ART ROCK
Chris Roberts samples the new releases on the prog/rock boundary.
Chris Roberts
It’s 34 years since Throwing Muses’ debut revealed a band whose music took startling switchbacks and twists, and the current trio, together since ’92, just keep getting bolder. Sun Racket (Fire), their first for seven years, merely tries to (in Kristin Hersh’s words) “commingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies”: in short, heavy and delicate. Few groups could pull off this high-wire act while still presenting songs of emotional intensity and psychological acuity. Water’s a recurring theme. Bridges too. Something’s said about today’s traumatised world among these devilish, oddly euphoric currents as Hersh and allies, with fierce fragility, keep on redefining “alternative”.