Soul Soldiers Kristin Hersh & Tanya Donelly

Throwing Muses have been weaving manic magic for over five years now, with songs that defy gravity and guitars which break all the rules. Danny Eccleston talks to the ‘savage housewife’ and her right-hand woman...

     Throwing Muses are a band with a talent for inducing grown men to lose it really badly. Words like ‘profound’ and ‘cathartic’ are bandied liberally as journos dredge the very depths of their lexicons in order to grasp at the Muses’ otherness. And watching them live, you can see what they mean, as Kristin Hersh stares beyond the audience, beyond the theatre, and towards something half-glimpsed within the world of her songs. No feet on monitors. No ‘Hello England’. Just the songs, some of which flutter delicately in the ether as others pounce with gusto like rock’n’roll with knobs on...
Since emerging from New England in 1986 with a self-titled primal scream of on album chocka with elusive tunes and terrible emotion, they’ve served an audience who continue to require a bit more than three chords and guy meets gal. Kristin and Tanya Donelly (songwriters, guitarists and half sisters) have also acquired a reputation as friendly, if retiring characters. And you’d think, with Kristin presently very pregnant indeed, the constant exposure of touring would be getting them down... But not a bit of it.

“Nooo,” exclaims Tanya, shocked by the assumption, “touring has never been the issue...”
Kristin concurs: “I like touring. It’s great. You can’t get phone calls, no mail...”
“You get to stay in hotels all the time...”
“You don’t have to make your own bed or wash your own dishes...”
And just to prove that they’re not averse to a spot of Road Frenzy, Led-Zep style, Tanya offers me some ‘pills’, but only of the Holsten variety. I wonder whether they’d regard themselves as clean-living characters.
“It gets less clean,” admits Tanya. “The older I get the more...unclean I become. But, relatively speaking, we’re cleaner than most. We’re not very experimental drug-wise.”
Kristin laughs. “If we were, we’d have really bad shows. In a band like this, you really couldn’t do that!”
“And also,” adds Tanya, “we went through our experimental stage kinda young. It’s not something that particularly interests me any more.”

     Still, with a new album, ‘The Real Ramona’, to promote, the circus ain’t about to grind to a halt just yet. And with a UK ‘hit’ in the shape of Counting Backwards the Muses have found themselves a bigger draw than ever. In a way, it’s indicative of Ramona’s poppier, more direct style, though the half sisters’ unique approach to their instruments is as striking as ever. Indeed, with so much attention habitually focussed on the domestic and sexual drama of Kristin’s lyrics, some of the Muses’ more basic virtues are often overlooked: which are a) They tote mean guitars, and b) they do so with very little reverence for what ‘rock’ guitar should sound like. Folky shapes, Spanish inflections and psychedelic excursions are all twisted into something new and unsettling. They are perhaps the only band ever to tempt the inkie music press into talk about chord progressions... Would Kristin regard her progressions as at all unusual?

     “Well, for some reason, we always thought that everything you did had to be fascinating, you know! Well, it’s not true for one - I don’t think it’s true, but that’s probably why people draw attention to that. We weren’t content to play in familiar keys et cetera. Chords which I associate with many other things don’t move me to bring anything else to them, so I find it more interesting to work with chords that hit me in an interesting way.”
     With former bass-player Leslie Langston leaving the band for California and a lurve interest, long-time acquaintance Fred Abong has recently taken over on four strings. Has Fred’s influence served to streamline the band at all?
     “Well, Leslie was a very melodic, very flowery bass player. Fred is more punchy. Before, things would begin with me and Dave (Narcizo, the Muses’ drummer), and Tanya and Leslie would have to fill in the spaces, so there was a lot going on. It was cool, each measure was contested, note for note, particularly between me and Tanya. All the melodies we were playing were working in and out of each other in a very complex way.”
     “Like Math!” laughs Tanya.
     “Yeah a lot like Math! And if you’re like a ‘slow hearing’ musician, then it’s fascinating - each measure is complex and interesting. But if you’re not, and  I don’t think anyone outside of this band would be that slow hearing, it just sounds... busy!”

