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Kristin Hersh on the Places that Make Up Throwing Muses’ DNA

Songwriter Kristin Hersh has called Throwing Muses’ new album + book Purgatory/Paradise “a keyhole view of our goofy world.”

It’s also a ramshackle map dotted with places and memories — a kind of Rough Guide to Throwing Muses, or a music-based 36 Hours in…

While the band’s hometown of Newport, RI, is a subtle but pervasive influence, Purgatory’s 32 songs careen restlessly from place to place —to New Orleans, Hersh’s sirensong “Bayou Paris”; down dark Portland highways, into the Palm Desert and across sticky Coke-spattered sidewalks in Providence, RI — but they always, always return to the windswept grandeur of Aquidneck Island.

I asked Kristin to tell me about some of the places that MADE the Muses — and how they continue to influence and shape the band, which is still a beautiful work in progress after 30 years.

How has being from Newport, a tiny town at the edge of a very big ocean, influenced your songwriting?

Kristin Hersh: Everybody from an island has an island-based psychology: you know that you’re essentially safe. All you gotta do is wander around in order to get to where you’re going. Because circles are all you’re meant to move in and god introduced confines and expanses at the same time.

This is kind of metaphysical, but what places give you strength + make you feel like you can accomplish anything?

KH: Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh: you climb a hill past ruins and picnickers and end up moved to tears by heather and yellow wildflowers.

Texas hill country, where the air feels infused with potential.

Forest Park in Portland, OR, sucking down the chlorophyll.

Anywhere in Australia or New Zealand. Sachuest Point nature preserve, here on the island.

And New Orleans: voodoo plus alcohol plus forgiveness.

Purgatory Rd. + Paradise Ave. are an actual crossroad in Middletown, RI. Name 5 other places that are part of Throwing Muses’ DNA.

KH: The Bells, a graffiti-covered wreck of a wreck of a building on Ocean Drive. It’s where skaters and burnouts partied when we were in high school.

The Cliff Walk, in Newport. We’d stumble down the cliffs to hide with our friends by the water, drink beer, and play guitar and boom boxes.

Dave’s parents’ attic, our practice space when we were 14. We left spray painted messages and drawings for each other on the walls. A far as I know, they’re still there.

Second Beach in Middletown. The suffer end is for surfers, the other end is for beached whales. We hang out in the middle.

The Salvation Army on Broadway in Newport. Nobody there has any teeth. It’s where we bought (and still buy) our clothes, furniture and Christmas presents.

Places past, present, loved, hated — go with your gut instincts.

KH: Little Five Points, Atlanta, GA. Where I was born, where my hippie home movies were filmed. Where I got the accent you can only hear when I’m tired, drunk, or both.

Athens, GA, where Vic Chesnutt lived when he lived. His house was my safe house. Can’t say that I really feel that safe anymore.

Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, TN, where my family is from, where my grandparents lived and where I learned all the Appalachian folk songs on “Murder, Misery and Then Goodnight.”

The Living Room!! We opened for REM, X, the Meat Puppets and the Violent Femmes there and played our first headlining show (where they paid audience members a dollar to come in).

Investigate

Read the CD, listen to the book —Purgatory/Paradise lets you determine your own experience. It’s totally choose your own adventure, but I went for the listen first, then listen-and-read, then listen again approach. (And I’m still listening.)

Find your own way of diving in — knowing full well that, no matter how you get there, the rewards will be huge.

Buy Purgatory/Paradise
Throwing Muses on Twitter
Kristin Hersh on Twitter
Lakuna Design
Cashmusic.org
Kristin Hersh

IMAGES: LIVING ROOM (FROM ALLKINDSAGIRLS BLOG) | ATTIC BY PAUL ROBICHEAU, 1985 (SCAN COURTESY OF C. PUFFER) | FIRST BEACH, BELLS STILLS BY JORY HULL

Can you go home again?

Back in high school, I distinctly remember vowing to leave Providence and never come back.

