KRISTIN HERSH
Sky Motel (4AD)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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While the songs Kristin Hersh has supplied for Throwing Muses and her previous solo projects have often been accepted as introspective and self revealing, there's always been a bit more to it than that. They've never been quite voluntary, and involuntary self revelation carries an interesting self contradiction and a heavy price. For Hersh, it was part of the price paid for a bi-polar disorder, one of whose effects was the appearance of songs in her head as much as transmissions as creations.

As time, hard work and new meds brought her disease under more control, the songs stopped coming in the old way, and Sky Motel presents a new Kristin Hersh, with new songs produced in a new way. She dug deep and worked these ones out in a more conventional fashion, which is not to say that she's fashioned anything particularly conventional. These are the most genuinely self revelatory and among the most arrestingly creative songs Hersh has produced. To get them across, she headed for a New Orleans studio with producer Trina Shoemaker, where she performed all the parts except for some percussion fills and flourishes.

The result is an intensely personal musical document that longtime fans are raving about, while it remains accessible to the newcomer to Hersh's music. Shoemaker, a double Grammy winner for her work with Sheryl Crow, may have provided the touches and inspiration that will finally take Kristin Hersh out of the cult fave category and get her some well deserved recognition as one of the finest singer/songwriters in contemporary music.

Track List: Echo * White Trash Moon * Fog * Costa Rica * A Cleaner Light * San Francisco * Cathedral Heat * Husk * Caffeine * Spring * Clay Feet * Faith

© 1999 - Shaun Dale