Rocking Rat Girl memoir

KRISTIN Hersh knew she’d made it in the music business the night she found herself wearing her contact lenses on stage.

“When you are playing rock’n’roll in tiny clubs nobody notices if you are half blind up there,” she laughs. “After I had a hit with an acoustic album, I realised I had to be able to see what I was doing. Sometimes there were a thousand people at a show. Without my lenses I might fall off a stool or bang into a microphone. And believe me, that makes a really loud noise.”

Hersh is reminiscing about the mid-1990s and her top 10 record Hips and Makers. The record was an angsty, bone bare affair that hinted at what Norah Jones or Alanis Morrissette might sound like if they’d up been up all night crying themselves to sleep. Hersh enjoyed the success, but not to the point where she was willing to abandon her first love, noisy alternative rock. Two decades later, she continues to keep a foot in both genres. She is currently assembling a new solo project in the minimalist style of Hips and Makers whilst also finishing a plugged-in LP from her band Throwing Muses.