Concert Review - Kristin Hersh - Auckland - 21 March 2025

Presented By Plus 1

Kristen Hersh Live in NZ March 2025 - Photo Credit Chris Zwaagdyk (13th Floor)

Review by: Faith Hamblyn

Artist/Band: Kristin Hersh Supported by Jon Muq

Venue/City: The Tuning Fork, Auckland, New Zealand

Date of Event: Friday 21st March 2025

I’ve seen Kristin Hersh a couple of times at the Tuning Fork, but this time was different, because this time she had an artist in support that’s new to me – Jon Muq. He’s from Uganda, via Austin, Texas, and he spins tales of cruise-ship misunderstandings between his songs of wonder, humour and improbable strangers in unlikely tangles. There’s a country-ish break in his voice that tugs at the heart, his songwriting is stripped down – he reminded me of Damien Rice with his songs of longing and connection, the simple truth of the heart.

He was brought to international attention by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and you can hear why – his voice stays with you, and you want to follow him on his journey, anywhere. A surprisingly sweet voice, like a 21st-century male Joan Armatrading.

He wrapped up to applause and laughter, and it was time for the voodoo queen of New Orleans to take the stage. If you’ve not heard Hersh in her post-punk band Throwing Muses, her tonally complex, smoky voice sounds like the Divinyls’ Chrissy Amphlett if she made a deal with the Devil. She sings of tarot cards and ghosts and renders everything darkly magical.

The crowd is always ecstatic to hear Kristin start ‘Your Ghost’, her hit from 1994 debut Hips and Makers that she recorded with REM’s Michael Stipe. Having seen her a few times, it sounds right without Stipe by now, and it’s pretty whimsical seeing football bros trying to dance to it in the crowd. How does one dance to a stuttering, tripping beat from such a mannered guitarist? There were a lot of cool shirts on display with the Generation X punters - The Breeders, Pixies; apparently riot grrls still rule.

She did ‘Sundrops’ and ‘Teeth from Hips’ and ‘Makers’ too and read from her books a couple of times. Her stories are amazing, with a tilted view on everything, and her first novel is also excellent. When she last played the Tuning Fork in 2023, she introduced ‘Clear Pond Road’s Palmetto’ with a story of standing on and destroying a cockroach’s tiny foot in her shotgun house in the South, she and the bug startling each other as she turned on the kitchen light to work on her music while everyone else was sleeping.

Last night as she encored ‘The Cuckoo’, I thought she’d be tickled if she’d known what had happened down the back of the venue during her performance – a tiny mouse had come in from visiting the smokers out the front and ran behind our couch and then on to hide behind the curtain that covers the door to Spark Arena. The staff ran around after it with cell-phone torches and a basket, as Kristin Hersh played on. It would fit right in with her stories of cities of the dead and startling her night-time flatmate bugs.

Kristen Hersh Tour PR 2025

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