Throwing Muses @ World Cafe Live

Throwing Muses
@ World Café Live
03/10/09
www.kristinhersh.com

Philthy’s most iconic musical event of 2009 looked something like a 15-year reunion of Reality Bites extras. For the first of only four scheduled US dates from not-surprisingly under-appreciated (as is the way of music history) Bostonian legends Throwing Muses, the city’s musical sanctuary of sterility, World Café Live, was filled to about half capacity with aged poster children for VH1’s I Love The 90s whose years of teaching five days a week at a community college have taken a slight toll on their Gen. X anti-dance moves. The truly alternative trio looked disappointingly inoffensive in a setting usually reserved for bearded singer/songwriters and “world musicians.”

The band’s set focused on material from the latter portion of their career, most notably 1995’s University (“Shimmer,” “Bright Yellow Gun,” and “Hazing”) and 1996’s Limbo (“Serene” and “Shark”). These brilliantly transgressive pop fables ring just as progressive as ever, but they lost much of their potency in the vast dinner theatre venue. While Kristin Hersh’s coy refusal to “perform” her songs as a pop star is charmingly striking in more intimate settings, from the back of WCL she likely just looked sleepy. Izzy Cihak