Listening to the Muses

Kristin Hersh talks about the angels and demons that informed her career

Kristin Hersh moved her teenaged band, Throwing Muses, to Boston in the mid-1980s not to pursue glitzy urban notoriety, but because they recognized the homegrown solidarity of the city’s music scene.

The Muses and their fellow bands (think Dinosaur Jr. and the Pixies) all wanted to be there, and were all supposed to sound like themselves — not like the money-making fantasies of a corporate business model. Soon, however, Throwing Muses signed with British label 4AD, and were abruptly removed from their enclave.

“We didn’t want the world; we wanted Boston,” Hersh says on the phone from Rhode Island, laughing warmly. “We toured non-stop, signed with Warner Bros. soon after. We were introduced to the ickiness of the American recording industry, where you’re asked to suck, to sound like other people and dumb it down, to dress like a bimbo — to do anything you can to make it easier for them to convince preteens to listen to you.”

Asking Hersh to fall in line with a homogenized standard is like asking Jackson Pollack to paint a Bob Ross landscape. Her oblique songwriting style, which has produced one of the most unique bodies of work of the last 20 years, is the result of “auditory hallucinations.” Songs come to her, transmissions from some unseen source, and she copies them down.

“The day that songs started happening was a scary day,” she says. “I call this my music, and yet it tends to come from somewhere else. They’re my gods and my devils, and it turns out I need them.”

Hersh has regained creative autonomy as an independent musician, releasing solo material and work by her other band, 50 Foot Wave, online via the non-profit organization CASH Music.

She’s come full-circle back to a grassroots, community-based system.

“Though I used to consider myself a scientist working in my lab, I had been altering the results to please the sponsors. Now I do my experiment as honestly as I can and because the results are true, they’re appreciated. That’s all I’ve ever asked for.”

Throwing Muses
Tomorrow, 9 p.m.
Music Hall of Williamsburg
66 N. Sixth St., Brooklyn
$20, 718-486-5400
www.bowerypresents.com