REVIEW: Kristin Hersh, Sky Motel (4AD)
- Chelsea Spear
Ignore the gauzy photography and beautiful packaging of Sky Motel, the photos of singer/songwriter Kristin Hersh looking all twinkly and happy. Disregard the enveloping, SurroundSound production and the chirpy-sweet first single and leadoff track, "Echo." Within the pits on this CD, Hersh has documented the long, dark night of the soul that has engulfed her in the three years since she was forced to dissolve her internationally renowned first band, Throwing Muses.
The songs on Sky Motel revel in strange, minor-chord tunings (such as "San Francisco"), rarely used time signatures and odd rhythmic patterns (the haunting "Costa Rica"), as well as melodies that both swoon and dirge ("Clay Feet"). As usual, Hersh's lyrics are usually cryptic and rife with disturbing imagery, as on the effectively molasses-paced "Caffeine," though even at their most direct they can unsettle listeners with nerves of steel, as with the album closer "Faith": "Was it me or the heat?/Made you not believe/Made you lose your faith in the afterlife," Hersh pleads with listeners. Even the joyous bossa nova skip of "Echo" cloaks a less-than-innocuous lyric ("I'm scaring everybody, I'm wearing everybody down") that seems to warn of tumult to come. Anyone buying this record in search of the cherubic joy of Strange Angels or even parts of Hips and Makers will find this jarring, to say the least.
That said, Hersh's first album with a band is an exhilarating, emotionally involving listen from beginning to end. The contrast between the at times wrist slashingly depressing lyrics and music and the brightly-coloured production serves to remind listeners of a popular theme within Hersh's lyrics, and, indeed, her life: the fact that happiness and misery can co-exist. Even at its bleakest, the music retains a playful side, demonstrated through the bongos that dance through "Costa Rica" or the Ravellian snare drum that keeps "Faith" moving forward.
Hersh's new-found songwriting ability also adds a new dimension to the songs that grace Sky Motel. In years previous, Hersh didn't write songs so much as channel them, as they came through her walls and entered her cerebral cortex. Her muse, the muse that gave her band a name, abandoned her before she had the chance to write this album. Hearing the songs she writes from scratch is another testament to her ability as a songwriter - the all-out rocker "A Cleaner Light" and glidingly melodic "San Francisco" - are as affecting as "Juno" and "Devil's Roof" were a decade ago. The one song she wrote with the aid of a muse, "Cathedral Heat," is one of the most affecting things ever committed to recording device, a moody environment that engulfs the listener and refuses to let go.
In short, Kristin Hersh has created a masterpiece with her first solo-album-with-band, Sky Motel. Adventurous listeners not shy to things that go bump in the night will greatly appreciate such an intuitive, stunningly beautiful album. On my short list for Record of the Year.
