Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Arts & Entertainment

Movie Review
"Eyes Wide Shut"
With its pro-monogamy moralizing, Kubrick's supposedly steamy last film is ultimately anti-erotic -- nothing more than an art-house version of an army training film.
By Charles Taylor
[07/16/99]

Music Review
Sharps & flats
Pastoral pop group Belle and Sebastian finally re-release their out of print debut "Tigermilk," which once sold for $1,200. The excellent disc is worth the long wait, if not the inflated auction price.
By Douglas Wolk
[07/15/99]

Column
From "Tootsie" to "Eyes Wide Shut"
Sydney Pollack directed Dustin Hoffman romping around in a skirt. Now he's co-starring as the orgy master who guides Tom Cruise through the debaucherous center of Stanley Kubrick's final film.
By Michael Sragow
[07/15/99]

Column
To Paris Las Vegas, with love
A few tips on keepin' it real for the folks who are bringing the City of Light to America.
By Sarah Vowell
[07/14/99]

Music Review
Sharps & flats
On "Goodbye, So What," New York trio Cake Like play power pop with sweet and sour kiss-offs.
By Robbie Woliver
[07/14/99]

Complete archives for Arts & Entertainment

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Apparently, though, Hersh missed electricity. "Sky Motel," Hersh's best work since the Muses "The Real Ramona," is also her most technically complex, aglow with feedback cascades, pulsing drum loops and sampled nature sounds that suggest a vast, empty night. Though she hasn't sacrificed her jagged bi-polar fury and devastating melancholy to synthesized slickness, she's polished the hysterical edges of her music. On albums like the Muses' "University" and Hersh's solo, acoustic "Hips and Makers," she alternated between a wail and whimper, but she almost always sounded emotionally shattered -- songs like "University's" "Bright Yellow Gun" were pure catharsis, the kind of music easiest to relate to in the midst of your own nervous breakdowns.

Kristin Hersh "Sky Motel" 4AD

"Sky Motel," to quote Luscious Jackson, is a nervous breakthrough. Here, Hersh sometimes sounds like she's barely restraining herself from letting go, lending tension and drama where once there was only release. Other times, her voice is wry and resigned, the knowing croon of someone who's fallen apart so many times that she's knows she can put herself together again.

"A Cleaner Light," is a uniquely optimistic song, full of shiny, propulsive guitars and a slippery, funky Kim Deal-style bass. Sure, the verses are full of ennui and despair, like the line "Keep away from the freaks on the fringe/They only talk to you 'cause you give them a good excuse to cry." But in the chorus, so upbeat and melodic it's almost anthemic, Hersh seems convinced that everything is going to turn out fine, singing "But in a cleaner light it's OK." She seems newly wise here, full of comforting empathy. "A Cleaner Light" is reminiscent of other songs that seem to wrap their arms around you and pick you up off the floor, songs as diverse as Massive Attack's soothing "Protection" and early '70s soul band The Five Stairsteps bittersweetly triumphant "O-o-h Child," with it's promise that things are gonna get easier.

Hersh played all the guitars on the record and mixed them together afterwards. While on some songs the music is nearly as spare and twangy as it was on "Strange Angels," more often it's hazy and luminescent, thickened by subtle layers of loops and effects, as on the heartbreaking "Caffeine," the dirge-like "Faith," and the haunting, hypnotic "White Trash Moon."

She has said that, unlike in the past, the songs of "Sky Motel" didn't come on her in feverish moments of inspirations. She had to purposefully write them, work on them, shape them. The difference is evident in the music -- instead of an explosive gush of naked nerves or a desiccated, raw whisper, "Sky Motel" is a dazzling, precisely crafted work of introspection, tightly coiled energy and unexpected hope.
salon.com | July 16, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon