Happy songs for happy people

LA is often described as a veritable hotbed of frustrated musicians…if so, ex-Throwing Muses doyenne Kristin Hersh is one of them.

“I always loved it and I always stuck up for it, but now I’ve had it,” she says of her hometown. “I’ve very little patience for buying into the bullshit here. The fact is, it runs on nervous energy. Everything here stems from anger. I’d rather be positive.”
Wise words indeed, although a little unnerving to hear from a woman who has spent years fighting the demons in her own mind.
“My songs entertain the idea of turmoil as a way of life,” she acknowledges. “When you express it in a way that seems beautiful, it sounds celebratory, it doesn’t sound like you’re upset about it.”
That said, Hersh has had to shoulder the burden of the ‘tortured artist’ label for most of her career.
“The new music is all about fun,” she insists. “I just don’t have the patience for the other stuff anymore. I have so much respect for happiness.”
Having reformed Throwing Muses last year, much to the delight of their original fanbase, Hersh made the unlikely move of putting the Muses back on ice and creating another band, 50 Foot Wave.
“It is a very new band for a different time. I wanted to use a pseudonym,” she explains. “I didn’t want anyone to know who was in the band. I think Throwing Muses has always been misread as a dark arty band. We didn’t mean to be that. I didn’t want it to darken the impression of 50 Foot Wave.”
Hersh moved her Throwing Music operation out to California last year, and her frustrations are documented in the first single from 50 Foot Wave’s eponymous debut album.
“‘Clara Bow’ is a song about being pissed off in the desert,” she laughs. “My husband moved me and my sons out to the desert while we were moving. I was in Palm Springs and I was just dying. I hate the heat! Then, I saw a documentary on Clara Bow and she looked just like me. And, her husband moved her and her son out to the desert and she went crazy! So it’s a song about all the people who get carted out to the desert.”
Still, it’s been a hugely productive 12 months for Hersh. In addition to releasing a solo album, The Grotto, and an eponymously titled Throwing Muses album (their first in seven years), and the 50 Foot Wave release, she has also had her fourth son, Bodhi. Luckily for Hersh, she sees neither musicianship nor motherhood as work.
“We’re a bunch of lazy babies,” she says of her profession. “Musicians will tell you that what they do is work, and if it is, they should quit. Also, raising children isn’t work. It sounds burdensome to care for another person so much, but it’s actually very enlightening. I always have something to learn from what they do.”
Hersh’s four sons, ranging in age from one to 18 years old, will also be in tow for the forthcoming tour, an arrangement that she wouldn’t have any other way.
“They’ve been on tour since they were in utero,” she explains. “Even at home, they eat in the car! They love it. They say they never feel safer than when they’re sleeping on the bus and we’re heading to the next town.”
Does Hersh have any desire to explore other creative waters?
“Some production company tried to buy my life story,” she reveals. “It was such a funny idea. I was like, ‘What if I signed and something cool happens? Do I own that?’ It’s pretty cool. Really though, my life story would make a bad TV movie. I wouldn’t even want to watch it.”b

50 Foot Wave (feat. Kristin Hersh, Bernard Georges, and Rob Ahlers) play The Empire, Belfast on Sunday, Sept 26th and The Village, Dublin on Monday, Sept 27th. The album 50 Foot Wave is out now on Throwing Music.