After clocking two decades behind an electric guitar and howling at one club crowd after another, nobody would blame Kristin Hersh if she cut out touring altogether and switched full-time to an acoustic guitar and long spells in the studio. On last year's sorely underrecognized The Grotto, Hersh's intense solo act had never sounded better. But even as her solo work gets quieter, Hersh's rock side is louder than ever: Throwing Muses' 2003 reunion album, cut in just three weeks, knocked more cracks into plaster than any of their past albums.
This year, with almost no fanfare, Hersh started a brand-new punk band. Like the Muses, 50 Foot Wave is a rock trio, and it features Muses bassist Bernard Georges-- but it's a different band, with none of the baggage and a completely new business plan. 50 Foot Wave is Hersh's rapid response project, built for short albums and long tours, and she promises that the group will self-release new EPs every nine months and support them with a hard-to-believe 100 shows a year.
Their first disc is so recognizably Hersh's that it immediately sounds like the Muses: Truck-collision guitars and flayed screams scrape over a pounding rhythm section, and the lyrics that make it to the surface either sound pissed off or grotesque (sample truism: "Bones were made to be broken.") But if 50 Foot Wave resemble the Muses, they do so without the drama. Much of the Muses' loudest work blew open like the earth and heaved with mood swings, like the emotional see-saw "Pretty or Not". By contrast, 50 Foot Wave is a succession of angry blows that end too fast to hurt. Much as the bandname's promise of tsunami torrents fits the magnitude of Hersh's distortion, a sleeker metaphor might have suited them better-- something like a hyper-tuned sports car, that can take the corners of the band's multi-sectioned math-rock and run you down like so many pylons.
At this intensity, the six songs-- already broken into quick changes and hastily-dropped riffs-- can fly like an undifferentiated blur. These aren't songs you'll get attached to, and if the band doesn't push its parameters, you may not need more than one EP at a time. And, of course, Hersh can release that way if she chooses, like postcards from the road. You can credit a lot of the date's exuberance to that marketing plan: After years of fighting with record labels, struggling for money and releasing albums on someone else's schedule, Hersh has total control of the product. Younger bands play this hard because they're just psyched to record; mature bands sound this excited because they know they're getting the money.
