Bristol
8 November 2016
This was an intimate show, just Kristin Hersh laying herself bare – furnished with a few self-released books and a shiny electric guitar. Last time I saw her live was just as intimate, in a small, vaulted church off Park Street, where she delivered a stripped-down acoustic shindig full of wonder. That harrowing encore satisfaction of “Delicate Cutters” is still creeping the personal archives some twenty-two years later.
Now Kristin’s back with plenty of new material, perusing some choice pickings from her extensive back catalogue. It’s very clear from the offing how much she feels the songs, needs them even, her head wavering, conveying every haunted word with a faraway stare as if totally lost in their corridors.
The new material flies with an assertive glare, “Soma Gone Slapstick” in particular throws out a wow of bassy ignitions, sits in your head like a long-lost friend. When “Your Ghost” hits, the room literally melts; I look over to Sarah and she’s grinning back warmly — it’s such a beautiful song that brings those twenty-two years rushing back. “You Cage” is another blast from the past, this time Throwing Muses‘, with those off-mic vocal ascends weaselling the shivers.
The encore brings on a few more choice treasures, one of which is from The Grotto; I just love this album’s haunting buoyancy and we get a personal recount of “Sno Cat”‘s creation into the bargain before the song fills the room with an imagined spiral of frosty exhale. She ends the evening with a taste of her childhood in “The Cuckoo”, an Appalachian lullaby her mother used to sing to her (the only one that wasn’t about death or murder, she added sardonically), another memorable moment from Hips And Makers.
A stunning evening of edgy intimacy.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-