Hunkpapa

By 1989, Throwing Muses were beginning to feel the pinch of being caught up in the American major-label machinery (their indie label home in the UK, 4AD, was rather more humane). When leader Kristin Hersh dismisses the few songs she wrote as compromises to label demands for pop songs, it’s not too hard to figure she means the story-song of “Dizzy,” Hunkpapa’s only single. But the rest of the album feels streamlined, too, in comparison to earlier efforts. Not in a bad way, mind: songs like “No Parachutes” and “Fall Down” benefit from the directness; Donelly’s “Angel” is a girl-group pop swoon that struts with confidence. And in “Mania” and “Bea,” Hersh wrote two of her greatest, most fiercely brittle songs, full of stops, starts, accelerations and brutal repetition.