Kristin Hersh is one of my idols. As I expect is fairly well known by now. Brilliant, prolific, multi-talented and with a range that stretches from sweet folk renditions to, well, 50FOOTWAVE. There are times when the only music I actually want to hear is a blast of take-no-prisoners rock-n-roll, With Love From The Men’s Room scratches that itch. Hard.
It opens with Radiant Addict, a blistering cacophony of contorted guitars, twisted vocals, gutpunching bass and fuckin’ SPECTACULAR drums: Rob Ahlers is a nuclear metronome, powering through at breakneck speeds always knowing when to briefly explode and steer well clear of complacency. It’s an EPIC track and it does it all in two minutes and eleven seconds.
The whole ep crams an implausible amount of awesome into a very short running time, never short of ideas and with an incredible sense of how to stitch them together. Each track was released individually, one a month, and it was unavoidable to stick each on repeat (for ages), gradually digesting the dense goodness of 50FOOTWAVE. Listening to them all back to back is a glorious, urgent rush.
If that wasn’t enough, it was released on CASH music: for free. Kristin Hersh has been doing this for years (long before it got fashionable), especially with 50FOOTWAVE. Heck: they released an ep called “Free Music” and stuck their entire catalogue online for free. Not as a limited time offer or a low quality file or any other kind of limitation/marketing gimmick. Just because the music deserves to be free.
The 20th Century was rather fond of a notion of industrialised creativity, that sometimes worked incredibly well and sometimes still does, but by 2011 a set of tools has become pretty well established to bypass all that. Mass distribution divorced from money. (Clearly, the creators and the acts of creation can’t abandon money completely - supporting creativity is still very highly encouraged.) So much of the stuff I loved this year was given for free over the internet, and as easy as that has become to take for granted, it’s still a pretty spectacular thing. So: my “Top 11 of ‘11” consists of freely distributed stuff that really resonated with me. Such as tomorrow’s choice…
