Throwing Muses Moonlight Concessions LP (Cream Vinyl)

Moonlight Concessions goes back to basics, a return for Throwing Muses to their esoteric off-kilter best courtesy of Kristin Hersh's pin-sharp sketches and their suitably abrasive musical arrangements. The album follows their acclaimed Sun Racket from 2020, a heady set filled with tough and tender tales spiked with surreal imagery.

Produced by Kristin Hersh at Steve Rizzo's Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Moonlight Concessions is a collection of snippets from everyday life writ large — think Raymond Carver Short Cuts, overheard conversations, recounted happenings and telling one-liners, all sewed together to illustrate the times as they slowly mature, fully peppered with original Muses' vim and vigour.

"Drugstore Drastic" is a kerbside soliloquy caught en route to a more alluring rendezvous. Built on a brisk acoustic strum with a guitar sub-melody underpinning proceedings, it's an unfolding tale of social awareness from a blurred sub-conscious. "Summer of Love" began as a bet with a guy for a dollar that revolved around the idea that the seasons don't change us. The album opener, it's a haunting baroque overture, bowed and brooding. "Libretto"'s strings offset the acoustic ambience, the hot and cold of longing at the very heart of it, a thematic driver filed with warmth in a safe haven lubricated by tequila.

Written in the differing South Coast environs of The Gulf of Mexico and Southern California, Moonlight Concessions pulls from the star clusters that light both, generating optimism and hope in varying degrees. Hersh explains, "In New Orleans the stars look greenish-blue, as it's below sea level and swamp-lit. But on Moonlight Beach, they glow icy white. All these songs were written in these two glowy places, which helped our sonic technique find itself."