I had a seizure one night, when I was a teenager, on the front step of Store 24 on Thayer Street in Providence. I was talking to my friend Mark and drinking a Coke, watching cars drive by, and then I was looking up at Mark’s face in the glaring fluorescent light and Thayer Street was sideways. “What happened?” he asked me. I didn’t say anything, ’cause I didn’t know exactly and ’cause I was busy feeling the sticky fluid on my face and in my hair. I hoped that I’d cracked my head on the cement step and that the sticky fluid was nice, dramatic blood, but my Coke can was empty and Mark wasn’t looking at me as if I was covered in blood, so I figured I’d not only embarrassed myself by having a seizure in public but also poured an entire can of soda on my own face. Swell.

“Lazy Eye” thinks this is a pertinent moment. It then goes on to describe ways in which our brains spend time in other places and the embarrassing frustrations that can cause us. Another eye in another place, out of this world, can set off our balance and poke little holes in the beautiful masks we wear in public. We make these masks out of psychological glitter and glue, ’cause we think we can fool people, or maybe we got our feelings hurt one too many times, and a thoughtfully constructed persona starts to seem important. They’ll think I’m so cool! But friends, lovers and well-wishers whose hearts are not made of stone always seem to be around when our weirdnesses shine through the eye holes like so much bright light.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support my work by becoming a subscriber is here.

Swollen is Marilyn Munster; the last “normal” Throwing Muses song. This is, of course, just a demo, but you can tell she wears trim blouses and pumps, smiles politely and probably only eats animals that don’t have two heads. It appears, though, that when Swollen left the building, she left the door open. Her sweet shuffle and actual chorus (of all things) was followed immediately by songs made of fractured instrumentals, unattached bridges and free-floating verses who tap dance for a minute then run away, only to reappear in a different outfit, a different song, later on in the program.

It is not un-beautiful to be in pieces, as long as those pieces are fully realized, so I’m happy to let these strangenesses be as they are. But after living in this fractured world lately, hearing Swollen again was like a gentle lady sitting down next to me on a park bench, Frisbees whipping by. I like Throwing Muses Frisbees, but the gentle ladies are comforting, especially after taking a bunch of Frisbees to the face.

I want to thank you Strange Angels again for allowing both the ladies and the Frisbees a chance to come to fruition in the studio. The NPR-ish model we emulate is a valuable one. Sure, forty bucks is a lot to pay for a coffee mug, but if you want no corporate involvement in your radio, then you pay the forty bucks and take or leave the mug. I’m thrilled to be sending you the new CD that we made together, I love it when you visit me in the studio or take me up on my offer of free admission to shows, but I find that, for the most part, you all are interested only in having the music continue. I will always write new songs, but without the ability to fund recording sessions, you probably wouldn’t hear them. Thank you for wanting to hear them.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support my work by becoming a subscriber is here.

A New York song, “Freesia” took elements from a walk back to our apartment in 1990 and a middle-of-the-night phone call with a friend this year. One image bright and hot and bendy; the other cold, haunting and rigid. Our New York was one of old movies, picturesque garbage strikes and trains. My friend’s 2010 New York is spooky and unkind. It didn’t matter that we were broke back then, New York lifted us up from underneath, but my friend is starving, pushed down by a city that doesn’t seem to care.

If you carry flowers down the street, you can’t smell the garbage; it’s just something you walk past. But wherewithal is hard to come by. It’s an elusive strength, like luck, and it doesn’t always bend down to kiss you on a cold night. After all, that’s what cold nights are for: cold. You can rise up to meet that spirit in your own way, by freezing your goddamn ass off. Then you’ll know what it’s like inside the next cold person you see. Maybe on a bright, bendy day when your luck has improved and you have a few spare flowers.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support my work by becoming a subscriber is here.

Our big, fat tour bus was sitting in highway traffic somewhere in the South. The kind of traffic jam where people get so bored and hot that they spill out of the cars to share cigarettes, conversation and thermoses full of Kool-Aid. We spilled out of our bus and parked ourselves on a guard rail to talk about endings. “We live in our future, so do we have a future?” etc.

