Kristin Hersh: by Sara Sherr
"When I look at music as a whole," she says, "there's punk in that because it has to come from somewhere that feels really hard, hard enough to slug you and push you around. And that's a good thing, that's like being bashed by waves. And at the same time, it has to be honest enough to show you the other side. That's more of a mountain song, where every emotion has an equal and opposite free emotion, because it's dishonest to say anything else. Anything too nice is sleazy, anything too angry is boring."
The 27-year-old leader of Boston's Throwing Muses (which included her stepsister, Belly's Tanya Donelly) often negotiated between the fury of punk and beauty of folk. While on the band's 1992 "Red Heaven" tour, Hersh discovered the beauty of the acoustic guitar in late-night hotel rooms.
And in a recent phone interview she admitted to falling so much in love with the instrument that she's offended by the selling of "unplugged" as supposed sincerity. "Why does it attract so many people who can't play guitar?" she asks. "And why do they use it as a backdrop for sensitive poetry and politics? It's such a human instrument. It speaks as well as our voices do."
_Hips and Makers_ (Sire/Reprise) seems to ignore such formalities as folk and punk. Its magical language lies in the "blaze across a nightgown" (from her current single "Your Ghost") - not the stain in a flannel shirt.
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