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50 Foot Wave - Bath White EP

Throwing Muses has existed as a three piece for some time now: Kristin Hersh and perennial drummer Dave Narciso along Bernard Georges on bass. 50 Foot Wave simply swaps Narciso for Rob Ahlers, but the differences are marked more by Kristin Hersh's shifted priorities. Too many artists get calmer as their career goes on, when they should get angrier. Hersh gets this, and 50 Foot Wave is Hersh's way of  indulging that without changing what Throwing Muses and her solo albums are about.

Though it once released a 25 minute standalone single, 50 Foot Wave is generally not a band concerned with making long and sprawling musical statements. As such, most of its releases are EPs. The title track's origins are in the ocean, which is an apt aural reference point for the EP in the way it subsumes the listener with sound and doesn't stay still. Bath White simultaneously complements 2011's With Love from the Men's Room EP and expands on it, and if you needed confirmation of Kristin Hersh's enduring importance, this is it.

Related:

50 Foot Wave - With Love from the Men's Room EP
Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise
Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled

Throwing Muses - Santa Claus

Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise

Looking at the running times of each track on Purgatory/Paradise, a third of which hover around the one minute mark, it could be a film score. In a very real way, it's is the soundtrack to the last ten years in the lives of Kristin Hersh, Bernard Georges and Dave Narcizo, the book that comes with it being a treatment for the script.

Throwing Muses have always been an example to other bands; they had a whole scene built around them in the mid 80s, and when they settled into the mid 90s alt-rock scene, a scene they had a big hand in creating, they settled near the top. Another decade after that, Kristin Hersh became a pioneer of crowdfunding for music. The better part of another decade later, Purgatory/Paradise sets an example that not many are likely to follow, albeit the same one being set this year by a number of veterans, including My Bloody Valentine, Richard Thompson and Wire: how to make a great rock album in the early 10s.

 If the film to which Purgatory/Paradise could be a soundtrack existed, it would be a disjointed, meandering narrative, telling the story out of order. Before the 32 song, 67 minute long album can take hold, what does make an impression is the sound. It's not lo-fi, but it's far from slick. It's very real, very human; the drums sound like drums rather than someone bouncing a basketball in an empty church. The album was mastered with an uncommonly light touch, and given the number of soft-loud transitions, it was the only way to do it. If the sound is human, then accordingly the music is direct. Whether it's a quiet, contemplative number or a strident rocker, you can imagine three people in the studio playing those instruments, and if there's any singer who sounds as if she might crawl through the speakers Ring style at any given moment, it's Kristin Hersh. Each of the songs carves out its own space while functioning as part of the album as a whole. Paradoxically for an album with so many songs, Purgatory/Paradise should be able to remind any willing listener of a time before they had thousands of albums and when their relationship with a song was deeper because of it. In 2013, releasing 32 songs that are worth listening to would have been enough, but it wasn't enough for Throwing Muses; these songs demand to be listened to.

Related:

50 Foot Wave - With Love from the Men's Room EP
Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

Thoughts on stuff ('n junk)

Kristin Hersh, who has been blogging longer and better than me, wrote a piece a few years ago called Thoughts on Sustainability. It is in part an introduction to her Cash Music enterprise which allows listeners to purchase music via her various projects' websites (and obtain some for free) with no label involvement.

The essay briefly touches on the survival of of the blandest phenomenon in present day music. It got me thinking that poor quality music gets a break because art is supposedly subjective and therefore exempt from having to meet any sort of standard before being made available for purchase. A dishwasher that doesn't wash your dishes would be pulled off the market; an album that doesn't entertain is permissible. There should, of course, be standards. Metallica fans tried to return their Death Magnetic CDs because the brickwall mastering the band approved introduced distortion that was not present in the master recording. I applaud them for taking a stand against a practice that should be unacceptable. A company that intentionally builds an undisclosed flaw into a toaster and doesn't factor it into the price would be prosecuted. Vinyl is less affected by modern mastering trends, but is overpriced and has its own limitations.

The quality of the music itself has no bearing on price either, despite the fact that it is not entirely subjective. You might prefer Wesley Willis to The Beatles and The Shaggs to Pink Floyd (or claim you do), and that's all well and good, but to say that they are better is not. But I'm not talking about music recorded cheaply by people of questionable musical talent. I'm talking about music recorded expensively by people of questionable musical talent. Music that goes through a homogenisation process at every stage of its development with the end goal of creating a product to be consumed by millions should not cost the same as music created with the end goal of creating a lasting work of art. Check used CD shops - while they stil exist - for a more meritocratic pricing hierarchy. There you'll find Hanson's Christmas album for as reasonable a price as can be. Fast food is cheaper than restaurant quality food, and with good reason. Both music and food produced by giant corporations by definition has to be stripped of any unique flavour in order to be palatable to a huge market. We all feel like a hamburger every now and then, just as we all sometimes feel like a song we can nod our head to in the car and then forget about; we just shouldn't have to pay as much as we're being made to.

50 Foot Wave - With Love from the Men's Room EP

50 Foot Wave is a punkish hard rock trio led by Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses, solo). The last Muses album gives an idea of what to expect, at least in terms of volume, but this trend of Hersh's is no compensatory gimmick; it's just a case of the amps catching up with the intensity of her delivery.

Not that I'm not looking forward to a second full length from 50 Foot Wave, but an EP is a well suited vehicle because small doses might just be the best way to enjoy the band. With Love from the Men's Room is a true sonic assault, opening with guitar squeals over an insistent rhythm and not really abating at any point. There's not a lot of buildup, but a lot of release, and no drama lurking beneath the surface; it's all out in the open.

By the way, With Love from the Men's Room is available for free. Hersh has been releasing it track by track at http://50footwave.cashmusic.org/, the final track having just been uploaded.

Related:

50 Foot Wave - Bath White EP

Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise

Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled

Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled (Throwing Muses) (1986)

There's no question that Throwing Muses deserve to be honoured in Flux Capacitor. They molded the then relatively new indie or "college" rock sound in the mid 80s more than most bands (and more than any other female-led band, if that matters), and, as the first American band signed to 4AD, permanently redefined the English label along with acolytes Pixies. The question is which album to pick, as their isn't really an accepted Throwing Muses classic album or ideal starting point. I've decided to go with the officially untitled debut for the same reason it was the first Muses album I listened to: why the hell not?

Cognitive dissonance set in straight away the first time I heard this album. My first thoughts were "this sounds familiar" and "I've never heard anything like this before". Kristin Hersh created the Throwing Muses sound by borrowing from REM, Wire, Joy Division, The Beatles and others, but, like the best innovators, fashioned it into something new. The debut never lets the listener get comfortable because it never sits still; you think the unrelenting post-punk ditty "Call Me" is going to set the tone for the rest of the album, but then the next track slows down the tempo and switches the time signature. The rhythmic shifts never stop, but Hersh's intricate arpeggios knit the whole thing together. Throwing Muses went on to release at least three albums as good as this one, but they wouldn't exist without this initial artistic triumph.

Related:

Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise
50 Foot Wave - With Love From the Men's Room EP