University

THROWING MUSES: “University” (4AD)

THERE WAS just no way 1994 was going to be a bad year for Pop, not after Kristin Hersh got her nimble fingers on it. Hips And Makers came out exactly one year ago, immediately hitting a bullseye of brilliance that every act of note then had to try to aim for – most missed, but their valiant if vain attempts to match Kristin’s Jocky Wilson-esque sharpshooting gave us a vintage twelve months, jammed with sparkle and soul.

University will, undoubtedly, do the same for 1995. It has no shortage of either. It isn’t quite as explicitly intimate as Hips, but then that was the whole point behind the solo LP – to get out a bunch of songs that were too close to her to let the band mess with. There are no straightforward exorcisms á lá ‘The Letter’ here: University is more elliptical, even, initially, baffling.

Kristin’s worldview isn’t easily translatable, as all the Muses’ albums have taught us, but for the first eight or so listens it’s nothing if not intriguingly unique: then, when you’ve dived in, fully absorbed and assimilated the vocal inflections and lyrical twists and found the swollen, thumping heart of the thing, there’s no way out.

Favourites come and go with moods, but at the moment, ‘Flood’, for her son Ryder, leads the charge. “Fly, you get high, right?...You’re my bright light/Oh God, I’m high,”she gasps, and it’s a sort of ‘Ode To My Family’, only listenable. Similarly rapturous is ‘Crabtown’, a quiet poem about a hazy, ecstatic week away with her loved one, when they “scattered days like spray champagne.” There is a sense of urgency palpable throughout. “Oh,we can’t hardly stand/ Oh, we can’t hardly wait around,” she sings, halfway between a croon and a splutter; a woman is in love, and it’s beautiful.

‘Surf Cowboy’, meanwhile, is just plain odd. A sexy, funny Pixies/Breeders pastiche, the lazy guitar and astonishingly come-to-bed vocal are like nothing this band has attempted before but hopefully will again, many times.

Malevolent moments are scarce – this isn’t nearly as furious an LP as Red Heaven – and when they do arrive, they’re not desperately enticing – ‘No Way In Hell’, for example, is dramatic and defiant but, it must be said, a little dull by Kristin’s exacting standards. (‘Bright Yellow Gun’, though, is pissed off, bored and bloody magnificent.)

No, University‘s high points are the sound of serenity, of a (formerly) thoroughly messed-up individual getting her life together at last, assisted by the love of a good bloke and the two kids we’ll hear all about when she comes to the Tivoli, while, thankfully, managing to hang on to her precious Muse and to be as deeply involving a writer, singer and guitar player as ever. Cherish this.

• Niall Crumlish