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New Uses for Her Muses
When Kristin Hersh's 'voices' stopped, she found a different kind of music
By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun
Like so many singer-songwriters, when former Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh sits down to write a tune, she often hears voices.
But not figuratively -- literally.
Hersh -- who suffers from manic depression, hallucinations and seizures -- says her latest solo album, the striking Sky Motel, came together after a serious case of writer's block. The new album brings her to the Horseshoe for a solo performance tonight.
She made good use of that so-called "down time," recording an Appalachian folk-song album, Murder, Misery And Then Goodnight, distributed only on the Internet.
"I was used to almost hallucinating songs," says the frank, funny and intelligent Hersh, 33, down the line from her months-old home in Providence, R.I., which she shares with her husband-manager and three sons, ages 13, eight and two.
She had been used to hearing songs in her head and had never tried to write a song on purpose.
But it made her "feel crazy to be hearing things that other people didn't hear."
So when the voices stopped, it was a relief.
"What other people would call writer's block, I just called life. And it was wonderful."
MORE-LAYERED ALBUM
For a while anyway.
"But eventually I realized I couldn't make Appalachian folk song records forever, which is what I had done to bide my time," Hersh continues. "And I was still under contract. So I just set the stage for these Sky Motel songs by playing progressions that I enjoyed and humming along and going, 'Well, that counts, that's a song!' I still think I was tricked into writing these songs that were already there."
While Hersh's last album of original material, 1998's stellar Strange Angels, was a stripped-down, raw and intimate affair, Sky Motel is more layered and experimental. The new album was produced by Trina Shoemaker (Sheryl Crow, Victoria Williams) at Daniel Lanois' studios in New Orleans. Shoemaker, whom Hersh lovingly describes as "kind of like Cindy Crawford and a metal guy combined," had engineered the last two Muses records.
"I think the songs just called for an almost idiosyncratic style of production," says Hersh. "Layering sounds that don't normally go together -- a Jane's Addiction bass sound with a Velvet Underground lead. These muted acoustic guitars tripled until they sound like cellos, and goofy, groovy bongo pads. It's a very California record, I suppose. The next record may very well be just acoustic again. These songs needed something else."
Hersh made her name -- in the U.K. she's worshipped as both "the godmother of grunge" and "the savage housewife of indie rock" -- as leader of seminal underground band, Throwing Muses, which she formed in 1983 with her half-sister Tanya Donelly (Belly) and officially disbanded in 1997.
So the other big thing that Sky Motel has going for it is Hersh's gravelly-voiced growl that recalls her more aggressive-sounding days with her former group.
ADMIRED PATTI SMITH
"It felt good to know that I still had access to that sound, even without the Muses," says Hersh, who also conjures up Patti Smith when she lets out a good howl.
"She was just always in my list of women -- Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith and Exene Cervenka (of L.A. punk band
X)," she says of the comparison.
"I'm proud to be on it. Now I'm one of the people on the list that people get compared to. My dad used to listen to Smith when I was a kid, but I thought that it was really scary music and I'd make him turn it off. I didn't hear her again, after I was like seven or eight years old, until we were making the Muses record, (1988's) House Tornado, and somebody said, 'You really should listen to Patti Smith, you know.'
"And so I'd listen to a couple of records on my Walkman on the way to the studio every day. I think it may have been too late for me. I think you need to hear it at a certain age to have it move you hard. And I kind of missed it."
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