Joshing around

It just seems like they're being cloned somewhere. Sheryl Crowe, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Fiona Apple - they just keep coming. Joni Mitchell's spiritual children all use the angsty approach as a marketing drive angle (or so it seems) and while MTV and newspaper magazines might find them all very "happening", Patti Smith can say more in two minutes 59 seconds than all of their albums put together. And when was the last time you saw Patti Smith making a ditzy guest appearance on the poxy Friends? I rest my case.

The exception that proves the rule is Kristin Hersh, who doesn't suffer from Cappucino Angst Syndrome. Once of indie journey people, Throwing Muses, she struck out on her own with the solo album Hips And Shakers (1994), got Michael Stipe in to do backing vocals (like you do) and came up with a wondrous collection of off-kilter lo-fi. With Throwing Muses now disbanded (a mercy killing if ever there was one), the rather strange Kristin went into retirement and built a house in Joshua Tree National Tree Park (a place which, despite U2's best efforts, will always be associated with Gram Parsons), but is now back with a follow-up solo effort called Strange Angels. A lot of changes? "Yeh, well, I just had to end Throwing Muses," she says. "It was very much against our will and it still aches. But this is the follow-up proper to Hips And Makers which was, looking back, a very minor-key mountain. I just pretended I knew how to make an acoustic record with that one; but this time everything seems a little more intricate and self-assured."

Not such a hippy-dippy, unplugged, Woodstock peace and love vibe this time out, then? "You know, it's so funny when you see people doing the `acoustic' thing, thinking to themselves that `this is really going to make me authentic' but in fact when the songs are stripped down, it's not a case of `oh, look, the songs aren't just bad - they're really bad'." Very true.

There are 15 songs on Strange Angels and it's all very spontaneous, as befits her songwriting style. "I wish I could say I made myself a cup of coffee, put on my lucky bathrobe and sat down at the piano with my rhyming dictionary," she says, "but that's not the way my songs happen. They walk in the room of their own accord." Different to her other work in that there's a distinct folky feel to the proceedings, albeit of the gingham/hillbilly type, it's hardly a surprise when she says she's going to go on and record a whole album of Appalachian folk songs, in a Nick Cave Murder Ballads sort of way.

"As a kid I thought those folk songs were lovely," she says, "but when I started looking at them again I realised they were actually quite horrifying. They're all murder and liquor and Jesus. And the most important thing for a woman is whether or not she's married. If she refuses to marry the man he kills her, and if the man refuses to marry her she kills herself. Either way she's finished."

Hows about all these newcomers on the distaff side of the music industry, some of whom cite you as an influence? "They may think this stuff isn't Barbie doll, but it is," she says. "It's Dysfunctional Barbie. And it's very scary for women of all ages to be seeing that as the face of womankind, because we aren't all like that. We are 3D: we are broken and we are fixed and we are aware of our own goofiness." Strange Angels by Kristin Hersh is released next week on the 4AD label.

Sort of related but not really, the new wave country label known as Vinyl Junkie has just joined forces with the lovely Rykodisc label to ensure that more of that "noo country" stuff gets into Irish shops - and with the likes of Wilco and Lambchop doing so well over here, it's about time too. The first release from the new deal is a fab compilation called Loose which rounds up acts like Giant Sand, The Scud Mountain Boys, Lullaby For The Working Class and Lambchop. Also well worth investigating is the new wave country music magazine No De- pression, which you can get in Tower Records. New Sounds of the Old West and all of that.