Kristin Hersh: Paradoxical Undressing

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 26 March 2008

As a teenager, I used to write to Ivo, the founder of 4AD Records. I would tell him how beautiful the music of the Cocteau Twins was (as though he didn’t already know), how innovative Colourbox’s soundscapes sounded (ditto) and how “tasteful” I thought 23 envelope’s sleeve designs were (I cringe now at the thought of this, though I suppose all I really meant was that they were to my taste). His replies were always kind and enthusiastic. He congratulated me on spotting a subtly different mix of a track on a compilation album, sent a 7″ promo for the then other-worldly Voix Bulgares album and, in summer 1986, told me to look forward to the forthcoming release by 4AD’s first ever American signing, Throwing Muses.

The band’s untitled debut album was released in August of that year, a month before I left home for good at the age of eighteen. I played it incessantly. Throwing Muses became the soundtrack to my college years and have been one of the bands whose music I’ve played constantly ever since, to a greater or lesser degree. Though I might not always have found Kristin Hersh’s solo material to be quite as compelling, I’ve continued to buy everything that she has ever released. I like the way that she thinks and operates: she’s a gentle revolutionary. It’s ten years since she started selling demo and live MP3 versions of her songs via the web, under the Works In Progress banner. Ten years… think about that.

Paradoxical Undressing was billed as a mixture of spoken word and song, with Kristin reading extracts from her forthcoming memoirs. The title refers to the phenomenon of extreme hypothermia victims removing their clothing as their body begins to shut down and their sense of temperature becomes confused; it alludes to the contradictory aspect of Hersh’s impulse to express her most personal and private emotions, despite her shyness.

The show’s format was neatly symmetrical: six readings each followed by a song in the first half, same again in the second. She was spotlit during the readings and then the lights faded during the songs, a useful device allowing the audience to concentrate on the music.
Hersh accompanied her readings with some contemplative, sparse and pleasantly repetitive guitar motifs. They put me in mind of Ry Cooder’s superb soundtrack for Paris, Texas, or maybe John Darnielle’s more fragile moments. They were marvellously complementary to the texts and never obscured the words. And God, what words. Quite apart from the content, her fluid and laconic delivery was a joy. It was also frequently laugh-out-loud funny; Hersh is an undisputed and somewhat unexpected mistress of perfect comic timing. If you only know her via her frequently impressionistic lyrics, this could catch you by surprise, though if you’ve read her blog you’ll be aware of her warm, wry humour.

Her storytelling powers made each passage utterly vivid, combining a keen observational eye, a sense of momentum, awareness of the need for a story arc and the scattering of memorable details like jewels across velvet. There were too many quotable lines to remember more than a handful. She recounted performance advice given to her by the actress Betty Hutton, before subverting the passage by acknowledging mournfully that “… what I do can be considered neither showbusiness nor entertainment”. She was similarly subversive of the idealistic passion that fuelled the conversations she joined with her teenage friends, noting that with a smile that “… self-righteousness can keep you warm all night”.

She was strongest on her emerging creativity and the relationship between this and the bipolar disorder with which she was eventually diagnosed after a failed suicide attempt. Although she has spoken about this in various interviews over the years, this is the first time I’ve heard her describe this period of her life in such detail. It comes across as something that was initially an intoxicating whirl, gradually progressing into an all-consuming blizzard that nearly destroyed her. She talks about the recurring visions of the snake, the wolf and the bees that she experienced and suddenly songs like And A She-Wolf After The War (written, or at least captured, in hospital as she was recovering from cutting her wrists) spring into sharp relief.

Hersh’s approach to creativity has long fascinated me. She insists that she doesn’t “create” or “write” the songs, that they exist outside of her – or at least somewhere deep within her – and she is merely setting them free. This might sound rather precious and even a little pretentious, until you hear her describe the visceral means by which these songs demand to be articulated, and the consequences for her mental and physical health if she tries to contain them and refuses to let them out. It’s “creativity” in its rawest form, more akin to the hot, wet and bloody process of childbirth than the refined piecework of an artist in her ivory tower. It sounds both exhilarating and terrifying.

As a teenager she spent her savings on studio time, trying to exhaust her supply of material. The songs simply kept coming, at a pace that only sped up and eventually nearly defeated her. If this intense subject matter sounds at odds with the humour that I described earlier, in the context of the performance it is anything but. She describes these weighty issues with a lightness of touch that marks her as a writer and raconteuse of considerable ability. Even the section covering her suicide attempt seeks no pity, describing her teenage self with a restrained compassion. It was intensely moving, without being either sentimental or harrowing. It did not jar with the earlier passages.

I’ll remember much of this show for a very long time. The way she contrasts her husky, low spoken voice with the “seagull noises” that she made when she first started singing. The description of the energy and heat constantly pouring out of her, even more so when performing and only ever cooled by swimming. The fact that one of her former apartments was nicknamed the Doghouse, thus explaining the name of the In A Doghouse compilation CD covering the band’s early demos and first album. Her car: the “worst car in the world”, known as the Silver Bullet, which in an ironic turn of fate was eventually put out of service by a recurring vision of a (were?)wolf that kept appearing in front of her on the road.

The conclusion of the occasionally stark but never bleak Paradoxical Undressing was summed up in its final section by the words of her Ethiopian friend: whatever happens, you take the shit and make something good out of it. This ethos is the key to the whole show. For all its intense and sometimes shocking subject matter, Paradoxical Undressing is essentially a sinuous, tangential feelgood story. On a more personal level, the show has helped me to connect with Hersh’s solo material in a fairly major way. Although its chronology doesn’t even reach the band’s second album, I feel I can also make more sense of some of the later Throwing Muses material, whose densely textured sound has frequently baffled me.

Did Ivo realise back in the mid-’80s that Kristin Hersh had this potential for longevity? Probably. He was, after all, heard to compare Throwing Muses to the invigorating strangeness of vintage Talking Heads, which was quite the compliment considering their relatively unknown status. For all her shyness and the contrasting maelstrom of many of her songs’ lyrics, I’m sure Hersh’s articulate, cool intelligence was every much as evident twenty years ago as it is today. Her memoirs will inevitably become compulsory reading for anyone interested either in music or the creative spirit as a whole. In “undressing” so comprehensively over the years, Kristin Hersh has revealed a body of work that will continue to enthral for a very long time.

The wonderful picture above is by Joseph Lee, used with kind permission. More of his shots of the evening can be found here.

Set list

Part 1: Napoleon Baldock’s house; Fish; Betty Hutton and Father Maguire; Hook In Her Head; hippy commune and soldiers in the woods; Cuckoo; winter touring & swimming; Slippershell; the Doghouse and creativity; Delicate Cutters; the hallucinatory snake; Cathedral Heat

Part 2: rats in the recording studio; Cottonmouth (excerpt); housemates and the car crash; Your Dirty Answer; wolves, bees and a suicide attempt; Poor Wayfaring Stranger; hospital; Buzz; Boston, Ivo & pregnancy, 37 Hours; elephant shit shoes; Cartoons

Further reading & viewing:

• Youtube: Slippershell @ QEH
• Youtube: Cathedral Heat @ QEH
• Manic Pop Thrills: The Snake, The Wolf and The Bees
• Throwingmusic message board: QEH thread
• Guardian: review of QEH show