The inimitable Kristin Hersh is a musician's musician, a songwriter's songwriter, and an innovator's innovator.  

The Queen of Grunge's first band, Throwing Muses, began recording and playing out when they were just 14 years old and they're still going - 2020's critically acclaimed Sun Racket was hailed as "a perfect record”. 

Hersh's refusal to participate in a corporate industry saw her leave a Warner Brothers recording contract at the top of her success in order to become listener-supported. 

"Music is humanist and so are we." as she puts it. 

Wildly prolific, she has released more than 20 albums solo, with Throwing Muses and with her noise rock band, 50 Foot Wave. 

She's also a celebrated author: Rolling Stone named her first book Rat Girl (Penquin) one of the ten best rock memoirs of all time. NPR said of her second book, Don't Suck, Don't Die, ““Not only one of the best books of the year, but one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written” 

While her third book, the game-changing Seeing Sideways, pushes the envelope of creative non-fiction while telling the story of raising her four sons on a tour bus. 

Kristin Hersh’s new album Clear Pond Road set for release on 8th September via Fire Records (Southbound Distribution NZ), is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming strings and mellotron.  

Clear Pond Road continues the juxtaposition of dark and light –dark sunshine, as Hersh puts it– that characterizes Hersh’s legendary work with Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave but goes even further inward as it explores the intimacy and complexity that sits alongside Hersh’s fierce independence. 

Watch first single video; “Dandelion” 

Kristin Hersh - Dandelion (Official Visualiser) 

“Few artists understand the intensity of living one’s art like Hersh” The Guardian 

"Kristin Hersh is a musical genius" - Huffington Post 

"A fearless rock innovator" - New York Times 

Set for release on 8th September, Kristin Hersh announces new album Clear Pond Road with the release of new single ‘Dandelion’ out 30th May and an extensive UK and Australia tour set for this Autumn. 

Clear Pond Road continues the juxtaposition of dark and light –dark sunshine, as Hersh puts it– that characterizes Hersh’s legendary work with Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave but goes even further inward as it explores the intimacy and complexity that sits alongside Hersh’s fierce independence. 

“Passion sounds less angry here, more grateful, I think.” Hersh reflects. “Sweeter, sadder, and somehow no less alive.” 

Hersh wrote and performed Clear Pond Road at Stable Sound Studio. She incorporates strings and ambient field recordings on the record to lushly cinematic effect, with the close-up intimacy and sensory nature of each track culminating in a record that resembles a sonic memoir. 

“Some records demand to be made,” says Hersh. “And you know this is the case when the songs function as systems in a body. I octavized an acoustic baritone as the skeleton, cellos are the lungs, a Nashville-strung Collings and glockenspiel were the fingertips feeling around in this weird-ass dark space, and drums are always your heart, of course… but the vocals are a strange narrator here. A narrator lost in the story, of all things, more like eyes.” 

“Her songs have always been both confessional and formally challenging; they expose her, but also evade us, throwing down clues and scurrying into dark thickets before revealing more.” NPR 

A cinematic road trip; Clear Pond Road is a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, plush with layers of atonal, edgy-dreamy strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking, an elegant piece of personal reportage: a home movie caught in time. 

‘Clear Pond Road’ is out 8th September.