Since then, I’ve ping-ponged back and forth so many times it’s a wonder I don’t have whiplash. And yet — there’s something about this town that’s magic. Weird magic, but magic nonetheless.

And for me, the town’s allure was solidified through music.

Two bands in particular formed the soundtrack to my Providence adolescence: Throwing Muses and Coat of Arms.

Keeping Providence Weird

Mid-80s Providence was your typical post-industrial city — economically downtrodden and pretty damn culture-deprived. But, like anywhere, there were beacons of hope around if you took the time to look for ‘em. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that comics and music got me through high school.

I’ve seen the Muses enough, and in such far-flung venues, that I no longer even truly associate them with Providence (or Newport), or think of them necessarily as being a local band. Coat of Arms, on the other hand, bring me right back to Providence, c. 1987.I’d just moved back here from California. I’d started to get into weird comics (the weirdest I got at the time was Love & Rockets —I know, NOT WEIRD. But, context is everything, and I lived in a tiny cultural wasteland) and I figured it was time to branch out into music.

I became friends with the school’s lone acid freak, who got me into the Velvets and Eno. (That was a slow process, but I got there eventually.)

Somewhere along the way I bought a slew of cassettes by local bands like Sleep that Burns, Stained Rug Theory, and Coat of Arms.

Coat of Arms: Party Band for Weirdos

Coat of Arms stood out. They had a rep as a party band, but they also weren’t afraid to use instruments not seen in your typical 4/4 lineup (flute, banjo, violin).

And their sound was comparatively sunny-sounding and all-American, fitting in nicely with their contemporaries (fIREHOSE, Pixies, Muses, Lemonheads). Songs like “Common Ground” and “Indoor Poolz” were giddy and effervescent, equal parts power-pop and kitchen-sink glam. (“(When I) Touch You There” went all jangle-pop on us.)The band’s reach often exceeded their grasp, but that was part of the fun. Thankfully, their one-off reunion in 2006 didn’t add any gloss to the proceedings. (And no, the cheekily earnest cover of “Borderline” didn’t count.)

Throwing Muses: Fearless + Beautiful

Back in the socially awkward years of late high school, Throwing Muses’ first album and the subsequent Chains Changed EP were the most cathartic albums I owned.

Although I was also a big Joy Division fan, I preferred the conversational, open-ended quality of singer/songwriter Kristin Hersh’s often harrowing narratives — they were fearless but also approachable, humane, sharp. They felt like real life to me.

I don’t think I’d ever seen a songwriter write so matter-of-factly, and so un-self-pityingly, about some of the bleakest experiences of her life — or with such wry humor.

The Muses didn’t really fit in to the Providence scene, and maybe that’s why I loved (love) them so much. But then, I’ve always loved the outliers, the outsiders and the oddballs.

Investigate

Coat of Arms singer Pip Everett’s got a couple of bands going right now: The Hope Anchor + Everett Bros. Moving Co. Follow The Hope Anchor.

Pip also just recorded a track (or two?) for Tanya Donelly’s next Swan Song series. Not sure when it’s coming out — check Tanya’s website for release dates.

The Hope Anchor
Throwing Muses on Twitter
Tanya Donelly on Twitter

IMAGES: THROWING MUSES IN 1985 (PHOTO BY J NARCIZO) / COAT OF ARMS’ ROUST! CASSETTE (1987) / COAT OF ARMS + SUBJECT TO CHANGE FLYER, 1985 (COURTESY OF CHRISTIAN PUFFER / 1987 MUSES PIC CREDIT UNKNOWN — GET IN TOUCH IF IT’S YOURS!

It’s Throwing Muses Week here at Warped Reality (I can hear you now: “Isn’t it always Throwing Muses Week?”) — starting with a sneak peek at the design process behind their beautiful new album, Purgatory/Paradise.

David Narcizo tackles design problems every day at Lakuna, the graphic design studio he owns with his wife, Misi.

