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Review: '50 FOOT WAVE'
'Black Wave'   

-  Label: 'Fire Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '15th April 2022'

Our Rating:
With this album, Kristin Hersh resumes her on-off side project with fellow Throwing Muses’ member Bernard Georges on bass and drummer Rob Ahlers. It is the first new ’50 Foot Wave’ album for six years. Their releases may be irregular but at least they are consistent in their brand of ragged glory.

As a 7-track release, including the two minute instrumental interlude with the title track, it is barely a full-length album but still packs in a fair degree of intensity. The title refers to the neighbourhood in New Orleans where the record was written.

The discordant grunge is not designed as easy listening. Hersh’s raspy vocals are buried deep in the mix so deciphering her impressionistic lyrics presents a significant challenge. No matter. It’s her no bullshit attitude that counts.

The album begins with the fuzzy, droning riffs of Staring Into The Sun . In this and throughout, there is a looming Gothic atmosphere born of uneasy reflections and surreal dreams where beds are lined with thorns (Blush) and blood seeps through hotel ceilings (Double Barrel).

You also hear the darkness in the slow burn of Hog Child and glean it from the statement that “Only the desperate care” on Fly Down South.

The horror is real, albeit tinged with gallows humour. In Broken Sugar, Hersh sings You'd scare the living shit out of a porcelain doll.

Hersh is now into her fifth decade of music making but shows no sign of mellowing. ‘Black Wave’ is a welcome addition to her idiosyncratic and endlessly fascinating catalogue.

Kristin Hersh’s website
  author: Martin Raybould

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50 FOOT WAVE - Black Wave