Throwing Muses: Sun Racket (Fire/digital outlets)

 |   |  1 min read

Throwing Muses: Sun Racket (Fire/digital outlets)
It's idle but interesting to speculate on how this 10thalbum by the decades-long Throwing Muses would be received if it was the debut by some hitherto unknown group.

Those who have followed the career of key Muse Kristin Hersh have long been used to her often dark, brooding and sometimes explosive songs. But newcomers may be suitably enchanted by the pure spirit of emotionally intense alt.rock here which can be seductively intimate (the short Maria Laguna which threatens a scream but never does) or rides brittle and abrasive textures (the shape-shifting Bo Diddley Bridge which brings to mind early Patti Smith).

There are poetic revelations here in Hersh's lyrics (the spare and hallucinatory menace of Milk at McDonald's undercut by small detail and big issues), some edges pushed (as on St Charles, the deliberately clunking and disturbing backdrop behind Hersh's almost disembodied vocal) and truly lovely melodies (Sue's right at the end).

Anyone coming here with no prior knowledge – and that's possible, it's been seven years since the Muses' unmanageably long Purgatory/Paradise and that arrived 10 years after their previous one – will probably find this a gripping collection of angular songs which (with a few exceptions like the pop-grunge of the opener Dark Blue and grinding forward momentum of the five minute Frosting later) don't quite “rock out” as maybe they had been lead to believe.

But with lyrics of haiku-like economy and imagistic resonance, Sun Racket is a mature and carefully considered collection which sometimes feels like diary entries.

A keeper.

.

You can hear this album on Spotify here.

.

Sun Racket comes with a visual album (films for each song) and here is the first track . . .

 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

David Gilmour: Live in Gdansk (SonyBMG)

David Gilmour: Live in Gdansk (SonyBMG)

Although perhaps only the most dedicated Pink Floyd fan might want this double disc (or the double CD-double DVD version, or the collectors edition which is a five disc set!) let's get a little... > Read more

The New Existentialists: Didn't Have Time (bandcamp)

The New Existentialists: Didn't Have Time (bandcamp)

With the subtitle “work in progress 2019-2020” and a blurb which downplays expectations (“raw unformed things that the world was not meant to hear”) the New Existentialists... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

GUEST MUSICIAN MARK DE CLIVE LOWE speaks of the inspiration for his new album Past Present (Tone Poems Across Time)

GUEST MUSICIAN MARK DE CLIVE LOWE speaks of the inspiration for his new album Past Present (Tone Poems Across Time)

This album is a collection of personal moments and reflections. Reflections on family, reflections on the past, reflections on the present. It’s a sonic and intimate journey with my late... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LIBBY HOLMAN: Sex, scandal, shooting and suicide

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LIBBY HOLMAN: Sex, scandal, shooting and suicide

When they found singer Libby Holman dead in her Rolls Royce of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1971, her suicide brought an end to a life marked by scandal, sexual promiscuity, one dead husband and a... > Read more