Kristin Hersh on stage at St Margaret’s Church, the home of the National Centre for Early Music in York. Picture: Paul Rhodes
IT was a night of contrasts under a warm and still October sky. Outside, York city centre seemed intent on consuming itself. Inside the wonderful, sacred space of the National Centre for Early Music, a full house sat rapt, listening to Kristin Hersh perform her extraordinary songs.
Hersh has always occupied a musical world of her own. Drawing mostly on her two most recent albums, 2023’s Clear Pond Road and the newly released Sugar on Blackstone, alongside older solo and Throwing Muses material, she showed why she doesn’t need a band, even if you could imagine some songs gaining still greater power with a fuller sound.
This reviewer first saw Hersh in the late Noughties, heavily made up and seemingly gripped by stage fright. The contrast couldn’t have been greater. Playing solo, she has the wiry, lean frame of a runner, and she was relaxed, comfortable and wonderfully engaging.
Living a colourful life has always been an asset for Hersh. Her life becomes her songs. From her children catching fireflies in jars with Amish children to stepping on cockroaches, Hersh has a very distinctive way of turning experience into something unique.
Kristin Hersh acknowledging the crowd’s response at the NCEM. Picture: Paul Rhodes
Her stories between songs were funny, sometimes surreal, and added enormously to the evening. The rapport between audience and performer never felt forced.
With only an acoustic and electric guitar, Hersh coaxed a remarkable variety of sounds from her instruments so the tunes were never samey. Strumming, thrumming, buzzing and delicate fingerpicking sat alongside moments of lovely, spaghetti Western sparseness. Her distinctive voice could be fragile one moment, fierce and unsettling the next.
There were plenty of highlights, with Samson (from Sugar On Blackstone) the standout. The songs moved between quiet beauty and unpredictability, with the older material offering a reminder of Hersh’s longevity.
For all the power a full band might bring, there was something special about hearing these songs stripped back to their essentials, creating memories that will last far longer than a night on the tiles.
Review by Paul Rhodes