Throwing Muses

Formed in Newport, Long Island, USA, by Kristin Hersh (b. c.1966, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; vocals/guitar), Tanya Donelly (b. 14 August 1966, Newport, Rhode Island, USA; vocals/guitar), Elaine Adamedes (bass) and David Narcizo (drums), Throwing Muses added an entirely new perspective to the pop model of the late '80s. The band was formed by step-sisters (who had previously been best friends) Hersh and Donelly, though Hersh was the primary influence: ‘The band was totally my idea. We were 14, and I was a pain in the ass about it, Tanya didn't even want to play anything for a year’. The duo picked up the services of Narcizo in their junior year in high school after he invited them to play a set at his parents' house. Previously he had only played marching drums, while the cymbal-less set-up of his kit was the result of borrowing from a friend who had mislaid them, rather than any great conceptual plan. The band's first bass player, Adamedes, departed while Donelly was still playing a Casio placed on an ironing board. Dreadlocked vegetarian Leslie Langston arrived in Adamedes' stead and the band relocated to Boston, Massachusetts. Seemingly unaware of conventional constraints, the quartet went on to peddle an off-kilter brand of guitar noise which accentuated the female self-expression implicit rather than explicit in their songs. Yet contrary to becoming too awkward for their own commercial good, the band were picked up by Britain's 4AD Records and thrust into the European limelight alongside local contemporaries the Pixies. Over the next five years and five albums, the media made much of singer Hersh's psychological disorders, drawing parallels between her state of mind and the music's unsettling idiosyncrasies. Langston departed to be replaced by bassist Fred Abong for THE REAL RAMONA, and more problems were to manifest themselves by the end of the decade as Throwing Muses became embroiled in a series of legal disputes with their manager (Ken Goes), the Musician's Union and over personal aspects of individual band members' lives. During the recording of THE REAL RAMONA, guitarist Tanya Donelly—who had also moonlighted in the Breeders—announced her permanent departure from the Muses, although she stayed on for the subsequent tour before forming Belly. The amicable split had come about because, instead of wishing to contribute her usual one or two songs to the new album, Donelly had written seven, and there was no room to accommodate these in the final selection. This left the Throwing Muses' picture in a decidedly muddled state by the close of 1991. By the following year the core of the group comprised the trio of Hersh, Narcizo and Bernard Georges (bass). This line-up recorded the critically acclaimed RED HEAVEN, but the group all but broke up the following year. Hersh attempted to retreat to Newport to concentrate on her family, but the ‘muse’ would not leave her, and the band regrouped in 1994 following her well-received solo album, HIPS AND MAKERS. 1995's UNIVERSITY served to remind doubters of what had made Throwing Muses so unique in the first place—a wilfully adventurous approach to song writing, though this time there were also more songs of potential commercial import.