Kristin Hersh — Hips and Makers (30th Anniversary Edition)
In 1994, the arrival of a solo album by Kristin Hersh seemed somewhat redundant. After all, Throwing Muses — the band she co-founded with stepsister Tanya Donnelly — had come to be defined by Hersh’s singular vocals and songwriting style, both of which moved in unpredictable directions that were wholly unique and intensely evocative. It was Hersh’s artistic dominance in the Muses that led to Donnelly leaving the band in 1991 to join the Breeders, then, later, form Belly to play her own, more traditionally hook-oriented take on indie rock. The first Donnelly-less Muses album, Red Heaven, found the band working as a trio, with Hersh’s presence even more dominant. The follow-up — University — was recorded soon after, but was temporarily shelved for Hersh to record and release Hips and Makers. Initially viewed as a “get it out of my system” album, Hersh recorded it in fits and spurts over the summer of 1993, tapping Lenny Kaye to produce. Although she very much takes an unaccompanied guitar-and-voice approach to this material, the cavernous recording style combined with Hersh’s individualistic approach to composition and tempo make this anything but typical coffee shop material. Vivid lyrics (“Don’t kill the God of Sadness/ Just don’t let her get you down” on “The Letter,” for instance, or “press your palm to your snow-coated thought cage” on “Beestung”) are both sharply focused and deeply impressionistic, and none of the songs here appear to have anything resembling a traditional chorus.
Occasionally, flashes of Muses-style rock sneak their way in (the percussive and dynamic “Sundrops;” the driving, snarling “A Loon”), and Hersh does allow a couple of guests into the proceedings. Michael Stipe duets on “Your Ghost” and ’90s indie rock’s favorite cellist Jane Scarpantoni (Ween, Soul Asylum, Bob Mould) provides accompaniment on about half of the tracks. But for the most part, Hips and Makers is all Hersh, displaying her talents, wit, and gentle weirdness in a way that just wouldn’t have worked in the setting of Throwing Muses. Of course, she would go on to record many more solo albums over the years, as well as spinning up a whole other band (50 Foot Wave) to perform material that didn’t fit into either of those buckets, but it was on Hips and Makers that Kristin Hersh first showed just how prodigious and uncontained her creativity was. This well-deserved anniversary edition tacks on the Strings and Your Ghost EPs — complete with Hersh’s incredible cover of “When the Levee Breaks” — as well as a clutch of compilation appearances (“Hysterical Bending” from Just Say Roe is a top-tier Hersh song) and stray b-sides. An excellent presentation of an album that turned out to be far from redundant.
