Kristin Hersh: Sunny Border Blue : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Kristin Hersh's fourth post-Throwing Muses album is an intensely personal affair, with the mercurial singer-songwriter writing, producing and handling instruments on twelve of its thirteen tracks. Like 1999's Sky Motel, Sunny Border Blue blends the spare acoustics of Hersh's early solo work with the flush orchestration of her Muses era. The result is a stormy soundtrack to one woman's inner life that swings from acoustic guitars to explosions of layered vocals, electric guitars and the occasional lonely horn or piano. As always with Hersh, the lyrical content is volatile - rich in loss, regret and transcendent fury. "Spain" escalates from a tranquil reverie into a series of hoarse, bitter love bombs ("I wanted you to sleep with her and hate yourself/Instead of me"). With their lilting melodies, "Silica" and "Ruby" would qualify as dreamy pop were it not for their overtones of "bad voodoo" and visions of sleeping with "idiots and prophets." Sunny Border Blue is a gutsy roller-coaster ride from an artist familiar with the thrill of emotional contretemps and musical collisions. (RS 865)

NEVA CHONIN