Here’s Why You Should See Throwing Muses

Throwing Muses return play to NZ next week. It’ll be 30 years since I first saw them…

Thirty years ago I moved to Wellington. It’s been on my mind a lot — especially lately. I moved here to study. I wasn’t very disciplined at the time. But I had a lot of fun, and that’s certainly part of going to university.

When I was there — at Victoria University — the Throwing Muses played at the Orientation, which was clever because their album at the time was called University.

So it’s 30 years since I first saw Throwing Muses. It’s been a year for a lot of these sorts of coincidences, anniversaries, and memories — I now work at Victoria University, have for a while, but this year I’ve been back up on the main campus where I studied. More than that, this year I’ve been back studying, as well as working.

I’ve completed an MA in Creative Writing. Well, fingers crossed. I’ve handed it in…

So, yeah, this was going to be a post about the Muses coming again, and about the 30th Anniversary of University (not that they’re here to play that, they have a fabulous new album).

And let this fantastic video assist you in the decision to head along and see them, as they’ll be playing from across the catalogue:

And so this is still very much a post about the fact that you should see the Muses, but I realised that earlier in the year I sent out a newsletter about seeing Kristin Hersh:

That contains some of my connection to University and the Muses, but was basically a plug in general for Hersh as solo act, as songwriter, as performer. All of that is of course connected to the Muses, a band she’s fronted for 40 years; many of the Muses best songs sneak into her solo sets, just as they sneak into her head, via dreams. She wakes up and captures them, just enough so as to record and then lets them live and be reborn on stages around the world.

So I’m using the same sort of title — and hoping it might inspire you to head along and see a show in Auckland or Wellington.

I still have this poster, framed and on the wall, from when I saw the Muses a second time — around about 2009 I’d guess. A fabulous “comeback” show. Since then, there have been many, and a bunch of great new albums, and Hersh remains busy also with 50 Foot Wave, and her solo albums and shows too.

Here’s footage from 1995 that I found recently — brought back a lot of memories of that first show for me, back in my first year of uni. I was up the front, and hanging on to the fence that stopped us from getting on stage. I was in awe of every song, of every lyric, and the mesmerising way Hersh was caught in her own sway.

Earlier that week, New Zealand’s great poet, Sam Hunt, had finished his Orientation show by telling the crowd to go and see Throwing Muses. He said they wrote the best lyrics, and that was reason to see them. I had met Sam a year or two earlier when he signed my book at one of his readings. So I bowled up after his show to inquire further about this band. He said it would be one to see and one to remember.

I love all of the Muses albums, but particularly those 90s ones — Real Ramona (1991) and Red Heaven (1992), and University (1995), and Limbo (1996), arriving as if two sets of twins, or two sets of siblings born so close together as to both share a secret language, a whispered lexicon that pertains only to these two album pairs.

They’re the albums I reach for — for and because of the nostalgia. Earlier in the week I was listening to University, and thinking about how that album just feels like a soundtrack to a time, but it also moves forward with me. I know every inch of that record. I anticipate each song in the tiny spaces of silence between tracks. I love the fade out and then back in of the final track. It feels like the most incredible coda to a record. Like the album itself is taking a bow at the end of its performance, aware that a curtain call is necessary after that complete run of some of the best songs you might ever hear.

Also, of how I was in this very short-lived band called Pop-Tart. We did a few originals but we had some cool cover versions up our sleeve. We did this great rendition of Manic Monday. It neither sounded like The Bangles nor Prince. Anyway, we also played Snakeface by Throwing Muses. Just because it’s so fucking good. I both sincerely hope we did it justice, and am pleased there is nothing even close to resembling old footage of that band to disprove my hope of competence there:

I love the energy of the Muses in concert, and the integrity and heart and muscle of the songs on the records. They are built for performance, and built to last. And the idea that I might see any of the ones I first heard 30 years ago performed once again is a huge enticement. But also the songs from recent albums — particularly this year’s new album — would be reason enough to go see this wonderful songwriter, and singer. Leading her wonderful band: