ALBUM REVIEW: Kristin Hersh – "Learn To Sing Like A Star"

First published: 2007-01-29

Kristin Hersh’s band Throwing Muses are one of those strange beasts that everyone who’s spent any amount of time immersed in the world of American alternative rock has heard of, but very few have actually heard.  Cult figures of 90s anti-grunge eclecticism and shimmering multi-layered alternafolk, they’ve pretty much been on hiatus since 1997, allowing the Muses’ two lead singers, Tanya Donelly and Hersh herself, to concentrate on work with The Breeders and solo projects respectively.

Unfortunately, Learn To Sing Like A Star is exactly the sort of record you’d expect from an artist with such a back story.  All very muso and earnest, it’s a lushly orchestrated vanity project, and inherently unlovable.  Thirty second filler track ‘Christian Herse’ is a prime example: self-punning delusions of grandeur that make a bit of twangy noise and then disappear.  But even worse is Ice, the song it leads into - a strings, plucking and whispering combo that forever sounds like its got important places to go and people to see, but sits down after three minutes looking pleased with itself having achieved precisely sod all.

Strangely enough, things start to pick up by the final quarter of the disc.  Drumming from Muses member Dave Narcizo makes ‘Winter’ sound like a fully formed song rather than a studio doodle, with church bells adding that much needed move away from singer-songwriter territory.  Hersh’s me-complex shows up again with ‘Wild Vanilla’s lyrical references to her own bi-polar disorder, but this is easily forgiven when you hear its psych-guitar solo, the fact that it steps up a gear from the rest of the album’s walking pace, and that it even has a memorable melody line.

There’s no doubt that this is a well crafted and, at times, beautiful album.  But with a few more songs and a few less aural tapestries it could have been much more than background music for indie record store clerks to play at their dinner parties.