See all in Music Features

A different Empire

Music Features

Songs of catharsis

We drift toward an inevitable topic: gaudy, superficial pop. You know the kind — it comes teetering in on nosebleed-high heels, autotuned and makeup-shellacked to within an inch of its 15-minute life. Kristin laughs her hearty, mischievous laugh, and calls its practitioners “bimbo paste.”
 
It’s not simply that she hates the fundamental dishonesty of bad music — the valuation of style over substance, and sugar-coated junk food over nourishment — there’s also the fact that every musician who plays that game makes it that much harder for everyone else. After more than 20 years in the music business and plenty of painful, protracted music-biz unpleasantness under her belt (after all, she practically grew up in the alt-rock spotlight’s scuzzy glare), she’s all too aware of the pitfalls. But she knows, too, that there’s a place for honest music that hasn’t been dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator.
 
“Any intelligent person is going to not want to be continually sold to. And to reach those people you need to look for different outlets. They’re never going to be listening to the radio. They’re probably not going to be surfing the bins in music stores either — unless they have a great indie store in their town that hasn’t been killed by the chains. Corporatization is making it so that those people are barely reachable. I hate to say it, but thank god for the Internet, or we wouldn’t find each other. We wouldn’t have that community.”

Hersh has helped build that community of fans over the past 10 years, and kept herself accessible to the extent that she’s willing to — by blogging, participating in readings, and answering fan queries at the band’s website, ThrowingMusic. com. And with her new US deal with Yep Roc in place, she seems to have reached her own comfortable level of success, and — dare I say it? — a pop career on her own terms.

• Share:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•