     Leslie was a comparatively trained musician, wasn’t she? Was there much of a conflict of approach there, Tanya?
     “She was very trained, yes. But the end result was that she played great bass lines, and she was a great bass player. But there were times when we... confused her.”
     “It was mainly with rhythms,” Kristin continues, “because Dave and I would often be playing the same part and Tanya would be playing a different rhythm. Leslie had to be told all the chords beforehand. I would write out all the chords for her so she always knew what the chords were, and what all the shifts were. But rhythmically, you can’t just always say, ‘These are the counts’ to somebody... She would be saying, ‘Why? Why does it go like this?!’”

     The earlier songs would often incorporate fairly radical tempo changes. I wonder whether this tactic is something else the Muses have decide to forego for the sake of greater simplicity. Kristin begs to differ...
     “Not really. They’re on the album, but more often we’re playing in different times, and together, it still sounds solid, instead of us all shifting together. Like on Dragonhead (one of Tanya’s songs, from 1989’s Hunkpapa LP)... that beginning! We were always playing different things!
     Not for the first time, Tanya breaks into giggles: “So now we just don’t do it!”

     With Throwing Muses being such intriguing entities, it’s inevitable that Kristin and Tanya should be asked how they materialise. Do they hold seances? More sensibly, do they have a strong idea of how a final track is going to sound before the record, or do the just wander into the studio with just the bare bones? Kristin takes up the question...
     “Usually the whole band has been playing a song for a good long time before we bring it into the studio, and it’s already developed it’s own identity. We trust that new and different ideas are going to come up in production, structural ideas. We’re pretty open to changes when we go in... but not that open!”
     What about Two Step on the new album? As the band’s first ‘communal’ composition that must have come about through messing about in the studio...
     “That came initially from something Fred and Dave were playing, and then,” Tanya squirms, “ as embarrassed as I am to say it, a jam. We were actually jamming. Once!”
     Kristin visibly dredges her memory. “Well, I was writing something, and it was the only song I’d ever written without a guitar, so I just had it in my head. Fred was playing this line in F, so I thought, ‘Let’s make it in F!’ And then we all started playing seriously, and it still sounds the way it did then. The only thing we added in pre-production was the beginning; we’d already decided how the end was going to go long time ago... We faded the song and pushed the reverb so it seems to just... float away!”
     Well, that sounds like fun. And even more fun is ‘Hook In Her Head’, where Tanya’s lead surrenders its usual restraint for a squalling wig-out . Live, it’s the only song where you’ll find her crouching over her Marshalls, coaxing out big lumps of feedback...
     “Yeah, I had everything turned up to 11 for that one! Also, it’s two guitar parts that I’m playing, so live I’ve had to do a lot of inventing to get around that.”
     Kristin explains: “Fred and I just try and fill as much space for her as possible there, so she can be creative rather than just holding it down. It’s strange because we toured that song before we brought it into the studio, and I think how we’re doing it now is very representative of the original idea, though other people might not! It’s just a very big headache thinking about re-creating the recorded version live, but if it works...!”

     In an envious attempt to unearth a rhyme or reason behind guitar work which explores such unexpected avenues, I ask Kristin whether she’s ever used unconventional tunings...
“Sometimes I do to write, but then I just figure out better ways to play those songs, so that I don’t mess them up!”
     And Tanya...?
     “Fred does for one song, but personally I’ve never gotten into altered tunings. Especially live, it’s always seemed overly precious to me to run around and switch guitars for one song, then switch back!”