You never know. A death doesn’t often announce itself, especially not the death of a band. When the Muses died, it was after a series of small moments: symptoms of impending doom, a closing door. Music didn’t care if nobody showed up at an in-store, but we did. Music didn’t notice a half-full club or a pathetic record company meeting, but we did. Music didn’t bother to show up for interviews anyway, so when there were no longer any interviews, music didn’t care. But we did. Like many people, entities, movements and energies, we had to go away before we were done. The music kept playing even after we’d stopped playing it.

Nothing’s ever perfect anyway; it never was and it never will be. How many eggs did you put in that basket? Well, who’s fault is that?

This song used to make me teary ’cause at one time, I had all my eggs in the Muses’ basket. Today, it makes me happy because I know the Muses will make it their own.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support my work by becoming a subscriber is here.

More than one night up all night with a song and I sorta lose patience. ‘Cause the kids still get up every morning and the pancakes aren’t gonna make themselves and blinking sandpaper eyelids is distracting, to say the least. Then the song loses patience with me , thinking I’m never gonna get it right, and starts playing louder and repeating mean “pertinent” lyrics and burrowing melodic lines into my brain. Well…that’s when I start thinking maybe I should be a mailman.

After a week of this, I started thinking maybe I should be an ax murderer and that’s when Milan started to really speak its piece. Not only did it keep me up for a week straight in the swampy heat of a New Orleans summer, it’s actually about keeping me up for a week straight in the swampy heat of a New Orleans summer. What the hell? I was in a sorry state and needed to be, I guess.

Milan itself comes off very civilized, of course; it only makes me look bad, which, after all, is what it set out to do: mess up my hair and smear my mascara and make me lose my temper while it just ambles along, sounding like a goddamn pop song — the bastard.

Milan and I didn’t get a long very well until I figured this out, but I did figure it out: this is not an overwrought song, it just has an overwrought singer. So I finished it, slamming my notebook shut and shoving my guitar back on its stand. Then I said a polite goodnight to Milan (who very kindly shut the hell up for once), went to bed and slept of all things. The next morning, I realized I had another Throwing Muses song on my hands (“Good! Let Bernie and Dave handle it!”), so I recorded this demo version along with a fistful of other new Muses songs.

Still don’t know what made Milan think it could get away with behavior like that, but, as it says: “All’s fair in New Orleans,” which seems to be altogether too true.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support my work by becoming a subscriber is here.

The band I started when I was fourteen, Throwing Muses, never broke up. We never suffered “creative differences,” we didn’t get complacent and sucky; we’ve always adored each other and were driven to play good music together. But touring and recording both cost money and don’t always make enough to pay the bills, so eventually, we could no longer afford to work. Happily or sadly, we were at the top of our game when we made the decision to stop.

Songs don’t care how much studio time you can afford, though; they just keep singing themselves at you. And I know a Muses song when I hear it: intricate and dynamic, they’re easy to spot. When one came to me, I would learn it and then put it away. The Muses songs I’ve collected over the years had nowhere to go, so they just sat–on demos, in notebooks, in my head. There are dozens of them. Sometimes, I’d play them solo, but I knew better…they needed to be in the Muses’ hands. I just didn’t believe that was an option.

Now with the help of CASH and my Strange Angels, it looks like the Muses may work again. We’re certainly willing — breathless with anticipation, actually — and the songs are just as vital as I remember them. If this band that never belonged in the music industry could finally make music without the industry, it’d be a real coup. Bernie and Dave are hearing these songs for the first time here, when they’re posted and will be working out their parts long distance, Bernie in Seattle and Dave in Rhode Island. I’m in New Orleans, of course, so we definitely have some details to iron out, but for now, we’re just thrilled to be thrilled again. There’s nothing we love more than working.

This song, “Sunray Venus,” is the first in a series of demos that the band will be hearing, playing along with, tearing apart, etc. We can’t wait to throw it up in the air and let it come crashing back down again, falling into place as the dust settles. We love that.

