Throwing deuces

Thought the Tom Waits double whammy of Blood Money and Alice in the one day last year was impressive? Kristen Hersh pulls a similar stunt this week in unleashing both her sixth solo album and the first album in seven years from the Throwing Muses on the same day. Yep, the very same Boston based 4AD band who gave us some the dizziest guitar pop of the late eighties and the stunning twin vocal talents of Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donnelly.

But Hersh’s reasons for the simultaneous release are very practical (as opposed to just showing off!). “It has happened in the past where one record would hold up the other,” Kristen states. “A Muses record was held up for two years once. That’s just boring. Also, if I released a record now and another one just before the year was out, the second would get no attention at all!”

Also, it must be added that the split in 1997 had absolutely nothing to do with differences – either musical or personal. “We always said that if one of us won the lottery we’d be a band again,” Kristen affirms. “Or maybe if a rich fan died and left us all their money! I got tired of waiting and I had all these songs that were in essence Throwing Muses songs. They sounded so stupid when I tried to play them by myself. I used the solo advance to fund the record and then used the Muses as my backing band. Maybe it’s not legal to do that but I so wanted a record to exist and I thought years were going by and nothing was happening.”

One question I always like putting to artists who have multifarious creative outlets is how the hell do they determine whether a freshly written song is a solo or band track or side project #6 section B? “I know! It’s difficult,” Kristin exclaims. “I didn’t know. And that’s exactly why I kept trying to make them into solo songs. It was just dumb. It was my husband that realised it. We were playing a demo on the tour bus and he was driving. He goes, “I know what’s wrong with this! You are still writing songs for your dead band!” Which isn’t as stupid as it sounds because I’ve been writing for that band since I was fourteen.”

But it wasn’t just lifelong friendship that cemented the Muses’ reunion. Cookies had a vital role in initiating proceedings. “I put some tracks on CD and sent them to David the drummer and Bernard the bass player,” Kristen recalls. “In Bernie’s package I included a bag of his favourites cookies. He is obsessed with these cookies and he never shares them. He emailed a couple of hours later to say; ‘I’m playing air guitar and cookie crumbs are flying back to make our record!’ Then it simply had to happen.”

“They (Throwing Muses) are my best friends in the whole world and the funniest people I know,” Hersh concludes. “We didn’t stop laughing until the record was done. Listening to it I feel like we should have been making records like this all along.”