We last saw Kristin Hersh on the Music Project back in #326 where we touched briefly on how 4AD’s Uncut cover disk compilation introduced me to her music.
Having had access to Hips and Makers via Mrs Gnomepants V1.0 actual copy of the album, I decided that it wasn’t really for me or at least that I wasn’t ready for the sound or the music. This was back in the early years of 1999-2003 and offers to see her play at various Liverpool venues were politely declined.
By 2007 the Great Internet Download Free-for-All was in full swing in the UK. I obtained a copy of Learn to Sing Like a Star for Mrs Gnomepants V1.0’s “evaluation” and, following a couple of determined listens, there I was – hooked. Here was an artist that could sing, play guitar AND talk to me – in such a way that only really David Galas had done so before or since. I immediately bought a digital version and then scoured the arts pages of the local presses to see where and when her next tour of the UK would bring her into my proximity. It wouldn’t be until 2022 that I’d finally get the chance to see here in “nearby-but-still-a-distance-from-Daventry” Oxford.
A unique vocal sound, a passionate guitar and a tone of “yeah, well what can ya do” . Awesome
Tess Don’t Tell was the first song I ever heard from this, Ivy’s fifth studio album. I forget where it was but suspect that it was on a random “Music you might like” playlist from the earlier days of Last.FM before it was bought by Spotify and ruined. Of course having a band name like Ivy meant having to use hardcore advanced Googlefu so that Ivy, the American band, came up in searches instead of what other monstrosities came up instead.
Often seen as the quintessential gay album of the nineties, I was gifted If You’re Feeling Sinister by old gay pal Gay Jamie who, himself, had obtained it during the Great Internet Download Free-For-All of the mid to late 1990s.
Jarvis Cocker and Sheffield’s finest with an hour and twenty minutes of lyrics illustrating gritty northern GenX premillennial social situations. How times have changed. Yet Pulp is still powerfully relevant and reflective of youthful experiences.
The guitar. Some would say it is a crucial instrument in modern music. “Without guitar” they might say, “All you have is some bloke singing with drums and a keyboard.” Which is true, but as we have already heard with the likes of 
Every so often during this music project I come across albums by bands I have heard of but can’t remember for the life of me what their song was that I liked or why I even have them in the collection in the first place.
More grumpy observations of the preposterousness pervading Britain from Nigel Blackwell and pals.
NME dubbed this “the album that should not exist”. Bloody hipsters.
Stegzy's Music Project 