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.

Jun 12, 1999
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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