Throwing Muses

Limbo (Rykodisc)
by Sheril Stanford

It’s no secret. Kristen Hersh has described in song her bouts with depression and psychosis. She’s also explained that her music comes to her in fully-formed “song bodies” that literally come out of the wall. Hersh, who, along with drummer David Narcizo (a member since the Tanya Donelly days, before she left to create Belly) and Bernard Georges on bass, form the current incarnation of Throwing Muses, has a deep well from which to draw, and the most recent result is Limbo, an assemblage of darkly intense and sometimes hypnotic pieces.

Hersh’s intricate, mutable creations are communicated through pure vocals, clean, generous guitar and unadulterated bass and drums. Although the stepping-off point for Hersh remains the instinct to bare the unbearable, Limbo has less of the overwhelming sense of despair and entrapment that marked previous efforts. Nonetheless, menace, danger and barely concealed panic pervade many of Limbo‘s offerings. On “Freeloader,” you wonder who Hersh is trying to convince as she repeats, “I don’t mind, I don’t mind… I don’t hear, I don’t hear…” The words are set to a deceptively rollicking melody that bleeds into a lonely Spanish style bridge and close. “Tango” features dark, minor chords, surprise change-ups and a mocking edginess, along with familiar subject matter: “thank you for chaining me to the bed… you lock the cuffs in your pocket around my wrists, I’ll even pretend that I didn’t resist…”. “Ruthie’s Knocking” has an upbeat sound, but on closer listen, you realize it tells a tale of ugly, hidden things, and “Serene” is anything but; Hersh haunts with the words “why do I like you, cuz I do, cuz I’d kill to be you,” against minimalist guitar. Interestingly, in keeping with an apparent music-biz trend, the artwork on Limbo is by Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets comics fame.