May 28, 2025

#236 The Best Album of 1989, Round 1 Match #3: Throwing Muses vs. The D.O.C.

Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:

#32 Throwing Muses, HUNKPAPA

Listen on Spotify or YouTube  

vs.

#97 The D.O.C., NO ONE CAN DO IT BETTER

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have two Designated Cheerleaders for HUNKPAPA, and I’m going to tempt fate by only publishing one, in the belief that I’ll have the opportunity to publish the second one in Round 2. (If it looks like that opportunity will be missed, I’ll publish the second one on the Bluesky account and update this newsletter.) [UPDATE 5:04PM: see below] Today, here is the DC from Kristin DeMarr of All the Things She Said. Take it away, Kristin!

Back when MTV still played videos, specifically the year of 1988, I saw the video for Juno by Throwing Muses. I stopped everything to watch, but more importantly to listen. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. The shifting tempos and beats held my attention. The vocal quality, and harmonies were also unlike anything I’d ever heard. I was immediately in awe and in love! I went to the record store the next day and purchased House Tornado on cassette. I listened to it obsessively for months (maybe even years-it is still in my rotation).

Very likely in January of 1989, the manager of the local record store let me know that Throwing Muses had a new album out. I was in the store weekly with every paycheck as soon as I started working at age 16. So, he knew me and my tastes well, and I’m sure we had talked about House Tornado or the Throwing Muses before.

Of course I purchased Hunkpapa without having heard any tracks. If it was anything like House Tornado, it would be solid start to finish. These were the days before streaming, so you were taking a chance every time you purchased an album.

Hunkpapa absolutely exceeded my expectations. Not only was it amazing start to finish (it starts with the banger Devil’s Roof and I fell in love within seconds of putting it in my car’s tape deck on the way home), but it immediately became my closest companion. It lived in the tape deck of my car for probably a year or longer. It came with me into the house when I got home, and went with me on rides with friends. It's one of the few albums that I had on cassette that I also purchased on CD once CDs became popular. It had a regular spot in my 5-disc changer and helped me study for classes and write papers when I ended up going to college in the latter part of the 90s.

If you have a physical copy of this, or the ability to stream an album from start to finish, do it now. The transitions and progression of this album is magnificent and magical. Probably one of my favorites is the song Dragonhead, where at about the 1:20 mark, it completely changes tempo and transitions, and then the next song, Say Goodbye (marking the middle of the album), is a mere 37 seconds. The lyrics:

Say goodbye
Kick her legs, kick her down
Say goodbye
Kick her legs, kick her down

This was the year after I graduated from high school, we were living with my grandmother across the river, and I was floundering a bit. I had no plans of college, and was just in a constant state of partying and looking for romance (read that as loosely as you want). So much of this album lyrically speaks to a lot of what I was going through at that point in my life. Dating/relationships, promiscuity, alcohol (and LSD), depression, loneliness, pain, sorrow, desperation, falling down (and picking yourself up), but also a celebration of continuing and making it to the next day.

One day, during the summer of 1989, with Hunkpapa still dominating my car's tape deck, I came out of a gas station, and the tan beater 2-door car parked next to mine had one sticker on it - the sticker ran the width of the passenger-side door - and it said throwing muses - in the Hunkpapa font. Yellow text, with a red border. I absolutely stood outside my car and waited for the owner of the car to come out of the gas station. The odds!?!?! I had to see who it was. I halfway assumed I would know the person, but if I didn't, I was hoping for an attractive single male (I mean, honestly, if he wasn't attractive, I probably still would have tried to date him because of his taste in music, which I valued higher).

