Kristin Hersh

Oran Mor, Glasgow

At forty years of age, Kristin Hersh could be forgiven for slowing down or looking back on a musical journey that began when she formed Throwing Muses at the age of fourteen. Since then she has juggled band work with a solo career and more recently with a new outfit, 50 Foot Wave.

Yet this is no triumph of quantity over quality: she retains the restless energy and intense presence that marked her out as a uniquely driven writer and performer two decades ago.

This is achieved mainly utilising the taut material from her recent ‘Learn To Sing Like A Star’ album, with a few landmark selections from ‘Hips and Makers’ and ‘Sunny Border Blue’ thrown in.

Though drawing almost entirely on solo tracks, it is a far from laid back show, with Hersh’s guttural guitar pickings augmented by her two 50 Foot Wave band mates as a rhythm section. However, rather than opting for her oft-preferred power trio line up, strings are added throughout by The McCarricks, who double up as support act.

It makes for a big, robust sound that covers the wear and tear in Hersh’s voice. Even so, the verve with which she attacks ‘Day Glow,’ Listerine’ and ‘Sugar Baby’ shows no concession to illness (a cold), and the pace is maintained throughout, with the most restrained song, ‘White Bikini Sand,’ (one of only two Throwing Muses songs) being the slowest on offer.

In between, she is an engaging mixture of self-depreciation (describing ‘The Letter’ as ‘ a “very bad song, written by me”) and wit (recounting stories of previous visits to Glasgow), all contributing to the overall impression of an artist entirely at ease in her own, disturbingly attractive world.