Newport’s legendary alt rockers Throwing Muses will release their first new album in seven years. ‘Sun Racket’ will drop May 22nd on Fire Records.
The follow up to 2013’s ‘Purgatory/Paradise,’ ‘Sun Racket’ is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Kristin Hersh’s well-thumbed notebook of storylines. A ten-song opus of suitably wrought tales set against a wall of sound that’s at once calm and ethereal before building into glorious cacophonous crescendos.
When Throwing Muses wrote their last album, they were shattered. Pieces were coming and going, elements repeating and charging the whole. “It sounded beautiful jumping around like that,” said front woman Kristin Hersh. Two-minute songs reappearing as twisted instrumentals or another song’s bridge. They mimicked the effect live which kept them on their toes. Whatever was happening was already over in other words.
‘Sun Racket’ is the opposite. It refused to do anything but sit still. It says, “sit here and deal”. “All it asked of us was to comingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies: one heavy noise, the other delicate music box. Turns out we didn’t have to do much,” Hersh continued. “Sun Racket knew what it was doing and pushed us aside, which is always best. After thirty years of playing together, we trust each other implicitly but we trust the music more.”
And so, they continue. Business unusual.
Throwing Muses consists of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. Kristin Hersh founded Throwing Muses in 1980 when she was a student at Rogers High School in Newport.
Tracklist:
1 Dark Blue
2 Bywater
3 Maria Laguna
4 Bo Diddley Bridge
5 Milk At Mcdonald’s
6 Upstairs Dan
7 St Charles
8 Frosting
9 Kay Catherine
10 Sue’s