SL:Because of the success of your solo album, many people are surprised that there is a new Throwing Muses release. What do you get out if the Throwing Muses that you didn't get out of performing solo? Is it a completely different sort of feel for you?
KH:I truly never meant to make a solo record, much less release it. I just put acoustic songs down for my husband & I guess the kids if they grow up and care enough. And that tape, I believe, we gave to my manager, down in Athens Michael Stipe got one, and Ivo, the president of 4AD; they convinced me to put it out. So I didn't take it seriously until it already released & I found out I was doing more promo than I ever have & that I was going to have to tour all by myself. So by that time the Muses record was already done & it's not like having hit records has ever really been a focus obviously I'd be in a different band. Now I'm getting back to work at my "real job."
SL:Do you think that you might do another solo record at some point? Did you like that experience?
KH:I liked the sound. I really fell in love with the acoustic
guitar itself. Its capable of a lot of power and delicacy
which is really rare in an instrument that you can play &
sing at the same time. I expect those songs to keep coming
that need that kind of a picture. They are different from
electric songs; they deal with literally a personalityÑpeople
with needs, baby life, coffee & cars. At least my electric
songs are a lot more internal or external .I'll never really
know, but they're somehow grander, more mythical than coffee
& cars, which are mythical in their own right or getting to
be. [laughs]
With the band that delicacy is a character instead of a
timbre of a voice, if you know what I mean. The character of
a song is almost like a certain turn & that's where it
becomes soft & sweet, but It can never really approach
putting all the dimensions of a song into just somebody's
neck, 5 strings, muscle & some air. It's a very different
thing.
SL: How did Bernard Georges go from being a roadie to being in the band?
KH: We tend to choose our bandmates that way, we like them to
be friends. We're bringing the guy who painted my house on
the road with us, because we like him. I'm trying to teach
him how to play keyboards. [Laughs]
Bernard is an excellent bass player. I thought that we would
give up either tightness or melodic creativity,that I'd
either have to start writing the bass lines or I'd have to
start playing them in the studio, one or the other, and we
didn't give up either. This was his first time in the studio
every now & then he'd loose it & go "Kris just play this."
'Cause it's a hard thing to get used to. We don't really like
to play with a click,sometimes you have to get a new song
approach. It's hard to get used to, using this weird kind of
musical ESP to know exactly when the next snare hit is going
to be and you start to get all mixed up & confused if you're
not getting into the flow. We made him play upright bass,
sometimes acoustic & fretless, so he was a little
overwhelmed.
SL: How did your recording engineer, Trina, wind up doing back-up vocals on "Snakeface"?
KH: I hate doing backup vocals. I hate it. I'd make my sister [Tanya Donnelly] do it all the time and she'd make me do it on her songs. I'd kind of pout the whole time and she'd go [said in a high pitched girlie voice] "No it sounds great! You sound like Lou Reed." And I'd say "Oh shut up." [Tanya:] "No that's cool." It's just lame. I just feel so...like I'm not a real singer or something. If I'm really singing, if a song is singing out of my neck working itself, I have amazing lung power. I sing louder that anyone in the business; I've blown more mics & speakers than anyone.
SL: Yeah, I read that for "Hips & Makers" you were 12 feet away from the mic?!
KH: On this one I was 25 feet away from the mic. It is impossible to record me, because I'm too loud and I can't sing quieter if it's not a quiet part. I drive [engineers] literally crazy. Plus the dynamics alone, I go from whispering to that. It drives everyone batty. That's fine; I can sing perfectly. I can do all these vocal tricks that I didn't even know were happening and the minute I'm not singing a song I'm just a retard. I mean it's a silly job to be singing; people don't even want to be heard singing in the shower; it just seems so goofy. But I can't do [sing back- up], so Trina was like "Try this melody." And I was like "Try this one." and then she just sang that one it and I was like "Well that sounds good; let's keep that!" And she was like "Well, no I got a Chicago accent!" [Kristin:] "Ah nobody'll notice." So she tried to imitate me and she can do it! Sorta imitated my voice but with a Chicago accent; she couldn't drop her accent.
SL: Why did you call it "University"?
KH: I think it was my husband's idea. We thought it would make a cool t-shirt. [Laughs] It does make a really good bumper sticker. But we didn't really mean college; we meant universe-ness. We thought it was kind of a psychedelic record.SL: Was that intentional? Are you really into a lot of sixties things?
KH:No and no. [Laughs] We don't do anything intentionally. We
don't have any idea what we're doing until we hear it later.
We just know that we want to be excited all the time and we
never want to lie. So often we'll just trust other people to
be better listeners. I consider sixties music to be like my
Dad's music, which is like a highball to me; I couldn't order
one.
We always just consider ourselves lucky if we come up with a
workable title that doesn't offend anyone. Titling a record
is an artificial and pretentious thing to do. You either make
it so stupid that you seem like you're part of an inside joke
or you make it really poetic and then it's pretentious.
There's no way to do it right, so we were lucky to have a
title track that had none of us on it, just the babies
playing in the studio and that's where you find the universe
in babies playing in teeny tracks on a record so we were very
lucky in that. [Laughs]
SL: How is the songwriting process for you? You've said in other interviews that songs just come to you in a way. Do you wake up in the middle of the night and there it is or are you in the studio; is it a lot like channeling?
KH:It is a lot like channeling, actually. Although I never use
that word in public. I thought I was hallucinating, maybe I
am hallucinating, when I was younger. And I've been
prescribed many drugs to shut them up, but they don't really
shut up. I can get to the point where I stop hearing them,
but they get stuck in other parts of my body. I used to get
them stuck in my left leg; it would twist up all crazy when
we were playing. It was like the songs were just jumping out
of my left shin and I just felt out of my mind my whole life
because of that.
[My left leg is] the only part that's ever been hurt badly;
it was broken in half. When I was 16, I was in a car accident
and I lifted my leg up & the foot was gone. There was a break
half way down my shin. I found it [the foot] under my leg and
put it back on. It healed and I had just a broken leg, but it
broke off. I was in a wheelchair. What happened to my face
was worse. I slid on my face for 20 feet or so; I didn't have
any features left. Very dramatic.
SL: Wow. You've recovered remarkably.
KH: Calendula lotion. It was actually the pure wax of the marigold flowers.
[We were interrupted my another interview coming in, so I ask a few final questions]
SL: What do you mean when you refer to the "female," but genderless approach of the Muses?
KH: I mean attention to detail, spontaneity, cyclical movement in songs, maybe even sporadic instrumentation. Things that sound crazy when you compare them to straightforward pop structures, which are all very solid very groove oriented. You should have a combination of both those things. The Raincoats are the ultimate in feminine,. Maybe the Velvet Underground, REM has done a lot in that way. But for the most part people are very balanced in their approach. When you're talking about radio friendly rock a lot of that just sounds like jingles. It's not smart to lean on any overly masculine approach right now; it's just boring. I find men to be a little more capable of a feminine approach, because they're not told that there is anything wrong with it. Women learn to shut it up in any venue. So they often write straightforward pop songs that wind up are really boring really predictable and don't how to use anything that might make them sound crazy or deviant.
SL:Do you think that's because they're too caught up in thinking that they have to compete with this masculine thing?
KH: Yeah they have to follow rules and it is true. You don't get played on the radio if you don't.
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