“midnight concessions” (Fire Records)
By Eleni P. Austin
If you came of age during the MTV era (when the “M” actually stood for “Music”), as a fan of Punk and New Wave, maybe you remember suffering through tedious videos from an assortment of execrable bands like Loverboy, Winger, Animotion and Starship. Waiting in vain for a Police video or an old Clash or Jam clip.
For better or worse, the music channel began segregating genres into different blocks of programming. There was Headbanger’s Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, and my personal favorite, 120 Minutes. Throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I watched it religiously every Sunday night. If I wasn’t home, you could bet the VCR was set to record.
Where else could I see and hear music that resonated so completely for me. Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave and later the Madchester movement and Grunge were represented for two glorious hours. It featured acts like the Sugarcubes, Jane’s Addiction, XTC, Paul Weller, Blake Babies, R.E.M., Judybats, along with my beloved Elvis Costello, the Lemonheads, Kate Bush, Too Much Joy, Lloyd Cole, Sinead O’Conner, Bob Mould, Downy Mildew, Robyn Hitchcock, The Church, Concrete Blonde, Mary’s Danish, The La’s, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins and The Replacements. (I could go on and on, how much time do you have?) Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” debuted on the show, igniting the Grunge era. 120 Minutes is where I discovered Throwing Muses.
Throwing Muses formed in Providence, Rhode Island and featured 15 year-old step-sisters Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donnelly. The pair had been friends since childhood (even before their parents married), playing guitar and learning Beatles songs together, before they began writing their own songs. As a teen, Kristen was hit by a car while riding her bike and suffered a double concussion. She began experiencing auditory hallucinations and synesthesia which influenced her songwriting. The original line-up included Elaine Adamedes on drums and Becca Blumen on bass. A couple years in, bassist Leslie Langston and drummer David Narcizo began anchoring the low end. Early influences included Syd Barrett, X, The Pretenders, Joy Division, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Au Pairs, as well as Post-Punk, Country and Folk music. While Kristen’s approach to songwriting seemed wild and mercurial, Tanya possessed Pure Pop instincts. Somehow, their disparate styles coalesced.
The four-piece released a self-titled EP via their own Blowing Fuses label in 1984. Not long after, they relocated to Boston. A demo tape, (later known as “The Doghouse Cassette”) made the rounds, and one track, “Sinkhole,” became a hit on college radio. That song won the band a lot of local press and pretty soon they were being courted by 4AD Records president Ivo Watts-Russell. They wound up signing with 4AD in the U.K, and Sire Records in the U.S. Their eponymous long-player arrived in 1986.
Following a couple EPs, their sophomore effort, House Tornado was released in 1988. Their third record, 1989’s Hunkpapa contained the single “Dizzy,” which climbed to #8 on Billboard’s Modern Rock charts. A year later, Leslie Langston left the band, and they recruited bassist Fred Abong. Tanya briefly took a busman’s holiday to join Pixies bassist Kim Deal for her Breeders side project. Their Pod EP was released in 1990.
She was back on board for the Muses’ fourth record, The Real Ramona. It was the band’s most sure-footed effort to date, spawning singles like “Counting Backwards” and “Not Too Soon,” and peaking at #26 on the U.K. charts. Once that tour had been completed, Tanya left Throwing Muses, taking Fred Abong with her and formed her own band, Belly.
Kristen and David soldiered on, enlisting bassist Bernard Georges and continuing as a trio. They released the heavier sounding Red Heaven in 1992, and recorded University. But it’s release was delayed when Kristen launched a solo career in 1994 with her Hips And Makers album. University finally appeared in 1995. A seventh album, Limbo, came out the following year and Throwing Muses disbanded not long after.
Although Kristen continued recording solo albums, she reconnected with David and Bernard and even Tanya provided backing vocals for their eponymous eighth LP, which arrived in 2003. A decade later, Purgatory/Paradise was released, and in 2020, Sun Racket appeared. Somehow, she also found time to write two critically acclaimed books, her memoir, Rat Boy and Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chestnutt, which chronicled her friendship with the late, great musician. Now the band has returned with their 11th long-player, Moonlight Concessions.
