June 12, 1999

Hersh, Kristin : Echo

[a]Kristin Hersh[/a] confounds preconceptions with an artful return to the light-headed viscera with which she and [a]Throwing Muses[/a] never quite succeeded in taking over the world.

After forswearing rock noise for more traditionally contemplative acoustic contexts in her solo work thus far, Kristin Hersh confounds preconceptions with an artful return to the light-headed viscera with which she and Throwing Muses never quite succeeded in taking over the world. 'Twas the world's loss, of course, and 'Echo' is a poised, near perfect blast of black widow pop, curling up from its playful organ intro and plunging
into
a full-on emotional spit-bath. "I'm loving everybody", seethes the mighty K, "and hating everyone I see". Few, if any, voices of her generation can muster such elemental force, nor repeatedly plunge into the waters of self-analysis without irritating the hell out of unconcerned onlookers, proof that angst need not necessarily be agony. "I'm scaring everybody/I'm
wearing
everybody down..." She's a treasure, pure and simple, and as such the hardly essential B-side covers of Nirvana's 'Pennyroyal Tea' and The Beatles' 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey' are an excusable exercise in 'fun'.

JAMES OLDHAM