Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh

Based on the diaries she kept at the time, this absorbing and idiosyncratic memoir chronicles the early years of Kristin Hersh's band Throwing Muses, one of the most fiercely intelligent groups of the pre-grunge American indie rock landscape. Playing dingy Boston clubs when they were far too young to drink in them, the band quickly built up a devoted fan base drawn to Hersh's dark and obsessive imagery. In the year when they finally got their break, signing to the British label 4AD, Hersh was diagnosed as bipolar and also became pregnant with her first child.

Hersh's style is both very funny and painfully honest. Describing the act of songwriting almost as a kind of invasion or possession means that her relationship to her work has always been distinctly personal. With a synaesthetic ear, where chords and notes sound like colours, Hersh describes her approach to music more as a science than an art, and despite the violence of some of the lyrics that are interspersed throughout the book, she comes across as disarmingly innocent. This is a fascinating portrait of a gifted, driven artist in her formative years, which also beautifully captures the vanished age of the mid-1980s indie rock scene. [Richard Strachan]