Mojo - The Music Magazine

IN A MUSIC AND PUBLISHING industry first, Kristin Hersh's ninth solo album, Crooked, is being released as a book. This desirably hardback object - via Harper Collins' imprint The Friday Project - contains individual song essays, lyrics, photos and instructions for downloading the album, plus demos, outtakes, audio commentary and recording stems for fans to make their own remixes.

"At this point in my life, I couldn't bear to make a standard release: another disposable, plastic CD," Hersh declares, phoning MOJO from Providence, Rhode Island during the East Coast's latest heatwave, "but something that brings more attention to what is substantive in this medium. A blooming, tangible object, a new kind of media."

The founder of Throwing Muses and 50Ft Wave calls music, "my religion", and admits her faith has been tested over the years. Craving creative freedom, fighting bi-polar disorder as well as music industry practices, feeding a family (she and her husband/manager Billy have four sons) and some awful bad luck (in 2005, insurance only paid half the bill for a house flood, which virtually bankrupted them), Hersh has found funds for recording and touring increasingly hard to come by. But in 2008, she co-launched CASH Music (www.cashmusic.org), a non-profit organisation whose software allows musicians to promote/sell directly to their audience. For varying levels of subscription, from $30 a quarter for downloads, physical CDs, guest list tickets and exclusive online content to a one-off $5000 payment that gets you access to recording sessions and an Exec Producer credit on her records, Hersh is now financed by fans from 12 countries.

"It's the model I've been looking for all over. I was frustrated by the music industry before I was even in it! At least in America, where they ask you to dumb down, like asking a firefighter not to put out so many fires. Luckily, 4AD in the UK gave us a bit of control, but in America with Warners, Throwing Muses dissolved under the strain and boredom of it. I formed another band, 50Ft Wave, to not make the same mistake of being indebted to record companies. But then the industry began falling around our ears! Now CASH allows fans to pay my costs, which is all I ask. I can even afford to make a new Muses album, which costs a little more because we all live in different parts of the States. That's a dream come true for me because I didn't think it could ever happen again."

Even better, she's also finally winning the battle against her bipolar condition, after a friend suggested she tried acupuncture. "I didn't for a minute believe her because this is the devil you're talking about, but I haven't felt this clear-thinking since I was a child. It's changed everything for me."

Hersh is celebrating with a burst of activity. This weekend, she plays Latitude festival, reading from her forthcoming memoir Paradoxical Undressing on Sunday afternoon at 2pm before playing solo at 5 (she's also appearing with Giant Sand's Howe Gelb at the Barbican on July 22). It's her first visit to Latitude's mid-summer Suffolk idyll, which resembles an 18th century pleasure garden with modern-day portaloos. There's music, of course, but also theatre, film, poetry, a literary salon, cabaret, even opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the all-male version of Swan Lake, while at sundown, the Faraway Forest "will transform into a den of magical intrigue. Indulge your darkest desires and set free any inhibitions as you lose yourself in its darkest depths."

"I don't know about that. I don't want to be around other people losing their inhibitions!" Hersh guffaws. "I want the park of shame and inhibition! The rest sounds pretty fuckin' highbrow huh? But I like festivals. They're so low pressure. Nothing is your fault at festivals. Well, apart from one time when Throwing Muses played Glastonbury and I forgot all the words, but I swear we got better reviews than ever! At festivals, I get to see my fellow musicians - it's isolating to work in this business, moving from city to city and only playing your show."

Any camping tips?

"Make eggs and potatoes in the ashes of your fire overnight and eat them for breakfast. That's good for poor people too."

Martin Aston

Photograph by Billy O'Connell

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Five more must-see tips for Latitude

Belle & Sebastian
Hard to believe, but the Scots haven't played live since September 2006. It's ten years since their first tentative steps with the arts council-funded Tigermilk album debut so the end of the hiatus isn't only timely, it's a wonderful coup for Latitude. And they're recording again, so expect new songs too.

The xx
From 2009's early afternoon set on Latitude's Lake Stage to 2010's headline slot in the Word Arena, South London's back-to-black moodists continue on a roll that few predicted. What's more, they're perfect for soundtracking the onset of twilight. At Primavera in Barcelona, swathed in dry ice and minimal flashes of red, purple and white lighting, they were magnificent.

Black Mountain
The Canadians' myspace site has them down as "Psychedelic / Healing & Easy Listening" so their rousing mantras (tracks from their soon-come third album suggests a more '60s West Coast-kinda showdown) will have a dual purpose on Friday night; to freak you out and then coax you down.

Darwin Deez
New York's lanky Darwin Smith laces his elastic indie-disco with hilarious synchronised Green Goddess work-outs with the rest of his endearingly ramshackle band. And that's not even counting his ridiculous coiffure. Never has a singer worn so many curls since Shirley Temple. On Sunday night, the geek shall inherit the earth.

John Cooper Clarke
If you can't meet the energy levels required at Deez's Sunday night finale, the thin white duke of Salford verse headlines the poetry arena with his usual rapid-fire mirth. Failing that, embrace the "sexy Siamese striplets, nervy knife-throwers and psychotic ventriloquists," at Les Enfants Terribles' Masked Ball in the Faraway Forest. Go on, you know you want to.

MA