Kristin Hersh

With a gift for raw-nerved, impressionistic lyrics and a history of bipolar disorder, Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh had been considered indie rock's answer to Sylvia Plath long before her first solo album, 1994's Hips and Makers, sealed the deal. Produced by Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group) and recorded in two weeks, Makers, both razor-sharp and maddeningly obtuse, is still Hersh's finest solo record, a hushed (especially in comparison to the often clamorous Muses), largely acoustic offering populated with the sort of darkly incisive love songs that are Hersh's stock-in-trade. "Your Ghost," a gorgeous and eerie duet with Michael Stipe that qualifies as Hersh's one modest hit, anchors an album's worth of guitar and piano ballads. Though the songs' sparse arrangements served them well, Hersh released Strings soon after, an EP of outtakes and retakes that refashioned some of Makers' starkest tracks into chamber music pieces, with a jaunty cover of Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" (!) thrown in.

Hersh spent the next few years shuttling between the on-again, off-again Muses and a series of solo records, most of which varied little from Makers' bare-bones template of guitar, piano, and cello. Strange Angels, like almost all of Hersh's solo work, is alternately dreamy and harrowing, a typically stripped-down and echoey folk record that in its worst moments tends toward Tori Amos-like spaceyness and in its best ("Like You," "Cold Water Coming") recalls Makers' strongest tracks.

Hersh plugged in for 1999's Sky Motel, using drums, electric guitars, and keyboards to create a buzzing, Muses like rock album that hits ("Fog," "White Trash Moon") more often than it misses. Hersh played almost all the instruments on the char-acteristically strange Sunny Border Blue, a dark, am-bient folk album that boasts all the tangled wordplay fans have reasonably come to expect, with trum-pets and a cover of Cat Stevens' "Trouble." With its emphasis on acoustic guitars and pianos, 2003's The Grotto, released the same day as the Muses' self-titled reunion disc, is more reminiscent of Hersh's Makers-era solo recordings than anything else in her catalogue. It's affecting and lovely, and unlike some of Hersh's other solo albums, it's not just for completists. (ALLISON STEWART)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide