Throwing Muses - s/t
(4AD)
Sounds like old times. Hyped-up martial drumming, rapid-fire strumming, and the sweet tones of Tonya Donelly's harmonies. Just like House Tornado all over again. Except. Except for Kristen Hersh's throaty vocals, which have grown more pleasantly raw as time as gone along. And except for the heavy guitar sound (Throwing Muses being one of the few bands to actually rock harder the longer they hung around, Limbo excepted). So, it's not so much like old times, but the best of the various incarnations of Throwing Muses. The energy and tempered lightness of the early albums combined with the raw intensity and heaviness of the later records, along with later bassist Bernard Georges, the best to ever play in the band. That is to say, I suppose, it's like Red Heaven with Donelly singing backup. Plus one of the best uses of the cursed digipak format yet. Not such a bad thing, any of it.
When Throwing Muses split (citing financial reasons) I was happy to have caught their last show at the Whisky in Hollywood, as they can be ferocious live (think being caught between a mother bear and her cub), but I was not necessarily so sad that they wouldn't record any more. Their last two albums, University and Limbo, had been spotty and weak, respectively. It seemed that after the breakup of the initial incarnation of the band after the weird The Real Ramona, Hersh had one last furious spurt with Red Heaven (made all the better for not having any Donelly-penned tracks, which were always weak spots) and that was all that was left. With the new album, they have proved me wrong, and I am more than happy to admit it.
The opener, "Mercury" is really a throwback to the House Tornado/The Fat Skier era, all manic energy and despair. The next track, "Pretty Or Not," slows things down for a minute and one wonders whether it can be kept up for the remainder of the album. But it only slows down for, literally, a minute, and they the song explodes with a wail into a "Bright Yellow Gun" like heaviness. Over the course of 12 tracks, it never lets up—the only leavening is provided by Donelly's occasional harmonies—until the conclusion of the final track, the soaring, loud, and aptly titled "Flying."
How does a band split, get older, get back together, and then record an album of such immediacy and intensity as to rival what they produced at their apex? (This is not, though, unheard of; see Wire.) It may be a factor that the band did not split because of animosity or boredom or having become a pathetic mockery of their former selves or any of the usual reasons. It may be that because the band never wanted to split, this album has been festering within them for several years, waiting to burst forth when its time came.
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