Limbo

Limbo

Editorial Reviews
<"b0000009qk7580"> Amazon.com essential recording
The Throwing Muses might've sounded at their inception like a fidgety, angle-heavy postpunk dream (cofounders Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly were mere teenagers!); as a trio in 1996 they sound particularly fierce. With Donelly long gone from the band, the former quartet has an oddly fatter sound, maybe thanks to their major-label experience in big-sounding studios with big-minded production. But with Limbo, Hersh, bassist Bernard Georges, and drummer David Narcizo not only founded their own label, Throwing Music, they settled into existence as a rock band that sounds as if they're on the verge of a spastic explosion. Musically, the three make grandly tense music, with Hersh alternating windy sing-song vocals and a forking, brusque delivery that reaches near-shouting levels in swift bursts. The Muses haven't sounded as frontally propelled in some time, here dashing into the loud bash of a song's chorus and there sticking to more regularly timed tempos and rhythms. There's little musical indication here that the band was on the verge of breakup, and Hersh's solo career seems a continuation of any of several Muses threads followed on Limbo (or on The Real Ramona or Hunkpapa, for that matter). --Andrew Bartlett --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

<"b0000009qk3999"> From the Label
LIMBO's fearlessly clean production style lays bare Hersh's singular songwriting gift, exposing the song bodies she still describes as "big, live things that have more to do with themselves than with my brain." Like UNIVERSITY, LIMBO was recorded by the band and engineer Trina Shoemaker at Daniel Lanois' New Orleans studio, Kingsway. On LIMBO, intermittent blasts of buzzy lead guitar and grace notes by cellist Martin McCarrack add depth to the mix without burying it. Straight-ahead beats and... read more --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.