The third Throwing Muses album, and the first one I bought, just after it came out in 1989. I'd known about Throwing Muses for at least three years by then, and they sounded interesting in theory, but it's strange to remember just how hard it was 20 years ago actually to hear the music of the people whose interviews you could read in the NME. You could always take a risk, but, in 1986, the price of a CD was not far short of a week's rent (I paid £64 a month for my bedsit in Agden Road that autumn). Recently we've been looking at renting in London and the price of a CD now equates to less than three hours' rent.
Anyway I took a risk on Hunkpapa and was very glad I did, because I quickly grew to love it. For a while I was quite a Throwing Muses fan. I went to see them at the Leadmill in March 1989, and there was the biggest queue I've ever seen there, literally round the block. I suspect this was largely due to the fact that The Sundays were the support act, and in those early months of '89 The Sundays had become the indie Arctic Monkeys of their day — or more precisely, the latest band tipped to take over the vacuum left by The Smiths. They didn't of course, and I was never that keen on them, so I wasn't too disappointed that, by the time I got into the venue, I only caught half of their last song. Throwing Muses was what I was there for, and I lapped up everything they did.
I can't imagine I've listened to them at all in the past decade or more, but I enjoy Hunkpapa all over again now. It's the combination of the lolloping rock rhythms and the crack in Kristin Hersh's that does it for me. My impression is that her voice has lost that crack recently — the unhinged, out-of-control character that makes you think something weird and alien-like is going to burst out of its midriff at any moment — and that might be why I no longer keep up with what she's doing.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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