It seems – at least from the outside looking in — as if Kristin Hersh is currently living one of her best artistic lives. Secure in a reliable harbour at Fire Records, retaining a supportive set of longtime followers, maintaining a literary side-hustle and ceaselessly productive with three alternating primary music routes (solo, Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave), to the point that critiquing commentary on these pages or elsewhere is unlikely to impinge on her creatively healthy existence. Yet, it continues to feel a valid and respectful exercise for seasoned observers to keep paying attention to Hersh’s individual new works in hand… such as this latest self-billed long-player.
Feeling like somewhat of a hybridisation of 2023’s sonically rich solo Clear Pond Road LP and last year’s returning-to-form Moonlight Concessions album with Throwing Muses, Sugar On Blackstone is a satisfying blend of rugged and atmospheric modes. Layered with Hersh’s vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percussion and mellotron parts that are ably supplemented by drums from 50 Foot Wave’s dependable Rob Ahlers and inventive auxiliary cello from touring Muses member Pete Harvey, the record leans further into the woody yet wiry electro-acoustic aesthetics that have latterly well served her still less-than-linear songcraft.
Opener “Dark Eyed Junco” compresses the overall modus operandi into one capsule, beginning as an aching minimalism meditation before being broken over several waves of craggy chugging.
Thereafter comes thickened weaving chamber-grunge moves (“Moths” and “Snow White Lies”); electrical yearning with organic orchestrations (“Ticking” and “Pink Nightgowns”); waltzing tier-building (“101 Run” and “‘72 Stingray”); limber scratchy but soothing folk-rock (“Silver Beach”); desolate This Mortal Coilisms mixed with meta Hips And Makers hauntings (“Sundial”); and earthy harmonising back porch serenity (“Samson”).
Conceptually threaded with coded and often darkened personal lyrical references looking back on a childhood neighbourhood in Providence, Rhode Island — where she nomadically relocated to once more ahead of its construction — Sugar On Blackstone is certainly one of the knottier Kristin Hersh LPs to fully unpick.
Yet patience reveals the record’s genuinely rewarding virtues via the divergent matrices of its aforementioned arrangements, even if its significance in the wider canon will take a little while longer to determine, principally through ever-enthralling live presentations.
-Adrian-
