xps Milton "In The Doghouse" is essential, yeah
really wish they'd reissue this:
https://www.discogs.com/Throwing-Muses-Throwing-Muses-EP/release/1435252
― Ambient Police (sleeve), Wednesday, 3 July 2019 03:07 (four years ago) link
and I never knew "The Letter" dates from that period, so that's why it gives me chills
― Ambient Police (sleeve), Wednesday, 3 July 2019 03:08 (four years ago) link
I knew "Doghouse" & the 7", but not the '84 demos linked in the article! amazing that Donelly had written 'Not Too Soon' that early
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 03:25 (four years ago) link
I have a long, long interview I did with Dave Narcizo back in 1994 and I don't quite know what to do with it - we published it in our little fanzine but it's completely obscure. He was the friendliest guy - blew out our allotted 20 minute interview to over an hour, once he realised I really knew the band's stuff - and at the show I travelled to in Melbourne, welcomed me like a friend when I crept up and said "I did that long phone interview." He invited my friend and I to the band room after the show, even gave us beers from the rider, I remember Bernard opening them on the edge of the table. I was too overwhelmed to talk to Kristin but she and Billy were friendly - pretty tired tho. Vivid memory from the show of K's electric blue eyes fixed on a point at infinity while she swayed around her Strat and its cowgirl decal.
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Wednesday, 3 July 2019 03:29 (four years ago) link
dirt is on the floor is one of my favorite deep cuts, glad to see it mentioned
― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Wednesday, 3 July 2019 04:49 (four years ago) link
Me to Dave Narcizo in the mid-'80s, shortly before the Muses were to play at the Blue Pelican, a now-defunct club in Newport, RI: "Let me buy you a drink."Dave: "I'm not legal yet."
― Jazzbo, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:32 (four years ago) link
Pretty sure I was at that spring 1985 show at the Living Room.
― Jazzbo, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:35 (four years ago) link
New album in May!
https://throwingmuses.bandcamp.com/album/sun-racket
― Jeff W, Tuesday, 25 February 2020 19:50 (four years ago) link
excellent news! Hersh's recent solo stuff isn't clicking with me, I've been digging the Tanya Donnelly Swan Song Series though
― avellano medio Inglés (f. hazel), Tuesday, 25 February 2020 21:07 (four years ago) link
New album is out! Who else is listening?
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 6 September 2020 01:49 (three years ago) link
just picked it up from my office mailbox today!
― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Sunday, 6 September 2020 02:19 (three years ago) link
Always thankful for new Muses. The usual curve so far: hard to get a handle on the songs at first, but struck by all the awesome sounds.
― geoffreyess, Sunday, 6 September 2020 18:54 (three years ago) link
seems to have a kind of Red Heaven vibe
― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Sunday, 6 September 2020 18:54 (three years ago) link
Starts off with a bang, "Dark Blue" has a great warped feeling. I should cherry-pick the best bits from their 3 albums this century.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 8 September 2020 20:56 (three years ago) link
The 2003 self-title is an untouchable classic front-to-back. It's awful to say but Kristin's blown-out voice is almost too uncomfortable for me to listen to now, which is so unfair because she's still writing great stuff.
― assert (MatthewK), Tuesday, 8 September 2020 21:16 (three years ago) link
The current voice does not bother me much; maybe even on the contrary, it is kinda correct that it is her in this era out of several. What was heartening to me at a cursory listen to this latest album was that it did not share that weird unlistenableness production- or mastering-wise that the 2018 solo album had that (awful to say) (in spite of still great writing) had me seriously doubting her ears.
― anatol_merklich, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 21:55 (three years ago) link
hm, her voice just seems to have aged in the way I'd expect it to. Milk at McDonalds, for instance, she doesn't sound that ragged at all. Anyway, this is a great album and in fact, I'd be hard pressed to name one single thing she has released that isn't great. She's just about the most consistent artist I listen to.
― akm, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 22:51 (three years ago) link
I was surprised at how much I liked the new album after hearing at at one of Mr Tim Burgess's Twitter listening parties - to my jaded ears it sounded like it had the energy of an excting new band, not someone whose been on the go for a zillion years. I went and bought my own copy and I like it.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Thursday, 22 October 2020 20:15 (three years ago) link
I like Michael Jones' post from nine years ago that the order you hear the albums in is important and makes a big difference. I was really captivated by the first album, and not as much by the rest.
thought Christgau's review of it was really incisive and funny, one of his most memorable, but it also really disappointed me (and made me doubt his future reviews) because I didn't see the album that way at all:
"When friends turn psychotic, I withdraw. I haven't found black leotards sexy since I broke up with Sheila in 1962. I'm rarely persuaded that verbal dissociation reflects any social problems but the poet's own. So while I'm happy to grant the originality and even craft of Kristen Hersh's quavery free-form folk-punk, I'd do the same for the art of H.P. Lovecraft, Anaïs Nin, or Diamanda Galas. Fans of whom will pay more mind to Hersh's buzz than I do"
― Dan S, Friday, 23 October 2020 00:04 (three years ago) link
I find that Xgau review to be mean spirited and sexist tbh
love that 1st LP though
― howls of non-specificity (sleeve), Friday, 23 October 2020 00:08 (three years ago) link
every now and then i wonder if i should give xgau another chance and then i see one of his reviews quoted here and i'm reminded why i haven't
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 23 October 2020 00:16 (three years ago) link
yup
― howls of non-specificity (sleeve), Friday, 23 October 2020 00:18 (three years ago) link
This interview is terrific: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/throwing-muses-kristin-hersh-on-the-music-that-made-her/
― Video Drama (morrisp), Thursday, 29 October 2020 06:49 (three years ago) link
TM = Ut for lightweights― mark s, Monday, July 2, 2001 8:00 PM (nineteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink
even xgau was not this wrong
― rip van wanko, Thursday, 29 October 2020 15:19 (three years ago) link
Ha ha. 19 years later, Mark S's throwaway line still sticks in my head!
