Hips & Makers

Probably my favourite album bought over the last ten years. Or at least, that's what I think after each time I listen to it. This album has long-lived listenability for its playing, its vocals and lyrics. You can get something different each time you hear it.also, this vinyl is a great pressing with clear sound, low distortion and surface noise. Expensive but worth every penny.

One of the ten albums I can never tire of. Every song on it means something to me, and I have probably bought and given a dozen copies away to others who now love it as I do.

Excellent- distinctive vocals-atmospheric.

Excellent music and singer

I can´t help adding my voice to the long list of praise that so many people have given this record. This was without doubt one of the finest recordings of the nineties and probably didn´t reach a wider audience only because of the vogue for male-dominated guitar bands at the time. I was never a fan of Hersh´s band Throwing Muses. It wasn´t that I didn´t like them, I just found them harmless and unremarkable. Then I remember her previewing tracks for this album on the radio one night. Alone she was suddenly a completely different prospect. Her songwriting was richer and she learned how to be spiteful and sing with malice, something that I´d never seen her do before. This collection of bare, haunting songs continue to captivate me. Michael Stipe serves as a perfect foil on the bewitching,"Your Ghost." My favourite track has to be the bullish,towerng "Me and my Charms." This blends excellently with sweet melodies like,"Velvet Days." Kristin Hersh has a fantastic vocal range and on this record she also shows herself to be a very able guitarist. She doesn´t need anyone playing along with her, solo she finds the bare emotion that mark this out as truly something special. If you want to get your hands on a little piece of lost magic, discover this.

This will always be Kristin Hersh's greatest achievement. On this album, Kristin put every aspect of her life on display. Not in a lame look-at-me confessional sense, but in an honest, powerfully human and moving sense. This is an album that seems to provoke so many different feelings in people. Astute music listeners recognise it as an extraordinary masterpiece; others dismiss it as a mad woman ranting. The fact is, there is not another album like this; none of Kristin's other albums are remotely like it either - this is a once in a lifetime recording. Every note bleeds; every note carries the torment and disappointment of life. Any person who has suffered in this life, will take this album to their heart. Everything is here, in the same way that everything is in Proust's literary masterpiece. They are both completely different in almost every way, and are seemingly bizarre bedfellows, but they are both masterworks of humanity. In a sense, Proust took the high road; Kristin has got down and dirty on the low road. These songs are full of dirt, broken glass, twisted beauty. 'A Loon' is full of paranoia; 'Houdini Blues' is full of defiance in the face of adversity; 'Beestung' possesses a beautiful but damaging fragility; 'Me And My Charms' blazes with a combination of despair and ironic pride. On 'Tuesday Night' she has resorted to the bottle to deal with the strain of living. Whereas the most recent album, 'Sunny Border Blue', is all about letting it all out, a kind of primal scream album for the twenty first century, a brilliantly pulverising rollercoaster of despair, 'Hips And Makers', only lets the despair leak out in little rivulets. It's only on 'The Letter', with its devastating stream-of-consciousness lyric, that we get a real sense of the despair, only then do we too get sucked into the hurricane of her personal turmoil. On this song, she sings: 'My hands are shaking; don't you love me anymore?' She's looking for some kind of clemency, but cannot find it. Perhaps the only clemency that can be found is in medication or the bottle. The album finishes on the jolting, disjointed rhythm of the title track, a kind of dark nursery rhyme ('I married a brewer to keep me from drinking; I married a boxer to keep me from fighting'). The kind of strange logic that has always defined Kristin's lyrics. It brings a kind of disturbing calm to proceedings, the false calmness of medication, a numbness that masks all the pain. It's like Kristin is rocking on a ship where all the crew have died and turned to skeletons. There are no tears left to be cried; she can only stare at the horizon. This album is an odyssey of human experience. Every note has been wrought by life; every note is pungent and poignant, unbearably vivid and moving. This album is life itself.

Kristin Hersh's Throwing Muses were one of the few great bands to come out of the USA in the 1980's. Their eponymous debut was doubtless one of the most striking and original records of the decade. That the Muses split after 10 consistently great records was a great shame.Reassuring then that Hersh came back with a solo debut that proved to be one of the half dozen stand-out records of the 90's. Hersh's uniquely raw and emotive vocals, by turn delicate and vulnerable, then fierce and fiery, plus her great lyrics (a rarity for most "rock" albums) make this a memorable listen.Accoustic throughout, with intricate guitar and piano rythms and a wonderful opening duet with REM's Michael Stipe on "Your Ghost", every track here is wonderful. Hersh stands unmatched lyrically, sounding more akin to poetry set to music.Hersh has yet to release a weak record, see last year's Sunny Border Blue for evidence of her still great output, but this is and will remain her finest record. A great place to start on probably the most consistently special back catalogue. Get this, then work through the Throwing Muses work too. Nothing comes close.

I'm not going to contest each and every song with the review that gave this two stars (I'm pretty sure there will ever only be one!), but in my opinion Your Ghost is the weakest song on the album (good as it is).The fact that it's mainly just Kristin and a guitar for considerable parts of the album make it all the more breathtaking that she manages to make each song sound unique! It's the best acoustic album in my collection of almost two decades of music, and one of the best albums I'll ever listen to. Buy it/download it/whatever, and only if you're tonedeaf or heartless will it fail to move you.

Questo CD un po' datato (è del 1994) è il primo lavoro solista della cantautrice statunitense. Accompagnata dalla sua fedele chitarra acustica offre 15 ballate malinconiche tra cui spicca il brano di apertura, "Your Ghost", dove la sua voce sognante si alterna a quella di Michael Stipe dei REM. Un lavoro che ha resistito al tempo. In grado di farci rammaricare di averlo ascoltato sempre troppo poco.

" Hips & Makers " c'est d'abord une guitare folk jouée par Kristin Hersh avec souvent plusieurs pistes mixées en parallèle ce qui donne de la consistance & une certaine puissance au son .Les autres instruments utilisés sur le disque sont principalement un violoncelle & plus épisodiquement un piano & un tambourin .Au final la production vraiment excellente se trouve assez éloignée d'un album de folk-music façon Dylan ou Joan Baez .Comme sur les disques des Throwing Muses , Kristin Hersh chante à fleur de peau & musicalement alterne les moments de calme paradoxalement intenses ( souvent en picking ) avec des passages énergiques en accords plaqués assez impressionnants bien qu'aucune amplification électrique ne soit utilisée .Pour un album acoustique à aucun moment on ne sent l'ennui pointer le bout de son nez .Tous les titres se révèlent excellents & de conclure qu'il s'agit encore d'un disque chaudement recommandable provenant du label 4AD .

Kristin Hersh is a must for anyone with a soul, anyone who feels different and needs inspiration to let it show creatively, anyone with a heart. I love her guitar playing- she is classically trained and it shows, but it is also lowslung, gritty and delicious. her vocal delivery is unique and amazing.

this is an intense album, but it definitely does not rock. it is quiet, understated, and lyrical-- and kristin hersh sings it with such honesty and vulnerability, accompanied only by her guitar, with maybe a piano or cello to add some haunting atmosphere. maybe not for the casual throwing muses fan, but a beautiful album nonetheless. 'your ghost' and 'beestung' are standouts, the latter of which made it onto a lot of mix tapes back in the day.p.s. i gave it four and not five stars only because it's just not an everyday sort of album.