Limbo

From the Label LIMBO's fearlessly clean production style lays bare Hersh's singular songwriting gift, exposing the song bodies she still describes as "big, live things that have more to do with themselves than with my brain." Like UNIVERSITY, LIMBO was recorded by the band and engineer Trina Shoemaker at Daniel Lanois' New Orleans studio, Kingsway. On LIMBO, intermittent blasts of buzzy lead guitar and grace notes by cellist Martin McCarrack add depth to the mix without burying it. Straight-ahead beats and bass lines gracefully keep pace alongside rushes of masterful, mostly clean-toned guitar. This is an album full of subtle shifts and sudden sharp turns. A seamless flow of time changes in "Tar Kissers" bends the song's spaghetti-western overtones into more sophisticated dimensions. The sexy/psychedelic title track, introduced by the jarring metallic clang of an electric cello, seduces with a trippy sense of danger. The tuneful pop of "Ruthie's Knocking" surges with harmonic Beatlesque crescendos, veiling the subtle threats within ("Don't look in the mirror/or he'll look back at you"). "Freeloader" gallops along like a swaggering cowboy ("I don't hear, I don't hear/ I'm a freethinker"), veering into flamenco-tinged bridges and a moody Spanish epilogue. "Tango" is a heady spin of menacing sexuality; "Serene," a gentle 3/4 strum touched off by an exquisitely melancholy string part, is as comfortable as a recurring dream. LIMBO's striking cover art features exclusive drawings by Gilbert Hernandez of "Love & Rockets" comics fame. LIMBO is a strange place, alternately heavy and weightless, somewhere between heaven and hell. The sound of it is pure; it tells the truth. "I don't think the specifics of any truth matter very much," says Hersh. "The sound will resonate in that part of you that tells the truth."