INCOMING | Kristin Hersh — Crooked

[The Friday Project; June 10]

It’s been a long time since Kristin Hersh completed her first ever CASH Music project, called it ‘Speedbath’ and promised to release it in physical form, but today’s announcement that the album – now re-recorded, re-jigged and renamed Crooked – will arrive in a rather special way is enough to make us forgive the delay.

UK publisher The Friday Project, in conjunction with Harper Collins, have revealed plans to release Crooked as a book. More specifically, “a hardback book containing stunning artwork, the lyrics to each track, an essay by Kristin about every song and an exclusive sneak preview of her forthcoming memoir Paradoxical Undressing” [HOLD UP. That means she's finally been able to drop that awful Rat Girl title? Good call].

Copies will retail at a tidy sum of £12.99 and each will contain a unique digital code that unlocks a “treasure trove of online content”, including:

• a download of the album
• full recording stems for each track so that fans can remix them
• track-by-track audio commentary by Kristin
• exclusive video content
• outtakes from the recording sessions
• a special forum enabling fans to interact with Kristin with Q&As, live webchats etc.

Says Kristin, “After building the record in public at CASH Music as a truly collaborative project with my listeners, I couldn’t bear the thought of releasing just another disposable, dead, plastic CD. I wanted to create a key to a living world: this blooming, tangible object, the Crooked book. The Friday Project, a strange, new kind of publisher, seemed the best possible home for this strange, new piece of media.”

Kristin will be in the UK over the summer to promote the release; she’s got a date lined up at Latitude Festival on July 18, so expect to see some more dates – possibly including some acoustic shows in bookshops – around that time. Watch this space for pre-order information.

In other news, Kristin’s hard-rock band 50 Foot Wave recently finished up their new EP, With Love From The Men’s Room, and we’re expecting further news on that soon.

Tracklist:
01 Mississippi Kite
02 Moan
03 Sand
04 Glass
05 Fortune
06 Coals
07 Crooked
08 Krait
09 Flooding
10 Rubidoux

Kristin Hersh website
Publisher website

Tagged crooked, kristin hersh