Reviewed on Sunday April 24
The hippies and the new-agers are right: the eyes are the window to the soul. Or at least, they’re the window to something. As Kristin Hersh bellowed out song after song, moving around the mic like a snake warbling before its strike, her eyes seemed to be the true source of her music, providing the weight behind each and every punch.
Not that it was a flawless gig – not by quite a margin. Despite the fact she was ostensibly on tour to promote her new novel, Don’t Suck, Don’t Die – a poetic non-fiction account centred on the life and sad passing of her friend Vic Chesnutt – Hersh peppered the set with readings from all of her books. Though her memoir Rat Girl is very good – it’s an extraordinarily tender account of a breakdown, full of heart and hurt – the extracts chosen were hard to follow, and the audience seemed more worried about whether or not they should clap at the end of each reading than the crises Hersh encounters in the book.
That said, the gig gained momentum when Hersh stuck to singing. Time has gotten to her voice in a way that proved tremendously beautiful – like wood warped by water, it bent off into strange new directions, and each line trembled with a power that silenced even those rude enough to chat away through the book readings.
It was 20 minutes too long, and sometimes it was boring, and sometimes it lost sight of itself. But through such imperfection, the real Hersh emerged. As she pointed out, her music is about “dead rabbits and blow jobs” rather than more commercial subjects, and her attitude is real – as rusted and dangerous as a split tin can. Anything polished would have seemed dishonest, and dishonesty is none of Hersh’s business. Anyway, when it all came down to it, the set lived in her eyes – flashing, searching, looking for absolution but coming to rest on the next best thing. Us.
