Throwing Muses performed at The Triple Door in Seattle on February 26, 2014 and at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco on February 28.
The sound amazing!
Seattle:
“Slippershell”
“Lazy Eye”:
San Francisco:
“Glass Cats”
“Sunray Venus”
“FREESIA”
“Static”
“Slippershell”
“Devil’s Roof”
“Bright Yellow Gun”
“Pearl”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
My favorite albums of the year, in no particular order:
1. Body/Head – Coming Apart
2. Bob Dylan, 50th Anniversary Collection 1963
3. Throwing Muses – Purgatory/ Paradise
4. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell – Old Yellow Moon
5. Bob Dylan – Another Self-Portrait
6. La Lux – It’s Alive
7. Savages – Silence Yourself
8. M.I.A. – Matangi
9. Arcade Fire – Reflektor
10. Joanna Gruesome – Weird Sister
11. Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest
12. Deerhunter – Monomania
13. Sky Ferreira – Night Time, My Time
14. Bill Callahan – Dream River
15. Neil Young – Live at the Cellar Door
16. Haim – Days Are Gone
17. Son Volt – Honky Tonk
18. Personal Records – Eleanor Friedberger
19. William Onyeabor – Who Is William Onyeabor?
Best Comp/Reissue/Box Set:
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica (Zappa Records)
Also of note, though it was released in 2012: Captain Beefheart, Bat Chain Puller
Favorite Music Film/Other Film
These are films I watched this year and really dug: The Butler, Beautiful Losers, Not Fade Away, The Last Mistress, Band of Outsiders
Favorite Music Book / Other Book
The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante
I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen – Sylvie Simmons
Just Kids – Patti Smith
I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell
Musical Highlights of 2013
Dylan’s Another Self Portrait; the rollout of Arcade Fire’s Reflektor; the unfolding of Kim Gordon’s solo career; a highlight not in a good way was Lou Reed’s death; the return of My Bloody Valentine and Neutral Milk Hotel; Jeff Tweedy solo tour; Sleater-Kinney on stage with Pearl Jam singing ‘Rockin’ in the Free World.’
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
A 6000 word interview with Throwing Muses’ frontwoman Kristin Hersh just went online at Uncut magazine coinciding with the release of the excellent new Throwing Muses’ album, Purgatory/Paradise.
The interview is by Michael Bonner, who writes “The View From Here” blog at Uncut.
Here’s a choice section:
Is there an inspiration behind the collection of songs on Purgatory/Paradise?
Ten years off, I suppose. The songs don’t give a shit about whether or not anybody is letting us work. We didn’t want to work in an ugly business any longer. It was never really the right thing to do, except it allowed us to make records. But eventually your morals can’t bear to hear ‘Dumb it down’ one more time. So you’re morally bound to either stop working or work in private if you can’t play the game, and we were not out to play the game any longer. So we did both. There were times when we couldn’t work at all and times when we worked a little bit, and this collection is a window into that more private world.
You say you’ve been working on these songs for three or four years.
That’s recording. The songs kept coming, and we always play together whenever we can. And that’s all there were but it always was, because we were such dorks we couldn’t really learn how to, I guess care. You’re supposed to want to be a rock star, you’re not supposed to filter down into the choices you make including selling a cartoon version of yourself and your friends and your product. I don’t see how that could not be transparent to everyone right now. I wouldn’t want to be caught doing that even if I could, and I couldn’t because I’m such a dork and so are my friends but eventually we were livid that that’s what was expected of us when all we were trying to do was… well, really what we’re trying to do is manifest heaven. I don’t know how else to put it! There aren’t any better ways. In private, we called Purgatory/Paradise Precious Pretentious! We don’t care anymore about caring. We care so fucking much, we’re tired of apologising for it. This is our Precious Pretentious world and it’s been private for the last decade because we haven’t wanted to engage in the music business and now the music business is dead and we’re dancing on its grave.
Read the entire interview at The View From Here
Listen to a track off the album:
Another track off the amazing new Throwing Muses album, Purgatory/Paradise.
To promote the new Throwing Muses album/book, Purgatory/Paradise, Kristin Hersh performed some of the new songs on acoustic guitar at Rough Trade in East London a week and a half ago.
I’ve been listening to the new album today, and it’s fantastic. I think longtime Throwing Muses fans will really like it, but I also think the current indie crowd will dig it too. And anyone else with an open mind.
Check out some of the live performances:
A narrative piece followed by a performance of “Wayfaring Stranger” at Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, North London.
Later this week the Throwing Muses return with a new album, Purgatory/Paradise, their first in ten years. The 32-track album comes with a 64-page book of essays and stories by Kirstin Hersh, plus photos and artwork by Muses’ drummer Dave Narcizo and Hersh.
“We’ve always lived in our own private world,” Muses leader Kirstin Hersh told The Independent, “and we might well have made this record and never released it, but we felt it was worthy of release.”
The group has spent the past decade “divorcing ourselves from the recording industry, which is collapsing. We wanted no further part in it,” Hersh said.
The new book/album is being published by HarperCollins’ The Friday Project Limited imprint.
For the entire story, head to The Independent.
Here’s are some old videos for your enjoyment.
Maybe you already know about this, but then again maybe you don’t. The song is “sleepwalking 1.” It’s a cool taste of the new Throwing Muses CD/book, Purgatory/Paradise due October 28.
For more, check out this old story in Pitchfork.
Here’s a list of the tracks:
Purgatory/Paradise:
01 smoky hands
02 morning birds 1
03 sleepwalking 2
04 sunray venus
05 cherry candy 1
06 film
07 opiates
08 cherry candy 2
09 freesia
10 curtains 1
11 triangle quanitico
12 morning birds 2
13 lazy eye
14 blurry 1
15 folding fire
16 slippershell
17 bluff
18 blurry 2
19 terra nova
20 walking talking
21 milan
22 curtains 2
23 folding fire 1
24 static
25 clark’s nutcracker
26 dripping trees
27 sleepwalking 1
28 smoky hands 2
29 speedbath
30 quick
31 dripping trees 2
32 glass cats