Few bands have seesawed between melody and noise with as much emotional complexity as Throwing Muses, but for the alt-rock trio’s 11th studio album in almost 40 years they upend everything. The guitars are mostly acoustic, the drums are shelved in favour of minimal percussion, and the lead instrument is often Pete Harvey’s cello, its brooding, portent-heavy sigh the perfect accompaniment for singer/guitarist Kristin Hersh’s silvery snarl.
There’s not a note wasted across these nine tracks, which conjure a dark, parched ambience akin to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session: that same austerity and tension. It suits these vignettes of American subterranea – blurry but resonant snapshots of lives becoming unhemmed, with violence often on the horizon. The primal strum of South Coast plays out a noirish tale of desperation. The brooding blues of Drugstore Drastic unspools a narrative of addiction and helplessness, people “moving weirdly slow-mo”.
Throughout, Hersh remains a force of nature: ungovernable, volcanic, drawing on her own near-death experiences, trauma and inextinguishable survival instinct. On Albatross, she’s “just trying to keep us alive”. On You’re Clouds’ tale of love and obsession, she registers every inch of pain and madness. On the closing title track, she’s a mighty storm of elemental wrath, howling of “breaking down then cracking up”, with that cello a churning undertow. As she has for four decades, Hersh persists, snarling until the last breath. The sound is, as ever, profound and thrilling.
