KRISTIN HERSH - Learn To Sing Like A Star

Learning to sing like a star. Going by a comment from Kristin herself (cfr. interview), the title of her latest solo album is a joke. Still, we'd like to believe there's a grain of truth in it.

In the past, between her career with the legendary Throwing Muses and the new project 50 Foot Wave, she had more than earned the title of star. But not a star shining with success. A star pulsing alone in the sky, with the occasional fleeting flicker, crossing the heavens without stealing the scene from everything parading around it.

Her previous record, "The Grotto", stood out for an acoustic exploration of rare depth, delivering moments of dark, almost anguished emotion. Truncated, essential songs, tiny in how solitarily they shine, overwhelming in the feelings they unleash. More than four years have passed since then. The accommodating, leaden, stripped-down atmospheres of the past give way to fuller songs, where the instrumentation grows richer, even though she plays everything herself, aside from a few outside contributions. Drums are handled by David Narciso (already a Throwing Muses alumnus), while cello and violin are provided by Martin and Kimberlee McCarrick respectively.

The opener ("In Shock") is an electric assault, a punch straight to the gut, in which the voice takes shape and surges forward as the seconds pass, words as heavy as boulders. The violin's contribution is jarring, often slashing at a rhythm that's already anything but docile, exploding into a finale worthy of the best Throwing Muses. A sound we'd never before heard on any record under her own name, so accustomed were we to a barely audible voice and guitar played with surgical precision. But the surprise turns to astonishment within a few seconds, as the second track kicks in, titled "Nerve Endings". A gorgeous cello melody wraps around slightly more subdued textures, the guitar rings out with firm gentleness, the flow unwinds solitary, lively and passive. Even more aggressive is the following track ("Day Glow"), where classical elements (this time, violin joins in too) fit perfectly with the off-key, forced guitars. Kristin's voice rises in pitch, reaching levels of fleeting, elusive, illusory power.

Throughout the album, the actual songs are broken up, almost halted, by small torn, creaking chords, a pause between one jolt and the next. "Christian Hearse" is a telling example, with its desolate 29 seconds. The raw, direct ballad approach settles in gently and voices dormant suffering ("Ice"), while the substantial difference between ordinary fear and fear born of desire materializes in the immediacy of "Under The Gun". Sparks of piano fly through the air like a circus act ("Piano 1"), the piled-up reverb of a thundering guitar accompanied by a hiss that sounds like a voice ("Sugar Baby"), souls made of bright colors, of a rare joy, are brought together in the album's most seesawing track, between more mysterious passages (once again, the violin is essential) and decisive swerves into pop territory ("Peggy Lee").

"Vertigo" collapses before the sweetness of a dream recounted by a few violins and an out-of-tune guitar, with refinement and classical elegance. A fascinating, worn-out photograph, memories piling up in an overwhelming way, words dodged and never spoken now set free, pouring out in a song that erodes the soul. Approaching the end, in the final tracks, one finds an unrelenting rhythm, where the drums take up more space than ever, in the album's most immediate and lively passage ("Winter"), while jittery guitar movements blend with a strange intimacy, not too far removed from noise ("Wild Vanilla").

The finale, held down in an abyssal pace, implodes into a sharp, crystalline song; it feels like a breeze with all its tiny sounds, delivered with genteel detachment. From the moment even "The Thin Man" ends, one strains so hard as to want to drive the pain out from within. Something has changed inside us, something has happened. Torn between a faint melancholy and a dormant happiness, we take stock of the songs that have just passed through our minds, their beauty crashing down on us as forcefully as an avalanche.

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30/04/2026