     Tanya’s dislike of on-stage pernicketyness isn’t shared by Kristin, at least as far as her sound is concerned...
     “Actually, I never realised after giving the band a pain in the ass for the first three or four shows, that every song has a different sound setting, and that’s probably pretty precious!” she laughs.       “Someone was saying, ‘I didn’t know it was that scientific - I just though you were running around ‘cos you had problems!’ Every song it was like ‘pad, pad, pad, pad, pad’ to the back of the stage...”
     Such ‘headless chicken’ antics have persuaded Kristin that there must be a better way of manipulating her live sound, and in fact...
     “...I’ve been doing a lot more with the guitar recently, which is great, because trying to rely on the amp is just too messy. I’m using a MESA/Boogie, which I’ve been using for the last couple of tours I suppose, because of it’s basic versatility. I mean, Tanya can go for a really great sound, which is her sound, and I have to go for a kind of half-assed versatility, so I don’t always get the perfect sound I need. But using the guitar more has been so great. I used to just pump the guitar for everything it had. Now, more control from the guitar,” she twiddles with an imaginary volume knob, “will make the difference between one song and another, and for a clean sound to be either flat or a very full clean sound. It’s made a huge difference, and then, in the middle of a song, you can actually do something, without having to run around!”

     On stage, there’s a pleasing symmetry to the Muses twin Les Paul attack, and I tease them with comparisons with Status Quo. However, their allegiances are purely musical rather than at all cosmetic. Tell us about the Les Pauls, Tanya...
     “Well, we were both playing Strats for a while, and then Kristin got a Les Paul, and then I got really attached to it just playing with it on my own,” she looks sheepish, “behind Kristin’s back. So I got one. Oh no... Kristin gave me hers and got a new one.
     “I just think they’re more powerful. And with a Strat you just can’t get that earthiness you can get with a Les Paul, but you can get pretty reedy with a Les Paul, too.”
     “You have to make up for the differences in tone with the strings of a Les Paul,” Kristin continues. “I raise the pickups for the bass strings, probably because I’m ‘rhythm’ for the most part. I have to play around with pickups a lot in order to get really balanced sounds, and sometimes I use different sets of strings and stuff. That’s the only thing I’ve found wrong with a Les Paul at all, which is amazing. Strats are really limited for me, and they’re probably the least limited of all.”
     I suggest to Tanya that Gibson necks were heaven sent for those not blessed with enormous hands.
     “Yeah, I have really wee hands, and there are still certain barre chords that I cannot play.”

     Despite a brace of fine Donelly tunes on ‘The Real Ramona’ (the spindly Honeychain and the Blondie-esque Not Too Soon) and a smattering of songs throughout the band’s back catalogue, there’s no denying that Muses’ songwriting is dominated by Kristin Hersh. At the risk of starting a fight, I ask Tanya why she hasn’t written more.
     “The thing is, when we’re going in to make a Throwing Muses record, Kristin will bring in about twenty-five songs, and I’ll bring about... four. I have been more prolific lately but, like, now we’re on the road for five years straight, I’ll just be selling them!” Tanya laughs, leaning into the microphone... “So if anybody wants to buy some really good pop songs...”

