While she's been diagnosed as bipolar and has suffered from synaesthesia, and has at times tried to escape whatever cosmic force forgers the music, it still possesses her.
"I'm still as obsessed as I was then," Hersh says. "Now I know it is music; it's not a panic, it's not a monster. I hear a sound and I serve that, and it's often the best part of my day. And having spent the last 25 years of trying to learn to serve it, I'm very comfortable with my craft."
In Throwing Muses' earliest incarnation, before the year chronicled in Rat Girl, and before they were signed to iconic UK independent label 4AD, they were allowed to play in clubs in Newport.
At that time, the band also included Hersh's half-sister Tanya Donelly, Elaine Adamedes, and Becca Blumen. It was a magical time, she recalls, even if it wasn't easy.
"We were so enamoured with the rock scene in our town that we just forced ourselves into it," Hersh says. "We tried not to stay at home ever, we would work every night. We were going to school in the daytime, and sometimes we were loading out at three in the morning. We were treated like crap pretty much."
However, the inventive and distinctive aspect of Throwing Muses music that would fully emerge later was already in evidence. Hersh explains that the older members of the Rhode Island scene thought they played as they did because they couldn't play the way other people did. Whereas what they were already doing was "much more difficult than what anyone else was doing," she notes.
That statement would generally apply to Throwing Muses presence in the alternative music landscape of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as it was gradually assimilated into the mainstream.
In what became a sea of sameness, the band remained a unique proposition, musically, lyrically, and how they were represented on record.
As Hersh reflects, she was never comfortable with the recording process then.
"I didn't understand how you could possibly capture something that felt like an explosion," she elaborates. "I had to learn how to create a musical photograph that was timeless. There's a lot about production that is style, and you want to avoid almost all of it. Beauty with a little bit of mystery."
That admirable aesthetic permeated the band's best works, which include 1991's The Real Ramona, and the following year's Red Heaven, the first without Donelly.
While some of the band's early work is so embarrassing to Hersh that she can't listen to it, she appreciates the early to mid-1990s trio of albums.
"We were still obsessed and yet we were absolutely in control," she says of that period. "But there are still moments where that can trip you up, where I think 'Oh God, what a dumb idea'. But even when we were making mistakes and sounding goofy, we weren't trying to be cool, we weren't trying to impress anyone, and we weren't imitating anyone."
No doubt that'll still be the case on the ninth Throwing Muses album, a listener-funded release which is currently being mixed. Hersh says at last count there were 38 songs to be included.
Throwing Muses double album retrospective Anthology is available through 4AD.
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