mp3: Winter

website: http://www.throwingmusic.com 

So there’s a new Kristin Hersh album due out at the start of 2007 (end of January/start of February). I’m looking forward to it, as it’s been 3 and a half years since I last got a proper Kristin solo album, and I’m looking forward to the subsequent touring even more. I haven’t seen Kristin play solo since the spring of 2001, and that’s a long time in the world of an artist who is almost perpetually touring. But the only European shows outside those with her band 50 Foot Wave have been in London, and that’s just not been the most accessible place for me in recent times. Plus a day spent there and you come home with the inner lining of your nose all black.

Now I have been fortunate enough to hear a couple of tracks from the new album, called Learn to Sing Like a Star, as at the beginning of the month she did a session with the (very cool) radio station KEXP in Seattle. It sounds very good too, and very different–even though I was expecting something different, it really is a turn I couldn’t have predicted. But that’s Kristin for you. Nothing ever sounds the same.

It would be unfair to post an actual album track at this point based on a radio show recording, but I have included one of the acoustic tracks she played live on the show that day. And it’s nice to hear her strumming away so hard as she does in this track because it reminds me of many of the live gigs I’ve seen her play over the years.