Photo by PETE TROSHAK
The Kristin Hersh that showed up at the World Cafe on Tuesday was a woman at peace with her ghosts, making them swirl and dance around the stage as she commanded them with her guitar. Hersh alternated between reading from her published diary and playing songs. The former concerned, by turns, an eerie meeting with an old lady on the bus, squatting in a dead person’s house, hanging out with faded movie star Betty Hutton and the verities of being a pregnant pregnant indie rock star.The latter were strummed into being with a black hollow body electric guitar with a clean heavenly tone. Her body an intense point of light, her eyes had that thousand mile stare of someone who has glimpsed the great beyond. Capping her set with an incandescent rendition of “Your Ghost” that was more exorcism than song, Hersh encored with three Throwing Muses classics – “Pearl”, “Hook in Her Head” and “You Cage”, and then sent the crowd out into the night, a little more haunted but no less happy for it. — PETE TROSHAK