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Kristen Hersh Murder, Misery and then Goodnight 4AD Last year when Kristen Hersh went out on tour, it was a much more toned-down affair than any of her outings with the Throwing Muses. For one, the show centered around her acoustic guitar, her voice, and her powerful songwriting. The show's down-home, organic feel was cemented by the presence of her two young sons, Dylan (4), and Ryder (7), and their dog, who managed to create the impression that what you were seeing was just a typical night around the house, without really disrupting the show. Occasionally, one of the boys would toddle out and ask for a drink of water, and Mom would point them toward someone offstage. The dog, which Hersh named Cap'n John Smith and the kids renamed Monkey, sat at her feet through the show and never barked once. Not only did we get to see Hersh balancing her roles as a performer and a parent better than most people ever do, we saw a great show. In such a familiar element, with her family close at hand, the show seemed less artificial, less like a performance, than it would have if she were up on stage with a band. What we saw was just a woman pulling out her guitar at the end of a long day and singing songs to her kids, just like we imagine she would on her back porch on a long summer's night. Hersh does an admirable job of maintaining this back-porch vibe on her newest album, "Murder, Misery, and then Goodnight." Even more than her stage performance, this is a very personal collection of songs, with her family as the intended audience. The songs are all traditional songs from Hersh's childhood, sung to her by her parents, and songs that she has in turn sung to her own kids over the years. Her husband, Billy O'Connell, produces the record (and "produce" most likely means "set up the tape recorder in the living room"), and plays percussion on various household objects, while their son Ryder plays piano and sings occasional backups. In arranging and recording these songs, Hersh was forced to acknowledge a dark side to her childhood; while all of these songs have functioned as lullabies, they're also grim Appalachian folk songs. More than half are about the deaths of young women (some are murdered by their husbands, some kill themselves rather than marry, some kill themselves because no one wants to marry them.) "Three Nights Drunk" is upbeat, but the story of a drunkard who comes home to his wife's frequent attempts to hide her infidelity. The gleeful, "What'll We Do With The Baby-O" advises, "every time the baby cries /stick my finger in the baby's eyes," and "wrap him up in a tablecloth / throw him up in the old hayloft." With young Ryder banging away at the piano and singing along, the song manages to sound wholesome despite being a rather twisted ode to sibling rivalry. Singing our children tales of murder and woe before sending them off to sleep is a long tradition, and these songs go far beyond "down will come baby, cradle and all." All of these songs are as old as the hills, and all of them still have life in some form. "Pretty Polly," the story of a woman killed by her husband-to-be and thrown into an already-dug grave, can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, and as far forward as "Polly" on "Nevermind," where the narrator and the woman's tormentor have become one and the same. Hersh is an engaging performer, and gives each of these songs life both as sinister tale and reassuring lullaby. In keeping with the intimate nature of the recordings, "Murder, Misery, and Goodnight" is a small-scale release, available only on 4AD's web site, www.4ad.com. -Mike V. |
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