Happy to be a lightweight.
― Michael Jones, Thursday, 29 October 2020 16:14 (three years ago) link
This is kind of following on from me talking about major labels on the Jawbreaker thread but I'm curious about Hersh in that interview being angry about signing to 4AD, but with Throwing Muses, her solo stuff and one 50 Foot Wave release, she wasn't finished with them until about a decade ago.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 2 February 2021 18:36 (three years ago) link
I’ve never heard her say a bad word about 4AD; wasn’t it signing to Warners (albeit encouraged by Ivo) in the US that was the disastrous thing?
― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 2 February 2021 21:30 (three years ago) link
correct
― Überschadenfreude (sleeve), Tuesday, 2 February 2021 21:40 (three years ago) link
KH is not exactly unsung, but still a bit surprising to me how relatively less talked about she an TH is, compared to, say, the Deal sisters.
― Mule, Saturday, 15 May 2021 12:20 (three years ago) link
and* TH
what is TH
― akm, Sunday, 16 May 2021 17:00 (three years ago) link
tanya honnely?
throwing huses
Jesus, sorry. Giant brainfart. T Muses, not T Donelly.
― Mule, Sunday, 16 May 2021 18:49 (three years ago) link
back on the 2003 self-title this afternoon, what a blast, maybe my favourite Muses? surely nottime changes on "Solar Dip" are absolutely core to this band
― assert (matttkkkk), Thursday, 11 August 2022 03:50 (one year ago) link
Yes! The 2003 s/t is maybe my favourite album of theirs since Leslie left. The rest of the power trio era is too shiny but this is the right kind of heavy and sunburnt raw. It feels like a drawn-out fight on one long too-hot afternoon. I find it hard to tell the songs apart but I get little sticky bitchy lines from them in my head all the time: "Here's a big fat aspirin, maybe you'll choke - that's not funny." "I don't like you any more than you know, I still like you too much." "I think your nose is broken, but you mouth is working." She's such a great writer and I think that gets kind of lost in the interpretations (hers too) of so much of her work as instinctive.
It's a shame this album seems to have slipped out of view, I feel like I never see Hersh talking about this time or any of these songs. I wonder if they are a snapshot of a period in her previous marriage she wouldn't want to go back to.
― verhexen, Friday, 12 August 2022 16:17 (one year ago) link
on a related note, her recent cover of "Like A Hurricane" totally rules
― thinkmanship (sleeve), Friday, 12 August 2022 16:23 (one year ago) link
perfect description, verhexen!
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 12 August 2022 23:46 (one year ago) link
also I mis-hear the chorus of “Pandora’s Box” as “milk-fed shithead” which is an insult I treasure; the real lines “your milk-fed shaved head / you move like an insect” are fantastic too
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 12 August 2022 23:48 (one year ago) link
was Tanya Donelly's "The Party" ever released anywhere except the the Muses debut 7"? doesn't seem like it...
― thinkmanship (sleeve), Friday, 12 August 2022 23:54 (one year ago) link
nope, nor adapted into anything else that I know of
― assert (matttkkkk), Saturday, 13 August 2022 00:45 (one year ago) link
A boy was tangled in his bike foreverA girl was missing two fingersGerry Ann was confusedMr. Huberty had a gun in his headSo I sit up late in the morning and ask myself againHow do they kill children?And why do I want to die?
― Mule, Thursday, 9 February 2023 00:09 (one year ago) link
written at age 18 iirc, just amazing
― sleeve, Thursday, 9 February 2023 00:19 (one year ago) link
incredible song. love that album so much
― j.o.h.n. in evanston (john. a resident of chicago.), Thursday, 9 February 2023 00:35 (one year ago) link
all time opening couplet
"I could be a smack freakand hate societyI could hate Godand blame dad"
― sleeve, Thursday, 9 February 2023 00:46 (one year ago) link
Just an astounding song. The emotional power blows you away. Such an incredible band.
― Mule, Thursday, 9 February 2023 06:43 (one year ago) link
A shout out to Leslie Langston’s bass play on the early albums as well. Such melodic lines.
― Mule, Thursday, 9 February 2023 06:45 (one year ago) link
I think she's a senior social worker in MA these days!Yep: https://medical.mit.edu/find-a-provider/leslie-langstonExtraordinary player, fully half the appeal of the Muses' early records to me.
― assert (matttkkkk), Thursday, 9 February 2023 07:01 (one year ago) link
That’s awesome.
― Mule, Thursday, 9 February 2023 07:08 (one year ago) link
I watched some of those YouTube videos where the video maker plays along with records on his bass, and the guy tackled a couple of early Muses songs. Ofc it was fun to hear the bassline brought out front, but also: iirc he freely admitted it was a bit puzzling and hard, and LL came along in the comment field going something like "hi! the reason that bit doesn't quite work is because you need to use the thumb from the top of the fretboard at the same time you see". This was couple of years ago or something?
― anatol_merklich, Thursday, 9 February 2023 07:53 (one year ago) link