The Future Of Songwriting
★★★★
Kristin Hersh
MELVILLE HOUSE FUTURES SERIES. £8.99
Throwing Muses frontwoman and solo artist unpicks that art vs. commerce debate.
“It took me a long time to extricate myself from corporate rock and forge a grassroots DIY path on my own,” Hersh writes in her treatise on songwriting – a creative process that she argues will become less about commodity and ownership, and more an exchange between listener and artist. She picks an unusual, at times frustrating method to explore this, via conversations with an unnamed alternative comedian, a bluff figure who acts more like a sounding board for her musings. But bear with… as always with Hersh, her labyrinthine trail has its own beautiful logic, one that emerges stealthily through this brief, mischievous, insightful book. To Hersh, songs are lifeforms and healing entities, a way of “bringing medicine to the person who needs it”. No wonder she felt so at odds with the ‘entertainment’ world, what she hilariously terms “the zombie apocalypse”. This book is as life-affirming as her music.