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you love your children and your husband, but sometimes household tensions pull your emotions to the breaking point. how can you keep loving and respecting someone whose faults you know all too well? the intensity of marriage can be surprising -- how sudden stabs of anger or jealousy, can give way to boundless love and joy. how much marriage "feels" seems to be one of the themes on this album.

how do you negotiate a loving relationship with the demands of a career? you can't always be with your kids when you want to -- and you feel guilty, angry, alone. how do you handle that?

how do you stay married, love your kid enough to die for, and not get lost in the process? is it possible to handle all the compromises and emerge not only yourself, but wiser?

how can you think about your past in a useful way, so that you learn from it; admit your follies and old bitterness, without becoming trapped in the role of victim? how to handle those old friends who still let you down?

hersh addresses all these points on sunny border blue. she sings about the stresses, strains, and contradictions with a blunt honesty, black humor, an appreciation for the surreal and the absurd in daily life, and the wry self-examination you need to get on with it.

this is her most personal and open album yet, without being obscurantist or sickeningly confessional. i think every thoughtful married woman can see pieces of her life in this music. that border between sunny and blue -- where one crosses quickly into the other -- is a place a lot of women know about.

the rock critic establishment likes this album ok, although some are giving it lukewarm reviews. don't be put off by what you read in the press. rock rarely deals with profound emotional issues in this complex and nuanced a fashion.

sunny border blue is a must-buy for fans, and new listeners may find it her most accessible album in a long while. surprisingly, the song that stays with me the most is the haunting cover of cat stevens' "trouble." i'm absolutely no fan of his, but hersh saw what was in this song and made it hers. she takes what was for most people a maudlin throwaway mini-hit and polishes it to perfection. you'll be taking this one to heart, i promise.


Good but overrated   May 27, 2002
 9 out of 12 found this review helpful

There's not much to dislike here, but it didn't meet the expectations I had given how much I was affected by such great albums as /Hips and Makers/ and the Throwing Muses' /University/. The sound of this record is strangely more reminiscent of the latter than the former, but it consistently falls short of that album's highlights. None of the songs here capture the goosebump-inducing intensity of "Flood," the ominous hysteria of "Teller," or the slowly ascending muscle of "Fever Few." The album is a reasonably pleasurable listen from beginning to end, but there were few standouts besides the opener, "Your Dirty Answer," and "Trouble"--which is a cover. I would recommend this album to any fans of Hersh's previous work, but I do not understand some other reviewers' unqualified enthusiasm for this record.


Blue   March 14, 2001
 8 out of 10 found this review helpful

Back during the storm of adolescence Kristin's first solo affair Hips and Makers saved my life more than once. It was a very empathetic album--very sad yet at times betraying more than a hint at optimism for better days.

Her two following solo albums, while each excelling, did not share that same emotion. The optimism was front and center. These albums were exceedingly happy without being flippant or sappy. They cultured my early adult life eerily.

Now just as I bottom out again "Sunny Border Blue" comes along to join me in my despair.

This is album is venting wrath, fuming bitterness, and wallowing in melancholy. It has thematically returned to the grounds once stomped out by "Hips and Makers"; however, it has brought along an amplified sound as company.

Some people react to this "band" sound (as pioneered in "Sky Motel") and say that it is a return to Kristin's Throwing Muses roots. This album is not Throwing Muses. It is but an essential piece that has developed into something new and different. "Sunny Border Blue" has the guttural, angelic voice of Throwing Muses, the jaded imagery and subconscious lyrics, and the fickle guitar work. Yet, at the same time, it is Throwing Muses stripped of the pulsating, playful bass and the militant percussion. It makes me long for the old band as much as Kristin does in track 13, "Listerine". "How did I trust a band who'd leave me one by one?"

"Sunny Border Blue" is mental puking by Kristin. Do I pay attention for the same reason that I'll look at a car wreck? Because it's not me? Or do I listen because I know only too well that kind of hurt? It is me.

This album is very necessary. It is completely honest to the point of pain. I need it to the point of pain. Very necessary.


Return of the strangest angel   March 11, 2001
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Kristin Hersh's "Sunny Border Blue" harks back to "Hips and Makers," in that, like her debut, "Sunny" takes a position halfway between the quiet "Strange Angels" and the Noisy "Sky Motel." You'll probably want to listen to this with the headphones on, and either late at night or first thing in the morning, before you forget your dreams.

The songs (and again she plays all the instruments) are delivered in the same deadpan steely alto that she has perfected since her "Throwing Muses" Days. And she remains The Maestra of the Minor Key (if there's a major chord anywhere on the CD I didn't hear it). As usual, the CD are cramed with her highly personal,jagged, strange lyrics that sometimes rhyme in the oddest places. And she's still smarter than you.

In the opening, "Your Dirty Answer," she opines: "i don't judge people, i just watch them 'til it's time to look away. i want to look away now." In "Spain" she notes, "the engine is idling and the car seems to be expanding," and in the next cut, "37 hours" she sighs that "we could be a silkworm tightrope but we're not." (Do all the people she's known, past and present, eventually turn up in her lyrics? Quite possibly.)

This time out Kristin tosses in a cover, of an old Cat Stevens cut, "Trouble," and she manages to make it her own.

In "Ruby" (and maybe this is the best cut) she ponders: "it's easy to sleep with idiots and prophets. leaves me wondering. ruby or iridescent cough drop?" Ruby.

And in the last cut (there are 13) she takes one last swipe at her former "Throwing Muses" colleagues (who she outgrew long ago) "how'd i trust a band who'd leave me one by one?" Their loss. Our gain.