Kristin Hersh

Sunny Border Blue

(4AD)

Coinciding with Throwing Muses’ last gasps, Kristin Hersh’s first solo stabs were fairly straightforward, her distinctive keening anchored by little more than cello and acoustic guitar. Subsequent releases have been increasingly inaccessible — it was as if, in her struggle to articulate her pain in fresh terms, she created a language incomprehensible to anyone else. So it’s a great relief that Sunny Border Blue is a return to relevance, if not to form. Hersh’s arrangements are fantastic — full, but not crowded. Once a poster girl for manic depression, she still has issues, but they’re easier to relate to now that she couches them in keen, rather than cryptic, lines. Abandonment and betrayal are frequent subjects: "Candyland" addresses Hersh’s losing a custody battle for her firstborn ("My son went down/ This isn’t trauma/ It’s not even drama anymore"), while "Listerine" glosses the Muses’ breakup ("How’d I trust a band who’d leave me one by one?"). "William’s Cut" sums it up: "How many times can you get fucked/ In how many different ways?" Hersh has always been mad, but Sunny Border Blue’s anger feels healthy. And that’s good for listeners.

—M.J. Fine