THE PRESS RELEASE: “Sun Racket is the brand new album from legendary Boston trio Throwing Muses, consisting of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. The followup to 2013’s Purgatory/Paradise is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Hersh’s well-thumbed notebook of storylines. A 10-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.
“Throwing Muses return and sing songs aquatic; toasting the dark blue of the water, the bywater viewed from Bo Diddley bridge? The bridge collapsing, the water waiting — who is saving us? Sun Racket has always been geographical. It started as a New Englander in California. A West Coast sound at New England scale then it travelled to the East Coast and the elements got more aggressive with deeper roots.
“When they made last album Purgatory/Paradise a few years ago, they were shattered. Pieces were coming and going, elements repeating and charging the whole. “It sounded beautiful jumping around like that.” 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 commingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies: one heavy noise, the other delicate music box. Turns out we didn’t have to do much. 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.” – Kristin Hersh
“Hersh’s songwriting is like a poison pen letter revealing terrible secrets that get into your psyche. “I don’t regret a single drop of alcohol,” Milk At McDonald’s admits. This is tell-all phone-in radio, these are everyday stories, the puzzles of life. “The devil has no soul,” closing cut, the mysterious Sue’s explains. And so, they continue. Business unusual.
