Lightning FayKristin Hersh Crooked September 4, 2010
Last month I reviewed Volume 1 by the Earthly Frames, an album distributed on USB drives loaded with extra content. Another recent release to take advantage of the flexibility afforded by digital media is Kristin Hersh's new solo record, Crooked. The album is actually made available in one of the most analog of all formats: the book. Crooked the book is a collection of 10 short essays, each one corresponding to a track on the album. The lyrics to each song are presented alongside the essays, as well as beautiful photographs of flowers by Lisa Fletcher. To hear the music, you follow instructions within the book that point you to a website where, using a password revealed in the essays, you access the audio files for the record. Like the Earthly Frames release, the listener is rewarded with a generous offering of bonus content (commentary, videos, recording stems that allow you to remix the songs, forums and more).
The idea to release an album as a book is so gloriously simple, I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner. Hersh takes all the anxiety out of the digital/analog debate. Many of us miss records. We miss holding something in our hands. We miss liner notes that you don't read off a screen. Yet we cannot deny the wonder of music online. The ability to share, the ease with which we bring entire libraries with us, the artist's ability to bypass corporations. Crooked brings us the best of both worlds. Something tactile and physical -- a book filled with beautiful images alongside the artist's own intimate thoughts -- and a record of songs that only exists in the ether. What an eloquent way of bringing the digital and analog worlds into alignment.
Crooked's songs don't resemble the photos in the book, in that Hersh seems considerably less delicate than the fragile petals. Neither does her music feel the need to be pretty all the time (though it very often is). But these songs do share with the still lifes an immediacy, a clarity, a closeness. "Mississippi Kite" starts off abruptly, almost as if you turned the dial on your radio (remember those?) and happened upon a song already in progress. There's no easing into this record. Once you hit play, you enter directly into the songs, and this closeness, this proximity, is maintained throughout the work.
Musically, Crooked is a fairly straightforward rock 'n' roll record, but fans of Hersh's music will recognize her own distinct style: her chunky rhythm guitar lines, her bright, spare leads and her warm, raspy vocals delivered close and scary. Hersh plays all the instruments on the record, which is remarkable in itself. (We know she's a gifted singer and guitarist, but a great drummer, too? Come on, Kristin, leave some for the rest of us.) And while Hersh is the primary writer in her two bands, Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave, the lack of collaboration on these songs makes a difference. Hersh isn't in dialogue with other musicians here; she's talking to herself, and her musical conversation has a natural, easygoing pace. Instruments come in and out of the mixes with little fanfare but to great effect. Hersh has been at this long enough to know that sometimes all you need is a shaker to make a song really take off.
There are many highlights on the album (the pulsing, driving light of "Sand," the beautiful dread of "Fortune," the terrible loss of "Flooding"), but Hersh was right to make "Crooked" its title track. In it, she builds a beautiful tension that releases briefly during the song's one chorus, only to build again. As this dark meditation draws to a close, the tension seems to become balanced. It doesn't break, but Hersh doesn't need it to. I think this is her version of peace.
Unlike the other essays in the book, which are lovely fragment-poems that give emotional context to the songs, the essay for "Crooked" is very direct, telling the story of Hersh's struggle with, and eventual relief from, bipolar disorder. A description of the moment when a friend saved the writer's life, this one page alone is worth the price of admission.
Another standout is the record's penultimate track, the haunting elegy "Flooding." It is a beautiful, sparse lament, the song that the living sing for their dead. (Vic Chesnutt, one of the album's dedicatees, was a close friend of Hersh's, and I wonder if perhaps this song was written for him.) "Flooding" is also a great example of Hersh's skill as a lyricist. She uses simple, plain words to compose tight little poems, full of dark colors and bare emotions. She opens this song with a clear and devastating assessment: "i can pinpoint the moment you closed your eyes/and said yes to the flooding"
Despite its sometimes-brutal nature, Crooked seems to me a work that is unable to resist beauty. There are no misconceptions of what beauty means, and sometimes it is surely as much about sadness as it is about joy. But the beauty of resolve, of friendship, of kin, of existence itself imbues this record with an uncommon patience and grace. Crooked is also the work of a mother, of one who knows that as much as we must take care of ourselves (and indeed we must), we must also take care of each other. In the essay for "Mississippi Kite," Hersh writes that "... cold as a demeanor, no matter what the cause, is limiting. ... On fire, underwater, wherever you are, your people are waiting for you to care. Their investment floats you back up to the surface."
Crooked comes to an end with the gentle throb of "Rubidoux," a song of contentment, of laughter and of peace. The warm electric guitar plays in a circle, over and over. Without hurry, rich and fulfilled. A minimal lead guitar briefly appears, then returns to silence this easy chant with a sonic pinprick, bringing the album to a close as abruptly as it began.
