Learn To Sing Like A Star, Kristin Hersh’s seventh solo album (and her first for four years), sees the singer mix the indie rock of her cult bands Throwing Muses and 50-Foot Wave with the sparse acoustica so familiar from her previous solo albums. It’s a mix that works very well, with the high energy angst complementing the album’s more contemplative moments superbly.
The main theme of the album is upheaval, both personal and social (some songs reflect on the devastation Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans, a city in which Hersh once resided). However, it’s the moments when she expresses her private anguish that really register; the titles of opening songs ‘In Shock’ and ‘Nerve Endings’ speak for themselves, while on the arrestingly honest ‘Day Glow’ she simply screams “Getting up is what hurts”.
The following track, a gorgeous slice of acoustic blues with the punning title ‘Christian Hearse’, is the first in a series of instrumental tunes that pepper Learn To Sing Like A Star. The others are the beautiful John Cage-like ‘Piano 1’ and ‘Piano 2’ which, oddly, feature no piano at all and are instead built around shimmering electric guitar notes. One of the most impressive features of the record is the virtousic string work of Martin and Kim McCarrick, which brilliantly augments the album’s shifting moods, from the icy atmospherics of, er, ‘Ice’ to the uptempo strumming of ‘Peggy Lee’.
Elsewhere, the bittersweet ’Under The Gun’ (which recalls Nirvana’s ‘Dumb’), the withering ‘Wild Vanilla’ (with its supremely sardonic line “If you lived here, you’d be home by now and suicidal”) and the epic finale ‘The Thin Man’ offer further evidence of Hersh’s formidable versatility. Overall, the album serves as a timely reminder of Hersh’s considerable talents and should maintain her exalted status in the US underground for quite some time yet.