Moonlight Concessions/Clear Vinyl

Description

Moonlight Concessions is a return to form, a return of Throwing Muses to their finest off-kilter esotericism, thanks to Kristin’s sharpened sketches and their abrasive musical arrangements. The album follows 2020’s acclaimed “Sun Racket,” a heady set filled with hard and tender stories, spiced with surreal imagery. Produced by Kristin Hersh at Steve Rizzo’s Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, ‘Moonlight Concessions’ is a collection of everyday life snippets – think Raymond Carver’s Short Cuts, overheard conversations and stories told, all stitched together to illustrate the times as they slowly ripen, entirely spiced with the vivacity and vigour of the original Muses. “Drugstore Drastic” is built on a fast acoustic rhythm with a guitar sub-melody, it’s a story unfolding on the social consciousness of a hazy subconscious. “Summer Of Love” started with a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that seasons don’t change us. The album’s opening is baroque and haunting. The strings of “Libretto” counterbalance the acoustic mood, the hot and cold of nostalgia at the very heart of the album, a thematic engine filled with warmth in a tequila-lubricated haven. Written in the varied environments of the Gulf Coast of Mexico and Southern California, “Moonlight Concessions” draws on the star clusters that illuminate both, generating optimism and hope to varying degrees. Hersh explains: “In New Orleans, the stars are blue-green because the city is below sea level and illuminated by the swamps. But on Moonlight Beach, they glow an icy white. All these songs were written in these two bright places, which helped our sound technique find itself.”