This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
A while back, Throwing Muses leader Kristin Hersh was apparently thrown over by her own muse — the songs she’s always claimed just pop into her head stopped coming.
So, for the first time, she sat down and made up tunes from scratch. Which kind of makes her new solo CD Sky Motel her first album in a way — and as such, it’s a damn fine debut. As you’d figure, it’s her most controlled effort yet, both in the songcraft (a dozen tracks of lean boho-rock and quirky folk-pop that fall between Patti Smith, Liz Phair and Julianna Hatfield) and in the performance (she plays nearly all the instruments). Sure, you might miss the tense unpredictability of her earlier work. But there’s no getting around the fact that Hersh’s best muse may turn out to be herself.
