Throwing Muses - Sun Racket

I've had an on off relationship with Throwing Music and Kristin Hersh for over three decades now since buying their debut album after reading a blazing review in the Melody Maker in the late Eighties. That 's still the only record of their's or hers I actually own which is an indication that I've never fallen very hard for their charms apart from that one time. 

Here comes their tenth album Sun Racket to remind me why I feel this way. Like much of their output I find it a bit of a curate's egg, liking some songs and not others, even liking some parts of individual songs but not other parts. I guess we're just not meant for each other.

Given our innate incompatibility for one another on some particular level, it's difficult for me to be objective  about Sun Racket as I generally can be when listening to music. It's not the definitive claustrophobia of Hersh's music that I don't go for. After all I listened to Tricky's latest perfectly happily yesterday morning and he's a man with similar dark inclinations and drives as her.

So, while I can recognise the skill of Hersh and her band, and they're readily on display here, I think I must resign myself to the fact that they will never quite be for me. The debut album will always be the one I return to, like someone you kissed drunkenly at a party one time years back but realised the next day that it was probably not something worth pursuing. 

Sun Racket is a perfectly good record, it's just an unnecessarily cluttered one for my tastes. Listening to it on headphones on my laptop for the first time I often thought another window might be open and two incompatible songs were playing at the same time. So, despite the bits I liked and there definitely were bits I liked, I think I'll leave it to the devotees.

PS. Perhaps I haven't been entirely fair to this record. I've only given it a couple of listens. I've also been advised by a big fan of the band that second album House Tornado may be the go to record of theirs. So I'll give that a try too.