of joy a little harder to
love than its Muses siblings. And
that's despite the likelihood that, as with "Hips And Makers",
it will outsell every album ever released by the Throwing Muses. In fact, during our interview, she all but banishes "Strange
Angels" to the cellar, kindly but firmly summing up its acoustic
ways as "pencil sketches" in contrast to the "bright
colors" of the Muses. "I didn't even mean to make that record. It's just my band got taken away from me. S when I do
interviews, I want to say "Don't you want to talk about Throwing
Muses?" We were really good." Throwing Muses, you see, after I0 years of modest-selling musical
influence and relative penury, have had to call it a day.
You can't eat praise - even words like "febrile"
-apparently. "Oh, at least we never won any false friends!
We did survive. That was our goal. For
I0 years. All we wanted to
do was make each next record and... as a band that actively tried not to
have hits, there's a certain amount of success in that.
But I wasn't very realistic about what it means in this world to
be a band like that. I didn't mind being in debt, as I didn't really
need to make money off it. I gave up my salary a few years ago so the
band could make money, but you can't really raise a family on that, and
they're getting older." Try to get in a word in favor of the solo albums Kristin seems to regard
as the runts of the litter, and you get a "yes-but" smile. "I
like the big loud colors of the Muses.
But I have to admit that when you're using pencils, people can
see what you're drawing a little better. And
live, well, I'm not a performer with a capital P who can fill a theatre
with sound. So the audience
do a lot of work to be good listeners and make it happen in the whole
theatre. And I was really touched by the fact that people wanted to
hear these songs." She smiles again as Ryder
thumps through the room. And until I'm not heartbroken over my band this
is a nice adult thing for me to do.
And the songs work, and my family can tour in a car.
It's OK. And Billy
[Kristin's husband and partner of eight years] keeps saying, "Don't
worry, it's just your first band that's dead.
You can have another band someday." I STILL can't
help thinking that for a Great Mystical, etc singer-songwriter, Kristin
Hersh has a most unfeminine aversion to Folky Acoustic Confessionals.
After all, isn't that the quintessential girl music? "Actually, I've just never considered myself a
girl," Kristin laughs. "And
so if you don't expect people to treat you like a girl, then they
don't." Almost as much as they get weirded out by pregnancy. I saw
people shiver with discomfort when Throwing Muses played The Garage I996
and Wyatt, who is now happily drooling on the hotel suite telephone,
made his London stage debut... in utero. "I know!
It's true - people treated me like a mutant, like I came from
another planet, like it's some kind of performance art piece, just
because I had to keep doing my job when I was pregnant. Jeez, where's
she going to put the guitar? In fact, the two seem to be really
complimentary careers to me: both of them are really physical, so
physical that they verge into the spiritual.
Maybe now it's all a little better, probably because of Frances
Bean [Cobain]. And Bjork
having kids, too." But does having children make you wise beyond your
years? Kristin, a mother for the first time at I9, laughs
again. "When I was pregnant with Dylan, I thought,
'Right, now you have to grow up.' And when I had him, I quickly realised
that he didn't want a grown up, he wanted someone to be down on his
level. Because you have no
control over how they feel or what they say or do.
They raise themselves. All
I've done is pour the cereal and put the coats on... they just turn
themselves into people." Into boys, in fact.
All three. "I know!" She makes an eyes-wide face. "My whole family's all male... even the dog's a boy! I guess I
always expected I'd have a daughter.. after all, my mother had one.
Though girls scare me -they're so complicated.
Boys are just very congruent: what's on the inside is what's on
the outside. A lot easier
to deal with." Are you worried they'll grow into sexist behaviour regardless of how you
raise them? "Well, their gender-specific ideas are already really warped, I'm afraid. Dylan would go to daycare and ask the other kids what their mom's records sounded like. And his artsy-craftsy teacher played the Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine when they were working on popsicle stick log cabins. She asked them if anyone knew what band it was. Dylan said, Well, it sounds like the Pixies, but I'm not sure... ...so he learned straight away not to talk about that stuff,"
his mum concludes wryly. "And
two years ago he came home and threw his bookbag down on the kitchen
counter and yelled at me, 'Hey, are you a rock star?' Like there was
something I'd been keeping from him!
So of course I said, 'No, honey, if I was, I'd tell you.' But
Ryder's pretty self-assured about it all.
If we have MTV on, he says, 'Men can't play, quitar. 'And he
thinks that women can't talk on the phone, cos that's what he sees his
dad doing.' STILL
There's plenty of people who imagine that the insights in your music -
delicate, raw, ugly, comforting, joyous - gain their intuitive power
from their empathy, and their empathy comes from you being... well, you
know. Female.
The Great Womb Goddess. "Actually, I should've been a scientist,"
Kristin announces. "I'm not creative, and I'm not very sensitive,
either. I'm kind of cold
and logical, even though people keep thinking that what they're hearing
is emotions. I drive Billy crazy. He's
this really emotional Italian guy, and he's always trying to get me to
talk about my feelings, to be open. I wish I could, but I can't...
because I don't even know what they are. Basically, I'm not a talker.
I'm not a sharer. And I'm not really so sensitive to other people's feelings. I
can't even read fiction, cos I actually think 'Hey, you just made this
up! You're just lying to
me!' I can only read about science.
And music, to me, after the inspiration, is just math.
There's the inspiration part, and the rest is just electronic
equipment and then science. "I'm really nice, I guess, that's true,"
Kristin apologetically. "But
I'm a little dim when it comes to people's emotions." Hmm.
Could've fooled me. |