I have nothing to offer but confusion," sings Throwing Muses' Kristin Hersh on "Bright Yellow Gun," the blistering opening track of University. It's a lie, of course. While Hersh may seem at the mercy of a manic imagination, on the Muses' latest record she delivers a pointed, powerful vision as she probes the thickets of love, identity and place.

Beneath Hersh's sweet, sad vocals, the record is...

Throwing muses have been around as long as R.E.M. and have outlasted the Replacements. But this Rhode Island-based trio of avant-pop pioneers still remains one of underground rock's least-exploited veteran bands. The group broke ground in the early '80s with singer Kristin Hersh's crystalline vocals and chilling lyrics and the music's dark, disturbed sweetness. Yet the Muses proved too sublime to...

As Throwing Muses has developed, so have the band's imperatives. On the Muses' first album, Kristin Hersh and Tayna Donelly, the group's two singer-songwriters, were barely post-adolescent girls trying to command the hormonal swirl of their lives: "Fuck you, stand up!" they bark in a militant moment. On Hunkpapa, from 1989, the Muses realized that feminism can embrace women's "weaknesses," as well...