Throwing Muses are one of the foremost bands in the 1980s “college rock” scene, best known for their uniquely asymmetrical, jagged songwriting style and the darkly surreal lyrics of bandleader Kristin Hersh.

Throwing Muses effectively began when Hersh was still in high school. Starting at age 14, she and step-sister Tanya Donelly would gather like-minded groups of friends from high school (mostly girls) to play rock shows with them at small clubs in Providence, Rhode Island. Hersh would habitually call up club owners and suggest the Muses as an opening act for the concerts of bands she liked. And it worked: they opened for quite a few of the great rock bands of their time, like R.E.M., Violent Femmes and the Meat Puppets. The idea was that a band of girls would be much less likely to incite violence at gigs – so it didn’t matter how underage they were, they were welcome. The star power of the bands they played with, however, failed to rub off on the group: at their first gig, the club advertised them as “THROWING MUSES – WE PAY YOU $1”. They still struggled to fill seats.

Slowly, the band congealed into a regular lineup: Hersh, Donelly, a California-born bass player named Leslie Langston, and childhood friend (and former marching-band drummer) David Narcizo.

Then, at age 16, Hersh was struck by a speeding car while biking to a summer job. She was thrown into the air and landed on her face, only surviving because she went limp before impact. She suffered a double concussion.

One day, while she was laid up in the hospital, Hersh began to hear sounds – at first, waves of industrial noise and percussion, but after a while, they formed into odd, discordant songs. They were pleasant at first – little “floaty angels” as Hersh called them. The songs would always stay with her, playing inecessantly until she wrote them down. Then (and only then) were they fully “exorcised” from her head.

Hersh soon moved out of her parents' house in order to really focus on this music that had come to her. So it goes that she stumbled into a run-down place that a friend had christened “THE DOGHOUSE” with paint on the door. Hersh was convinced that this house was filled with a horrid, evil energy which permeated everything inside it. Her floaty angels turned into fierce, jagged things, songs that would “grab your face and shout at it.” Songs would play unexpectedly, overpowering everything around her until she wrote them and sent them out into the world. She eventually had a nervous breakdown due to the extreme mental stresses of this songwriting method. After being checked into psychiatric care, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder – a diagnosis that became further refined in later life as disassociative disorder.

The band, to their credit, took these unkempt songs and ran with them, breathing incredible, energetic life into Hersh’s wild sketches. They soon gained quite a bit of attention with their frenetic, angular music – especially once they moved to Boston and caught the ear of Fort Apache Studios' Gary Smith). Smith wooed them into letting him record their demo tape (titled The Doghouse Cassette), which he sent around to record labels. Quite a few of them came back interested, but the only one that actually attracted the band was London’s 4AD Records (thanks to their enigmatic leader, Ivo Watts-Russell).

Throwing Muses became the first American rock band signed to 4AD. Their first album, 1986’s Throwing Muses (a collection of Doghouse songs) heralded a change in direction for the label (then famous for their roster of moody, gothic-type bands like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins) towards underground rock music, soon set firmly into place with their acquisition of fellow Boston act Pixies (who were only signed because of Throwing Muses' influence). The album was given an international release by 4AD – yet was never printed in America until Rykodisc gave it a deluxe CD reissue in 1998 (as In a Doghouse).

This began a long, rather awful pattern for the band in years to come. For their second album, House Tornado, they paired with Warner Bros. (through their Sire offshoot) for American distribution. Warner immediately took full, tight grasp of their creative control, replacing the original 4AD album cover with a portrait of the band to aid their “strong promotional push” to mainstream acceptance of the Muses. This, predictably, did not get them very far.

By their third album, 1989’s Hunkpapa, the label’s unrelenting push for the band to produce a marketable (read: dumbed-down and polished) single to promote the Muses had fractured the band – Leslie Langston left in 1990, their manager sued the band and Hersh, aggravated by an absolutely terrible situation at home involving her son being taken from her and his father taking everything she had, spiralled into a painkiller addiction and developed PTSD.

Following the bleary recording of 1990’s The Real Ramona, Tanya Donelly left to focus on her newer projects: Belly and The Breeders. Hersh, thoroughly disillusioned, broke up the band completely.

For a while, Hersh recuperated: she settled down, married, had another kid, and throughout it all kept recording songs on a home four-track. David Narcizo, who remained as close as always, heard these demos and convinced Hersh to get the band back together – damn the suits and labels.

So, in 1992, the band (save for Tanya Donelly) released their fifth album, Red Heaven. The label, apparently, welcomed them back with open arms, as much of their comeback was recorded in the famed Power Station studios. Bassist Leslie Langston briefly re-joined for the recording of Heaven, but was soon replaced by Bernard Georges, who has remained with the band ever since.

Three years later, the band found their biggest success to date with the album University. Suddenly, alternative rock stations across the country had picked up on Throwing Muses and they had their first significant radio hit (“Bright Yellow Gun”). They were even written up by Rolling Stone at the absolute height of their cultural powers. And yet, sales still failed to materialize. Despite everything, Throwing Muses were unceremoniously dropped from the Sire artist roster that year.

4AD, however, still hung along. The label remained extremely faithful to the band – and with good reason. After all, Throwing Muses were the band that pointed them in the direction of the single most popular act they ever signed: the Pixies. So, the band released one further album with them before calling it a day due to lack of funds and outside interest.

The band moved their separate ways. Hersh quieted down, moved out to the desert and stopped seeing songs for a while. She still released the occasional solo album, but that wandering spirit had faded away.

One morning in New Mexico (during the Strange Angels tour), as Hersh’s husband was ordering coffee, she began to see music pouring out of the speakers in the cafe. She started weeping – she hadn’t seen music in years.
Her husband, worried, turns to a group of Native Americans burning herbs over a young boy’s guitar. He accosts them, asks, “Did you do this to my wife?”
They reply, “Oh, sorry, we’re blessing this man’s guitar. We must have missed and hit your wife in the back of the head.”

And just like that, she heard songs again.

The band got back together (complete with Tanya Donelly) for one more album in 2003 – again titled Throwing Muses, as if the band felt they had to re-introduce themselves to their audience. They were met with immediate critical acclaim, and the album is widely considered to be every bit the equal of their early work. However, financial strains ensured that the band’s reformation was short-lived.

Then, in 2010, the band did something that was, at that point, rather unique. Hersh went to the internet, explained their financial situation and sent fans towards a crowdfunding website she helped set up called CASH Music. The campaign was such a success that their crowdfunded album, Purgatory/Paradise, was packaged in a rather unorthodox fashion. It was a book (written by Hersh, designed by Dave Narcizo) filled with downloadable extras, including an album commentary and instrumental tracks. Hersh even placed the band’s entire back catalogue up on her website, free to listen to (with a monthly subscription fee if you want to download anything, among other fan club-type perks). The Muses, after 35 years as a working group, had fully embraced the new digital methods of music distribution with open arms and came out on the other end stronger than they’ve ever been.

According to Hersh’s website, the band is currently working on a new album.