Even at fourteen, we knew that striving for success in music was inherently tragic, as success in the music industry was, for the most part, ugly and devoid of substance. We still wanted to play for people, though, so we did. Our shows were crazy, magic parties where the listeners played as big a role as the musicians. Music happens between people. We never forgot that.

So here we are again, amazed by the power of listeners, making music happen between us. Thank you.

Love,

Kristin

P.S. — As usual, please share this music — keeping in mind that theses ARE only demos. Repost these songs, use ‘em in podcasts or torrent them. Help us tell the story of what’s happening here. This is going to be a more comprehensive project and we need all the help we can get to spread the word. Strange Angel subscriptions will help ensure that the Muses project is brought to fruition.

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Now that my new record, “Crooked,” is recorded, mixed and mastered, we’re re-launching my CASH page, compiling the two series of songs I’ve released via CASHMusic.org, along with lyrics, essays, artwork and stems. If you’re a Strange Angel subscriber, check your subscriber page for more, including details on the release plans for “Crooked” — and check back from time to time, because a few surprises will be showing up in the next couple of weeks, along with some pretty exciting news coming soon. Until then, here’s the first track from the new record fresh from mastering: “Mississippi Kite.”

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

“Bliss” happened a couple years ago, in Portland Oregon. It’s one of those songs that tells the future. I mean, it told the future, but I still didn’t see the future coming; I hardly ever do. One of the pitfalls of being more concerned about a guitar part or a production technique than what a song is attempting to spell out in big, fat English: “you will walk willingly into a trap.” Something we all do from time to time, so I coulda sworn it was talking about the past or maybe even the present, or, best of all: somebody else. Big, fat English’ll only get you so far.

Warm and cool and hot and cold and you’re shaking, trapped, but golly, it seemed like such a good idea at the time! It happens to everybody. Whole groups of people sometimes, but usually just two. So at least you can turn to the guy next to you and shrug helplessly, “I guess we did it again…”

In the studio, I told Rizzo that I wanted to sound like a sweet, sixties rhythm section: hardly any melody, just keeping time. That I’d play a full kit, then knock off one drum at a time until I had the bare minimum that the song needed, which turned out to be kick and shaker. And maybe an adorable, little tambourine. The guitar had to be percussive yet gentle and the bass needed to sound acoustic: just sweet, to frown sympathetically and pat your arm if this unfortunate fortune rings true for you, too.

Love,

Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

Having heard “Flooding” every night on the last tour (I kept opening with it, inexplicably, ’cause I didn’t know it yet), Billy wanted to hear it again, but he wanted to hear it the way it was bouncing around inside his head. I did too, ’cause I’d only heard the version that bounced around inside my head.

So I gave Billy the wheel and he steered “Flooding” in an impressionistic, watery direction. It swims, doesn’t even try to walk. Swiminess is effective when emotional timing is called for, but to play a song with no discernible meter is hard, to make it sound okay, even harder. Piano?? Seriously?? But I trust music that bounces inside heads, so I let the man with the plan boss me around until “Flooding” became a sad water creature.

And it is sad, I should warn you. The heaviness of the vocals was not put on, it’s real. But such a beautiful treatment; I’m honored to have played a part in its painting.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.

To see or not to see? I don’t know anybody who wants to see everything all the time. A whole lot of crap out there is unsettling, so we shut our eyes and turn off lights and peer through opaque “Glass”, hoping our brains make up something better than what’s really out there. If a nearby personality begins to disintegrate and show us its component parts, we hope it grows quiet and wanders away–soon!–before things get uncomfortable.

In the dark, though, we find ourselves in the dark. There’s gotta be more than this, we think, turning on the light, and soon find ourselves looking out the window and asking questions until we come across some piece of information, visual or otherwise, that’ll help us make it through another day.

Should glass people be clear or cloudy? I don’t know. Warily, I let them sleep on the couch in the sunshine and sooner or later, flies are waking up, another spring is here, and it’s time to open the windows again.

Love,
Kristin

Find this song and all my recent work, in multiple formats – including lossless, free for download on my CASH Music pages. Information on how you can support the creation and distribution of this music by becoming a subscriber is here.