But designing Purgatory/Paradise, the lavish new book of essays + music by Throwing Muses, the groundbreaking band he’s drummed for since 1984, presented a special set of challenges: “I had to be careful not to overthink it,” he tells me over coffee at his Newport, RI studio.

In the 10 years since Muses’ last album, the band has become fully-listener supported with the help of CASH Music, a nonprofit that makes open-source tools for musicians. (Muses singer Kristin Hersh is a co-founder + board member.)

Free from music industry constraints, the band could release music whenever — and in whatever form — they wanted.

And with 32 songs — culled from a whopping 75 — recorded over 10 years, something special was in order.

But what?

It’s one of those great — and daunting — creative questions, acknowledges Narcizo.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have [Throwing Muses] my life for 30 years,” he notes. “Part of that good fortune is the chance to combine my current job (Lakuna Design) with [the band] — it feels like the beginning of another chapter in Muses world.”

Take it away, Dave…

Learn to Let Go of the Past

The Throwing Muses collection Anthology (4AD, 2011) had a complete design that was scrapped.

Early on in the process I shared some sketches with Vaughan Oliver [legendarily cantankerous designer of multiple Muses sleeves].

Now, in the early days of the Muses we were surprised by how off-putting we were to people. We thought if we put photos of ourselves on the sleeve — show we were “normal” — that it would change the perception of us. Vaughan would argue vociferously against it — he always wanted to preserve the mystery.

So with Anthology, I wrote to him and said, “Hey! There’s not a single picture of us in it!” And he wrote back: “What a mistake you’re making!” [laughs]

So I scrapped that design and reworked it to include all kinds of ephemera that was personal to the band: tour itineraries, ticket stubs, etc.

Use Process to Take a Step Back

I always design a cover opened. One thing I remember Vaughan saying was, “Don’t worry about the cover too much” — he was basically saying, “The cover doesn’t have to be the main event.” That was freeing to me.

With Purgatory/Paradise, I wanted the cover to have a vintage book feel to it — I wanted the light to feel magical but not spooky.

Prompts Are Good

Kristin sent me a list of words to get me started on the overall look + feel: colors, names, places, objects.

Then I received all the essays. I realized there were a LOT of words.

I knew I was going to need buckets of assets.

Some of them are mine, some are K’s. I created collages behind the text, some specific to what she’s talking about, some more allusive. I didn’t want to be too precious about it.

There are lots of photos of Newport in there. Like Brenton Point — we joke that it’s our “photographer date spot” because it’s where we ALWAYS took photographers. Chains Changed was shot there.

It was a lot of trial and error until I settled on collage out of necessity — to treat every page like a separate layout.

The intro is more geometric. When it gets into songs the look is more collage-y.

I had to be careful not to overthink it. When it’s about you you’re less willing to go with one idea. I was trying to exercise restraint.

Evolving Beyond the Album (While Still Loving the Album)

One of the things that K and I have been talking about a lot recently is that it’s taken us a long time to get to this place — we’ve evolved past the album.

It’s odd because, almost more than anything else we’ve done, this record really feels like an album.

And yet, at the same time, I feel I’m ready to let go of albums.

I don’t think we have to think in those terms any more — we can record and then, maybe after the fact, decide, “Oh, this all works together as a collection. We’ll package it up and then make it something tangible that people can have.”

Maybe it’s one song, maybe it’s a piece of design —or writing. Releasing “stuff” — whatever form that takes — when we feel like it.

Bands should never break up. We’re always going to be around, in some form.

Shows in 2014?

Bernie [Muses bassist] hurt his thumb, so we’re going to play shows in 2014.

Jeff Craft, our booking agent, is going to try to book us into places that are just unique and fun — like the De La Warr Pavilion [a Modernist-era concert hall] in Sussex, or the Islington Assembly Hall.

The first show that’s been announced will be part of NoiseFest in SF.

Investigate

Throwing Muses on Twitter
Lakuna Design
Cashmusic.org
Kristin Hersh