"Sky Motel" is a CD you can, and should, judge by its cover. It is a wash of bright, warm colors, kinda all blurred together, out-of-focus and bleeding on one another, yet the shapes are still distinctive. It opens with a tune called "Echo" filled with flanging guitars, tubby drums, distorted harmonies. You don’t notice that at first. First you get the Smash Mouth-esque "keyboards" (by which I mean appropriated 60s pop) and bossa-nova beat. It’s a great opening track, and it even takes a gamble with a shocking halt, the likes of which not heard since the glory days of Big Audio Dynamite. It works marvelously, turning this pop song from a "pop song" into something altogether more important.

I’m glad to see Ms. Hersh recording good records even after the demise of her band Throwing Muses. They were one of the great everybody-likes-them bands of my college days. If one was ever at a dorm room gathering and struggling to find a disc that would appease everyone’s interests, you could always count on Throwing Muses (as well as the Beastie Boys or Jimi Hendrix, but let’s not get into all that right now.) Their second-to-last album, and perhaps best known, "University," had one of the funniest promotional gags I've ever seen. They made up some of those reverse-sticky stickers undergrads put in their shitty Volkswagens that said, "Throwing Muses University" as if it were a place of higher learning. It’s very difficult to dislike this music. For some it is passable, unobtrusive pop. To those that are listening, it is formidable songwriting. And while it may be a bit subtle, Hersh’s performance has always been a tad subversive.

"Sky Motel" is as good as any of Throwing Muses’ work. It keeps its deep production values without getting overly dreamy. It finds a safe plateau above the valleys of navel-gazing mope or bright n’ happy Veruca Salt crap that so many "chick" singers fall into. What I like about her music I also like about her; she doesn’t look like a pop star, or an "alternative" star. She looks like a regular gal with a few extra pounds, plain clothing, and a smile. She’s not about barrettes in her hair or exposed midriffs, which can net someone a record deal a lot quicker than something to say.

I’ve also heard that Kristin Hersh is or was a real mental patient. Maybe that explains for some of her small but fanatic following. In one of the rockin’er tunes, "A Cleaner Light," she sings "Keep away from the freaks on the fringe/They only talk to you ‘cause you give them a good excuse to cry/But in a cleaner light it’s okay." There’s a dripping guitar, some Beach Boys harmony, and a quaveringly-held high note. It’s a strange tune to categorize. It’s quite intriguing. "San Francisco" has Syd Barrett chords under an echo-y keyboard. "Cheap champagne and blackjack on the bed/I was born in America, with fists of a saint/Way out of range." This isn’t the indie rock we get much of these days. It doesn’t quickly push any easy, trendy, Lilith-y buttons. And it ain’t Ani DiFranco. It’s about as commercial as Hub. Which means I rate it as high as I can for what I know is still at its core a pop album.

Hersh’s former bandmate Tonya Donelly has kinda vanished into thin air. She polluted the airwaves a bit with that novelty hit "Gepetto" with Belly during the first crush of indie-chick-chic in the early 90s. She was a pop star. Kristen Hersh is an artist.