Throwing Muses
House Tornado

THE REVIEW

The Throwing Muses formed at college in 1983, when the two blondes Kristin Hersh and Katya Donnelly, amidst constant squabbles, shared their sharp guitars and voices. On bass another woman, on drums oops... a man! David Narcizo. Three years later, they would have the honor of being the first American band to sign with the English label 4AD, known for its music-depressive preferences....

 In reality, the Vibrant Muses have little in common with that genre, perhaps due to the frequent hallucinations caused by the mental illness (bipolarity) suffered by Hersh... "House Tornado" is their second work released in 1988, and it confirms their penchant for a sort of psychedelic ballad characterized by the  jingle jangle of guitars blending with rather complex rhythmic patterns, based on time signatures rarely frequented by other musicians in the scene.

 Fans of the genre beware: they will have to contend with an unpredictable style, with skewed and jittery cadences that make the tension of each track quite palpable. A sort of folk-wave that evokes the complexity-simplicity of Violent Femmes and the Byrds, with the addition of the voices of the Hersh/Donnelly duo that drive the listener into a trance towards a labyrinth of unsettling psychedelia ("Run Letter"), twisted jangle ("Juno"), skewed electric ballads à la Patti Smith ("Saving Grace"), distorted potential hits ("The River"), country-folk gallops with steel teeth ("Drive").

  The two project leaders won't stay together for much longer, a few more great albums ("The Real Ramona") and then Donnelly will fly off towards the Breeders and then Belly.

 Girls with uncommon intelligence and worthy of respect, because their style expands the boundaries and expressive limits in which we constrain the definition of the word rock.