KRISTIN HERSH – Songsmith Legend Magnetizes With New Emotive Solo Album ‘CLEAR POUND ROAD’

11 September 2023


(Press photo via Fire records)

The stirring Throwing Muses legend KRISTIN HERSH has her new solo LP,
titled CLEAR POUND ROAD out. Order info here. She will tour the UK/IRE
and AUS next Fall/Winter. All dates here.

Fire Records: “Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal
vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming
strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts
and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time.”

Kristin Hersh: “Sweeter, sadder, and somehow no less alive. Some records demand
to be made. And you know this is the case when the songs function as systems in a body.
I octavized an acoustic baritone as the skeleton, cellos are the lungs, a Nashville-strung
Collings and glockenspiel were the fingertips feeling around in this weird-ass dark space,
and drums are always your heart, of course… but the vocals are a strange narrator here.
A narrator lost in the story, of all things, more like eyes.”

TUTV: For me, and countless music fans out there,
music evokes aural activity, feelings, and images
on your movie-screen in your mind. And it happens
too, of course, while listening to Clear Pound Road.

What do I hear?

Krautrock dynamics with an acoustic guitar and a mellow cello.
Song by song, the repetitive/rotating rhythms have a magnetic power.
10 intro/outro-spective sparks glowing, like the lights on the LP’s cover.
Hersh‘s voice is singular, a bit hoarser than before, think Marianne Faithfull.
I love both voices

What do I see?

Images of her solo concert in Belgium last year.
I didn’t hear one noise/word from the crowd – except for the enthusiastic
applause between songs – during the whole show. Hersh‘s music and
vocals make people silent. She sung/played like troubadours do.
Poetry in motion. And her green eyes are magnets.


(Belgium, 2022)

What do I feel?

Intimate heart-and-soul satisfaction.
Zen-like tranquility and peace
Stirring sedateness.

Singles: Dandelion / Ms Haha / Constance Street

– DANDELION –

– MS HAHA –

“Mr Bones is my man and Ms Haha is me, ripped
off from a Truman Capote story. So heavy. Love is
goofy gravity.”

– CONSTANCE STREET –

“I lived on Constance Street in New Orleans when that song’s story happened.
Buying slips in the Irish Channel/broken prince in fluorescent camo is a very
Southern day. I was born a hick and I guess I’ll always be one.”

KRISTIN HERSH: Facebook – Instagram

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