He was attractive, single, and my age! We exchanged phone numbers and ended up dating for maybe a month or a few weeks at least. Is it horrible that I don't even remember how the relationship ended? I think it just kind of fizzled out, and we went our separate ways. It wasn't one of those dramatic breakups (not even sure we officially broke up?). It turned out we had a ton of friends in common, and I was surprised we had never met before that day at the gas station. I reconnected with him back in the early days of Facebook, and wrote a piece here inspired by a conversation we had. We are actually still friends, and I run into him and his wife at a local brewery, music, or cultural events in town quite a bit. He does some kind of sound engineering, and one of the local record store owners was telling me that I should totally ask him about doing the sound for Al Jourgensen/Ministry in the mid-90s in Chicago. Anyway, as much as I can't remember how we parted ways, every time I pass by that gas station across the river, I remember seeing that Throwing Muses sticker on his car, and can hear Hunkpapa playing on my car stereo.

And now, for a more straightforward plug...
I let out a huge squeal last month while watching the season three finale of Yellowjackets because look:

Shauna's sporting a Hunkpapa shirt! ❤️ I mean, if Shauna is a Throwing Muses fan, don't you want to be one too?

Thank you for that, Kristin!

At 5:04pm, about 8 hours after starting the match, NO ONE CAN DO IT BETTER, which was trailing by about 9-11 votes for most of the day, suddenly surged ahead by a vote. If it stays like this, it’s going to be close, so I need to publish the 2nd DC for HUNKPAPA.

The following DC was written by @kevinalexander.bsky.social and was originally published here. Take it away, Kevin!

Proximity can make for strange bedfellows. Being label mates with New Order is the only way to explain how Throwing Muses found themselves on tour supporting the Manchester band.

But I’m sure glad they were. I knew what I was getting with New Order when I bought tickets, but I had never heard of the opener. Sometimes, a band comes along with a sound that rearranges your mind. New Order had already done that to me. In May of 1989, a band from New England was about to do it again.

I found myself mesmerized as Kristen Hersh belted out her stream-of-consciousness lyrics (“Nothing ever happens here, I said, I just wait” is a favorite on an album chock full of great lines).

Who was this band? Why didn’t the drummer have any cymbals?

In the 30+ years (yikes!) since that show, this record has never drifted too far from my playlists.

Part of that, I’m sure, is down to the fact that this was my on-ramp to the band. You always remember your first, right? Having the benefit of hindsight and having heard their entire discography, I can see why some people were not as enamored with the LP as I was. It suffers in places from a bit of overproduction — a sheen that sounds great to new ears — but might be off-putting to anyone raised on the band’s earlier, rawer sound.

But — and this is a big but — to my ear, the good outweighs the bad. The album may be a bit more polished than House Tornado or The Fat Skier, but it still stands on its own. While those points of criticism may have some merit, I could never quite get past the rawness of it all. Much of that is down to Hersh’s lyrics; sometimes it feels like a descent into madness, other times dizzying highs, or even gleeful delirium, but with just enough grounding to be relatable.

Hersh and her half-sister Tanya Donelly also played well off one another, each comfortable in their respective roles. Donelly’s songs tended to be sweeter & lighter, while Hersh’s seemed much more urgent. Here, Donelly’s Angel is a perfect example, foreshadowing what we would be in for with Belly and later her solo work and The Loyal Seas. A lot of ink has been spilled about Hersh's bipolar disorder. Listening through that lens, the compulsive drive to get the songs out of her head and the tenor of songs like “Fall Down” and “Mania” make a lot more sense.

And credit the impressive way the rest of the band (Donelly, Leslie Langston, and David Narcizo) insist on keeping up with her wherever she takes them. That determination pays off.

In an era when a lot of songs were long on style and short on substance, here was an antidote: a band from Rhode Island playing incredibly literate songs. The sound and words are beguiling—and influential. Throwing Muses may not have ever known stardom, but they are the favorite band of a lot of our favorite bands. Even now, knowing the words forward & backward, I’m still not sure I know what Hersh intended them to mean. But I’m not sure it matters, either.

Thank you, Kevin!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #65 Beat Happening, BLACK CANDY defeated #64 Mötley Crüe, DR. FEELGOOD, 118-71-2.

Thanks for voting!

Kent