KRISTIN HERSH | INTERVIEW

Any self-respecting alternative rock fan will recognize the name Kristin Hersh, iconic frontwoman of Throwing Muses. Forming as teenagers in early 80s Massachusetts and now synonymous with the development of the artier end of the punk movement, the band’s legacy has permeated throughout the decades – empowering countless female artists while also inspiring acts such as the Pixies (the Muses’ compatriots and touring partners during the late 80s), and thus indirectly monolithic groups such as Nirvana.

While having long attained the status of alt-rock icon, Hersh has managed to retain her integrity thanks in part to her almost uncomfortably vulnerable lyrics. After suffering a fall when she was 16, Hersh became plagued by a myriad of suspected mental illnesses, dissociative disorders and misdiagnoses that would shape both her creative process, and her life at large. Whilst some musicians draw on personal experiences and music theory to craft their work, Hersh instead is guided by her alter ego, Rat Girl – a product of her trauma who handles the music writing process on her behalf, and synesthesia.

Bandmates Fred Abong (briefly the Muses’ bassist before joining their sibling band Belly) and Rob Ahlers (also of 50 Foot Wave, another Hersh vehicle), will be able sidemen on this tour, which follows Hersh’s 10th solo album Possible Dust Clouds, released last autumn and which is a little more collaborative than her previous works.

 

BUZZ: What music do you typically listen to when on the road touring?

KH: Hopefully, road music isn’t different from other music. Road people are different from other people, but in an annoying way, which I could probably trace back to our soundtrack, but I’m not gonna. You need to take songs like drugs on tour: uppers to remind you what you’re doing there, downers to forget, and hallucinogens to forget where you are at all.

 

After spending a decade as a proudly independent solo artist, what made you sign with a record label for the release of Possible Dust Clouds?

I set aside the notion of a record company when the business was crashing around us, but really I had set it aside long before, when I saw the obsession with dumbing down output and selling crap to the lowest common denominator. There isn’t a lowest common denominator, so I knew that system was gonna bury itself.

People rally, though, and create entities like Fire [Records, Hersh’s current label]. Music people who help music find its people. Because I’m listener-supported, their involvement means I can earmark fewer funds for distribution, promotion and manufacture, so it all goes to recording. Throwing Muses are in the studio, 50 Foot Wave is next, as we’ll as an ongoing solo venture. It’s all possible now.

 

It seems like you’ve experimented with almost every medium, from art, graphic novels, apps and books. What medium would you most like to create with in the future?

I didn’t mean to write books but “they” asked me to and I’m polite, so I did. I fell in love with writing, but only after it sucked for a couple years. Clever, I guess? Which is gross. Now writing is like automatic writing, which is probably weird, but it means I’m still in love with the medium. Haven’t fallen in love with any others yet. And if I do? I’ll have to sit through a couple years of sucking before I show it to anybody.

 

How much does your synesthesia play a part with inspiring your art?

I’m not sure I allow for synesthesia; it’s such a fundamental aspect of my perception. Color-coded chords are definitely easier to remember, though. I don’t know how other people memorize musical pieces without thinking, “tangerine into aqua into burgundy,” and so on, seems impossible.

 

The theme of home is prominent on Possible Dust Clouds, and to my knowledge, you’ve lived all over America. Where is home to you?

I don’t have a home, maybe? I’m from the Deep South and deeply southern. Meaning kinda front porch dreamy and I have a slow drawl when I’m drunk or tired. The trees smell right in Georgia. But I also grew up on the island where I record, where I’m sitting in a snowstorm right now. And I live in California with my pro surfer boy, Bodhi.
I’ve been trying to build terrain-adjusting muscles since I started playing out as a teenager. I’m wondering if maybe you couldn’t live a life of movement embedded enough in a place to call it “home.” I dunno, though. Still sounds nice.

 

Is there anywhere you haven’t lived but would like to?

I haven’t done the Texas hill country. Been there plenty of times but the meadow home is an attractive anachronism. Space is no longer a given even in this spacious country. Our desperation focuses on urban support and there’s so much desperation here. We’re meeting up in cities like angry ants. Breathing sounds nice, in other words, and we may need breathing room in which to do it.

 

Several band members are credited with the elements of production on Possible Dust Clouds, and you’ve confessed in past interviews that the majority of the album making process falls on you, even when working with your bands. What were the differences in your creative processes when writing Possible Dust Clouds and albums with a band?

My writing process never changes. It’s just listening. But as a producer, I have to begin altering the material from the top down as soon as a song is finished. Songs ask not to create an effect but for their most powerful presentation. If a full band is asked for, it’s in the potential for dynamic range and the sense of a “room” – the space the listener shares with the musicians – that it begins to shine.
Possible Dust Clouds is still mostly me playing, but the raucous effect was a template laid out by my friends. I think people like the impression of a party more than the impression of a woman alone at work, anyway…

 

Personal vulnerability has always been key to your lyrics, such as on Loud Mouth and Lethe off the latest album. Have you ever had any regrets about being so open?

I don’t feel that I’ve made myself particularly vulnerable in my good material? I can resent the songs for embarrassing me, but really, I gotta be cooler than that. When I write a lousy song, it’s mired in self-expression and sounds confessional. That’s yucky vulnerability, so I try not to publish those. Nobody needs more whining in their life.
The goal is to play an idiosyncratic take on the universal. The bones we share should be the bones of the song and the musician’s particular eyes, the reason for their output. No shame in that ultimately. The shame is in every fail in between!

 

Is there any song that’s too painful to play live?

The Letter on my first solo record, Hips And Makers, makes me puke. Ugh. I wrote it when I was 17 or something. I wasn’t lying or anything, but ugh.

 

What’s the most gruelling part of being a full-time musician?

Travel is both the high and the low of this work. When I tell people to be ready for no access to food, water, sleep, privacy, air, laundry or coffee, they think I’m exaggerating! Luckily, we need only music and each other to survive.

words ALEX SWIFT

The Globe, Cardiff, Tue 26 Mar. Tickets: £20. Info: 07590 471888 / globecardiffmusic.com