     Last year, Tanya said au revoir to Throwing Muses for a couple of months, scampering up to Edinburgh with Kim Deal (fellow Bostonian and bass-playing Pixie) and Josephine Wiggs, to record ‘Pod’ as The Breeders. Produced by the notoriously provocative Steve Albini, it was an unlikely, but successful collaboration. Will there be a reprise?
     “Eventually, yeah. It’s really hard to know when, but that’s going to happen soon,” she indicates the contents of Kristin’s floral maternity dress. “So probably sooner than we thought...”
     Slapping ‘Pod’ on the Dansette a year later, it still sounds like an incredibly intimate record.
“Yeah, it was really intimate. We made it in our pyjamas. We all had these Marks & Spencer pyjamas on the entire time!”
     Even Steve...?
     “Nooo! He thought ‘Great, I’m stuck in Scotland with a bunch of cheerleaders!’ Actually, he was really great to work with. He’s easy because you can have a huuuge fight with him - I think I’ve had bigger rows with him than any other man in my life - but then the next day he’ll come downstairs and it’s like ‘Hi’. He gets over it automatically, and you get over it automatically.
     “It was literally done in about two weeks, which was so nice - just such a ‘capsule’ experience. You don’t have time to get over the ‘whee, we’re in the studio’ felling. You’re out while you’re still feeling good about it. There are some things that I would have done differently, and that Kim definitely would have done differently, and in retrospect I wish we’d had just a little more time.”
     For an album conceived by three guitarists, it’s remarkably guitar-light. On the other hand, the drums almost constitute GBH...
     “Yeah, Steve likes drums. He’s actually a big drum head. Strange, because Big Black was so guitar oriented (check out the Big Black albums ‘Atomizer’ and ‘Songs About F***ing’ for savage examples of what Tanya means), but he actually pays a lot more attention to the rhythm section. He’s not such a big guitar/vocal fan.”
     “That’s a big producer thing, I think,” interrupts Kristin. “Dennis (Herring, Ramona’s producer) was the first producer that was that involved with the guitars. Usually people just say, ‘There it is... now put your guitars over it.’”
     Their use of guitars in the studio is something which they both feel has improved.
     “Something that’s really interesting live can sound still groovier on vinyl,” Kristin insists. “You can keep building on things in order to create guitar dynamics, which you don’t necessarily have to do live, because the excitement’s already there.”
     Tanya warms to the topic...
     “And because it’s not just traditional strumming, with somebody playing over it, people don’t really know how to mix it. Each of us ends up playing three different guitar parts on one song to get the one part we do live...”
     “...And three different guitars!” exclaims Kristin. “This is the first album where we’ve actually played our own, personal guitars through the whole thing.”
     Tanya agrees: “This entire record is just my one guitar. Which is pretty amazing considering we used about eight different ones on the last one... It was always, like, ‘Which guitar are we going to use?’”
     Kristin goes momentarily misty-eyed...
     “Going to Fort Apache (producer Gary Smith’s Boston studio), where we do a lot of our stuff, is like entering a guitar museum! It’s so wonderful! Like these insane blue guitars autographed by Chubby Checker. I used the ‘Steven’ guitar a lot on the last record, just because I like Steven. Steven is like a local comic back home which is just sheer genius, and they had the cartoonist in the studio who drew little Steven characters on some of the guitars. I said, ‘I wanna use that one!’”
     Tanya laughs: “It might sound really bad, but at least you can feel cool!”
    Within various vain attempts to describe the Muses’ musical manifesto, they’ve been spuriously compared to bands as diverse as The Roches, The Raincoats and Jefferson Airplane, but it’s obvious that the common link is nothing more profound than a lineage of ‘women in rock’. In search of a further clue, I ask Tanya what sort of music they both grew up with.
     “A lot of stuff! A really strange mixture, cos we lived on an island in the middle of nowhere! We listened to The Clash a lot; Blondie; The Beatles; Pink Floyd...!”
     The mention of ‘The Floyd’ puts paid to that line of questioning, as the duo fall off their chairs in mirth. Ahem... Perhaps there’s a tension between the two of them, a contrast in approaches which makes the Muses tick. What does Kristin think?
     “Well, Tanya’s actually better at being more free-form than I am. I try not to be but I’m sort of, ‘this note has to go with this one, and this one with that one’ and ‘these are the chords here’. But she won’t even let me give her the chords! She’ll be shouting, ‘Just listen; it sounds fine!’”
     “That’s true,” Tanya concedes. “I never know the chords. Eventually I learn them, after playing the song dozens and dozens of times. But I don’t write my parts according to chords at all...”
     By this point they’re in rapt conversation and I might as well not be here. Kristin picks up the thread...
     “It makes a big difference, because some of the notes in Two Step I would never have played because I thought I wasn’t allowed to! You bring an edge to it that I just...couldn’t.”
     “You have pretty good instincts, though.” Tanya protests. “The parts you write for the songs that I write are very interesting.”
     “But they all go, you know! I hardly break any rules. I break rules on my own turf, but not so much on Tanya’s.”

     As we’ve seen, Throwing Muses are a band who attract analysis and dissection like no other, but after meeting them it’s impossible to believe them the calculating pop professors they’ve been painted. Tanya Donelly remains vehemently committed to the heart-over-head approach.
     “Definitely people have to trust their instincts more. So many people think that we’re sitting in a room somewhere, planning out all these patterns. It’s definitely way more instinctual than that. I don’t think people trust themselves enough.”

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[ Note From Mark: Thanks to Shaun Adams for forwarding this article to me!]