The record slips into gear with the opening track, “Summer Of Love.” Barbed baritone rhythm guitar sidles around serpentine bass and shaky percussion, As the arrangement expands, prickly electric riffs are folded into the mix. The lyrics offer up a series of non sequiturs that stitch together like a crazy quilt. But the hooky chorus: “Finally life, finally life as it should have been, finally life as it should be, I owe you a buck,” is simply irresistible. Razor-sharp guitars quiver and quake through the break anchored by lowing cello notes.
Although this album was recorded last year, a couple of tracks, “South Coast” and “Albatross,” add a layer poignance following the 14 wildfires that cut a swath through Los Angeles at the start of 2025. The former is powered by clinky-clanky percussion, shivery bass, fluttery guitar chords and oscillating cello. Lyrics like “This is the south coast, hot winds are gonna blow, I can’t see your house and I’m not going home/Don’t, don’t have a rescue up my sleeve, this is not your rhythm, not your melody either, it’s so lonely here,” seem to speak directly to the conflagration and its heartbreaking aftermath. Knotty guitars pair with downcast cello on the break, underscoring the resilience and sorrow. On the latter, moodily elegant guitars wrap around melismatic cello, subterranean bass and a tabla-flavored percussive attack. Spiny lyrics unintentionally name-check fiery points of origin: “Two hours later, in an Uber coma, I’ve heard it all but what I wanna hear, Santa Monica to Silverlake asking ‘are we here? Why are we here?’” The song truly soars as cello and guitar enact a sanguine pas de deux and Kristen declares “that bird shoulda been able to fly or survive, I’m just trying to keep us alive.”
Even during their Punkier days, Throwing Muses songs have always been tinged with a measure of wistfulness and melancholy. The best tracks here continue that tradition. On the haunting “Theremini, bare bones guitar, bass and drums wash over vivid cello notes that share some musical DNA with Gabriel Faure’s classical composition, “Pavane,” Kristen’s waifish rasp envelopes cryptic lyrics like “Question: what happened? answer: everything, happily out of gas, your lips in a smile at last.”
Meanwhile, “Libretto” is probably the record’s most inviting number. Chugging guitars and slithery bass brush up against a hulking beat as flinty cello latices the arrangement. Lyrics like “And then you land, you land so hard you crack the weather and we land, we land so hard we crash together, and you laugh, you laugh so hard that we laugh together, and we laugh, we laugh so hard,” seem speak to navigating life’s hardships and hopefully overcoming them.
Chance encounters and overheard conversations were the inspirations for “Sally’s Beauty” and “Drugstore Drastic.” On “Sally…” shuddery Mellotron-y fills collide with swoony strings, stuttery guitar, angular bass and a cymbal splash. Crossing paths with a homeless person, lyrics paint a vivid portrait: “He lives on Sally’s Beauty, all wall-eyed glee and a bag of salvation fit for a king, you color like a rage, rare and darling.”
“Drugstore…” is built around a twitchy guitar figure, sinewy bass and a sly shuffle rhythm. Lyrics toggle between a vaguely hallucinogenic exchange: “Meet me under the cool tree, NOLA nobility, and you her superhero in drugstore plastic, and you her future hero, drugstore drastic,” with a more chemically enhanced discussion: “’don’t think you should drive, but you’re walking ok, whoa, are you high too? hmmmmm, no, I don’t think so, no, I don’t think so, no/Anybody else in here that I could talk to, anybody else in there that you know? It’s just that you’re weirdly moving in slow-mo.’”
The album’s final two tracks wind things down gently. “You’re Clouds” matches spiraling guitar and gossamer cello to thrumming bass lines and a kinetic pulse. A bit of a jagged waltz, Kristen’s slightly aggro vocals warble atop stream-of-conscious lyrics like “A yellow flash, your lotus life, I cry, you laugh, both seem right, bordering on boredom, a rotary dial eternity.”
Finally, the title track unfurls. As slow and thick as molasses. The dissonant drone of down-tuned guitar, spidery bass, sawing cello and skeletal percussion, perfectly frames a conversation already in progress: I took a bullet for you, smiling, you know what? I wanted to, crying don’t serve us, I know a place for the restless, for the raving, I know a place.”
Kristen co-produced Moonlight Concessions with Steve Rizzo. The three-piece were joined by Pete Harvey on cello. There’s something compelling and hypnotic about this record. It pulls you in and holds you close. The final line of the title track has Kristen asking “where you walking, can I join you? And the answer is yes, yes, you can.
