Throwing Muses return to (something like) the limelight this August with a new album Limbo (on 4AD), perhaps their finest yet. Limbo replaces distortion with a clean production sound (done, as ever, by the band themselves) that allows the intricacies of Kristin Hersh's songwriting to shine through. The album will be proceeded by a single Shark at the end of July. Kristin herself is particularly busy at the moment with not just a new Muses album to promote, but also a new baby on the way, and new solo material to ready to record. Kristin's pregnancy has limited the Muses touring potential although they should be touring Europe September to October, then restarting in March to tour America. Obsolete talked to them in a London hotel towards the end of a European press junket for Limbo. Although Kristin and David Narcizo have spent three whole weeks listening to the drivelling of jaded hacks they pay my questions every attention. These people have the patience of saints, after three weeks of this sort of thing most of us would be semi-psychotic, Kristin (looking radiant on a floral print dress, with her pregnancy just beginning to show) laughs at the suggestion, "it's not a hard job. Selling donuts is a hard job."
Limbo:
Limbo is the second album (after 1995's University) to be recorded at Daniel Lanois studio in New Orleans. One of the albums songs, Cowbirds, contains the line "you suck me dry I'll never die," and imagery of red lips, and red roses. Ah-ha, thought I, here's an easy angle. New Orleans, vampires. Kristin looks totally thrown by this observation however. "Vampires, that's one we haven't thought of. Somebody said that when we were making it. That totally went over my head, all I know about the roses is that when they're upside down they dry and they never die for that reason, and if someone turns you upside down you'll freeze like that forever, and you know "fuck you" you did this and now I'm alive forever. But I didn't get the vampire aspect of that." "The songs are also done before we go, stuff like that doesn't rub off on us too much. New Orleans definitely makes us comfortable, but it doesn't really rub off on us," adds David. So much for my Anne Rice angle. This is going to be tougher than I thought. Kristin further puts the boot into my lazy journalism. "You don't actually see any vampires, unless they're making a vampire movie. Which they were last time. We'd walk outside and there be these big trays of coffee, and stuff like that, we thought they gave you free coffee in New Orleans. But it was because they were making Interview with the Vampire. I had to do a photo shoot so they got one of the make-up and hair people from the movie to do it, and she made me look like a vampire. She had been so used to doing that every day. I had long black hair, and it was all teased up, and I had these dark red lips, and white face. And it was like "Aaarrgh". She was like "oh, sorry I'm just so used to it.""
Song voices
Kristin doesn't care to analyse her own songs to closely. In fact she refers to the songs as having their own voice, almost as autonomous entities. "Since I have to play them, I try not to analyse them. I know because they sound like the truth to me, and really beautiful relevant things, that they're right. But if I took them down and let my brain screw with them every time I went to play them, my brain would be in the way. So I'm the most important person to not know what's going on in the songs. I have to disappear for the real song voice. And then when a line comes up it's the truth, it's what needs to be said. But it isn't me talking about something that's already happened, it's more timeless than that. It's more for other people than that. When you listen to music, it shouldn't be with your brain, it should be with your guts, or your heart, or even your skin, they're all good chemicals that don't need to lie to you. But your brain is big on lying to you."
Kristin has the knack for writing songs that are just ambiguous enough to give something to the listener, but not so much as to be meaningless. For instance Serene on the new album can be read as being about a mother looking at her sleeping child, or someone gazing at a sleeping lover. It's a hard thing to do but it allows her songs to be relevant to a variety of moods, and feelings. Kristin agrees with this idea. "When you think you've figured (a song) out, it's like a joke that you can't hear again. But every time I play a song I learn something else from it... and I can lay it over this thing in my life, or my head, or whatever. I've had records like that, House Tornado, it seemed to be about housewives, which is a strange thing for a record to be about. But I kinda got that impression, a lot of the imagery, a lot of the stories, were housewife stories. And I didn't think I'd ever met a housewife, certainly not been one. I had a kid but he'd just live in the van with the band all the time. I didn't know what a vacuum cleaner was, or anything. Then about five years later I actually became a housewife, something I did not see coming, and something that moved me really hard in my life. It's a really important job, making kids bodies work right, making sure that they have walls around them that are strong, and good for them. And I understood House Tornado, it's storyline, for the first time ever. I understood every single song as far as the life story goes. So with [Limbo] maybe I haven't lived them yet."
Being a mom.
Kristin Hersh is a rarity in rock music, being a mother of two (soon to be three), who attempts to be both a working musician, and supply a stable domestic environment for her children. In some ways she is the anti-Madonna, harshly critical of the attempt by some feminists to downgrade the domestic, mothering role. "People have no respect for this timeless female job; it doesn't have to be done by women, but it is a feminine job. If we have no respect for the traditional role that women play, making them only amount to something if they're wearing suits and going into business, then we are downplaying what we always thought of as the essence of femininity.
"It could be that men need to do it for a while, and men are really good at it, before we realise that it's a big deal job."
The option of being a traditional mother is one that Kristin fully realises is not open to a vast majority of women, or men for that matter. "It's not a job that most people are rich enough to have; including men. But it is something that goes on 24 hours a day no matter how many other things you're dealing with. Right now I'm not being a really good housewife. But the idea of making a home around kids to make good people, healthy people, is something that's really human. To downplay that, or degrade it, is really... sad." So how does Kristin cope? "I just don't have any other choice. And my kids are used to it. It's not ideal for either the band or the family, but the little one lives on the tour bus and doesn't know the difference, and Dave and Bernie are his uncles."
And what problems can this create? "(Ryder) was worried the Easter Bunny wouldn't find him because we were in our apartment this year and not on a bus (laughs). He just doesn't really know the difference. Maybe he will one day and he'll hate me (laughs). It's not a bad life for a kid, he has to be home schooled but he's learning all the time any way, he's always going to museums, and he's been everywhere, and he remembers everywhere, he knows people all over the world. I comfort myself with that when I'm feeling really guilty, so it could be rationalising on my part. It's better than day-care I think, and we can afford a nanny." It doesn't sound very rock'n'roll. Then again Kristen and her partner Billy (who handily is the Muses manager) are not into the bogus, self-destructive, narcissistic, rock star clichés. They are after all, grown ups.
Longevity.
10 years old is a serious age for a rock band to reach. In an industry obsessed with new faces but recycled ideas, Throwing Muses stand alone. "We've been allowed to play in the corner of the music business forever," says Kristin "which is truly bizarre in a business where you're supposed to either have a hit or disappear. We haven't done either (laughs). Maybe we disappeared and didn't notice." The Muses have managed to avoid becoming faddishly fashionable. "Nobody cares what we look like, or what we wear. We don't have that goofy side of the business, that bands who have hits have to put up with. The only people who want to talk to us actually care to talk to us.
"But what if you did make a million dollars? Everybody hates rich people, and then your kids are rich kids, what do you do with it. The only people I know with money are really afraid to lose it, we certainly don't have that fear (laughs)."