1994. The year I went travelling. The year I turned 21. The year that Kristin Hersh released an album that changed my life. I say changed my life, it changed my guitar playing. I did a reverse Dylan and moved from electric guitar to acoustic. Kristin’s beautiful acoustic debut made that happen.
But this isn’t about me. This is about an album so unexpected and different, it deserves all the attention.
I’d seen Throwing Muses several times at various festivals and shows. Their gnarly brand of indie punk soundtracked my teenage years, alongside Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Pixies, and The Fall. I probably got introduced to them through John Peel’s radio show, I can’t remember. When I heard that Kristin was releasing a solo album, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to buy it.
That opening track, Your Ghost, featuring R.E.M’s Michael Stipe on backing vocals, set the scene for what would become my most played album that year. I hadn’t realised how poignant and fragile Hersh’s voice was, yet powerful and serene in equal measure. More than just versatile, across all 15 songs – which together run for a little over 50 minutes, so compact is the album – the whole gamut of emotions are run, by Kristin and, consequently, also by the listener.
Hips and Makers is an album I’ve gone back to many times since. One that I carried around Europe with me on my travels, copied on to magnetic tape and rewound using a biro so I could play it again on my battered Walkman-lite personal stereo (a Sanyo, in case you wondered).
Each listen brought out something new. The punk vibe still existed, on songs like Sundrops, Close Your Eyes, and, to some extent, on Me and My Charms. Yet, there’s a vulnerability, so often hidden behind the brash uniqueness of the Muses’ song structure and fuzzy guitars, that’s present on songs such as Teeth, Velvet Days, and The Letter.
And that song, The Letter, which feels like someone reading out a painful personal missive they’ve sent (or wanted to send but didn’t, or couldn’t) rather than a song they’ve written. How it sinks into your bones and makes you ache in ways you can barely describe. A song that has to be experienced, and then replayed and experienced again and again.
Hips and Makers. A solo debut of extraordinary songs from an extraordinary artist. Kristin still makes amazing records; other highlights would be 2001’s Sunny Border Blue, and 2018’s Possible Dust Clouds. Yet, Hips and Makers remains a highlight that still sounds as if it was recorded last year. And yet, when asking around it’s not an album that many people have heard – and as it’s not been reissued on vinyl since 2012, it remains an Unspun Hero.