Following her own muse

Kristin Hersh returns with a vital new solo album as her writing career wins her new fans.

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

She laughs uproariously when she's reminded, and then Kristin Hersh sighs. It's about one impressive statistic of her career: Hersh has released some 25 albums since the 1986 debut of her Rhode Island high school band Throwing Muses, formed when she was still a teenager wondering whether she should study medicine or sign a record contract.

That's counting her latest solo release, Clear Pond Road. She's also written half a dozen books, mostly intimate memoirs which have increasingly offered their own weird music since her acclaimed first, Rat Girl in 2010. The book helped win her a new generation of fans.

"In America, I have a lot of little Rat Girl fans," she tells the Listener on Zoom from New York. "They carry the book in their backpacks, and they all look alike. They all stand in the front row. So, there's a lot of seeing the band because you missed it the first time."