昨天在佳佳看到她的新專輯，
可以在 Amazon 試聽。
Kristin Hersh: The Sky's the Limit
Kristin Hersh, who recently returned from a European
publicity trek to promote her fourth solo album, the
eerily beautiful and ultra-confessional Sky Motel,
will tell you she's pursued a smart career
strategy. Though she never knowingly searched
out the big-time, Hersh's logic is certainly
understandable: Everything that goes up must, of
course, come down. "I feel lucky that I have
something to do other than be trendy," the singer
says.
"There are so many other things to do, like make
good music," she says. "I don't mean to be
snotty about it, but that's how I feel. And also, if
you're ever in, you'll be out someday. And I've
just been allowed to hang out over here in the
corner and keep going for 15 years, which is
unheard of."
Since founding the critically acclaimed but
otherwise insolvent Throwing Muses more than a
decade ago with her stepsister Tanya Donelly,
Hersh has always made music on her terms.
Despite an ongoing battle with mental illness
(Hersh has been diagnosed as both
schizophrenic and having a bipolar disorder), she
served as the band's main songwriter, churning
out such critical and college circuit favorites as
the band's self-titled 1986 debut and 1991's The
Real Ramona.
"People who want to play music are usually
pretty reserved," she says, "and not good at
selling themselves. I think the people who really
live for their music don't expect anyone else to
ever like it. The Muses were like that. We were
obsessed with what we did, absolutely thought it
was the greatest s--t in the world, but never
expected anyone else to ever listen to it."
The Muses' expectations proved to be right on
target. The band's tour dates were packed, but
meager album sales couldn't pay the rent. In
1992, due largely to creative tensions, Donelly
left the band, going first to the Breeders and then
to Belly. Two years later, Hersh released her solo
debut, Hips and Makers. She reunited with the
Muses for 1995's surprisingly accessible
University, which yielded the modern rock radio
hit "Bright Yellow Gun."
Despite the unexpected success, the Muses
broke up once again in 1997. That was traumatic
enough, says Hersh, but right around the same
time, she also found out that she couldn't have
more than the three children she had. In
characteristic fashion, she fled to the California
desert, turned inward and poured her anguish out
through her music.
"I used to hear these songs in my head," she
says, "like it was musical epilepsy. I was hearing
things other people weren't and the only thing
keeping me from having seizures was to write the
songs and turn them into sounds. If I didn't write
the song, I would literally have a seizure. And I
haven't had a seizure since I started writing
songs for this album.
"Once I got over feeling sorry for myself," she
continues, "I started to write songs on purpose,
for the first time. It sounds like working, but it
wasn't. The songs didn't suck. They didn't hurt
my feelings to write them 霠I wasn't fighting
them anymore."
Sky Motel is her peace treaty with her emotions.
Hersh says that this is first album she has done
where she had control over the songs, and not
vice versa. "It's the first one I walked away from
without going, 'If only we had one more week,' or
'Now I know how to sing that song!' I usually walk
away from an album going, 'Boy, I really sold out
now.' But this one really is nice."
Sky Motel has received the usual critical praise,
but Hersh doesn't delude herself with dreams of
chart domination. She's content, she says, to
make music her way. Quietly.
"I feel really lucky. I'm a working musician, which
is a contradiction in terms," she says. "I'm not
making a great living. I have sold millions of
records, as it turns out, even though it took me
15 years to do it. So I'm making a better living
than I expected when I started the band." 霊
--
gender is just an excuse, relationship shouldn't just be an excuse,
love is often an excuse, although sometimes these excuses are all
we have to hold onto,
death is the reason and living is the celebration
- Beth Orton
--
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