Music briefs

Ever since she was teenager, Kristin Hersh wanted to be in a band. It was her first thought when she was struck by a car at age 15. "I lifted my leg up and there was no foot on it, because my foot was underneath my leg," Hersh says, laughing surprisingly, "and so I stuck it back on, and laid back down in this pool of blood and said, 'Ah, that's better. Now I can stand up in front of a band.'"

For about 14 years, beginning in 1983, Hersh led the college-rock trio Throwing Muses, establishing a catalog of pop-rock with intricacy and angularity that belied a energetic punk undertone. But the Muses broke up in 1996, not because of creative differences, but because of the difficult finances of supporting a band.

"I guess for most people when they're in their 30s, they begin to need more than passion," Hersh says. "They also need health insurance, and, you know, food, but that didn't really happen to me. I would've kept sleeping on floors. I just kind of got left behind, but at the same time, as a solo artist I can afford food."

Indeed, across her six albums, Hersh has developed quite a following for her introspective acoustic pop. One of the keys to Hersh's successful transition from band to solo artist is the innovative ways that she and her manager/husband Billy O'Connell have promoted her music on their website. Hersh even makes her whole album available for streaming before purchase.

"Any way of getting the music out there and heard, we support," Hersh says. "Financially, that means we hope people like it enough to come to the show when we tour. The music business is only a few decades old. Songs used to be walked from town to town and played at parties, in homes, churches and bars. That's music. It's a right, not a privilege. If someone can't or doesn't want to pay, I'm still honored that they want to hear what I'm doing."

Kristin Hersh plays the Earl Mon., Feb. 7, 9 p.m. $8.

Ed Hamell doesn't truck no shit nor pull any punches. Assailing our celebrity-shilling culture on "Halfway" from his album Tough Love, he sings: "It's insulting your pretense of integrity. Take the movie's name, tattoo it to your labia, spread your legs for the camera, what difference would it make? I mean fuck it, why go halfway?"

"I don't have anything against Britney Spears - she makes her music and her money, that's fine. But to be wondering what that idiot thinks at any time of the day is very strange," Hamell says from his Brooklyn home.

With his nitro-fueled folk-punk strum, a pocketful of satire, and a mouthful of bad attitude, Hamell (aka Hamell on Trial) follows up the noir-flavored tales of Choochtown with an album that takes aim at social intolerance, from "Hail," which imagines Teena Brandon, Brian Deneke and Matthew Shepard having coffee in heaven, to "Don't Kill," in which God asks, "Was it the 'Thou' part that threw you? 'Thou' means 'you,' 'shalt not' means 'don't'."

Tough Love was written after a serious car accident that put him in an upper body brace for five months, and required 52 staples in his skull. "Initially, it was going to be a lighter record, but all these things happened - my kid was born, 9/11 happened, then I got into a car accident," Hamell says. "It was really hard to get away from it. You'd write a song and be like, 'Should I save it for later? Well, it'll only really be relevant now.'"

Certainly part of what makes Hamell's music so enjoyable is not only the canny eye for detail, but the dark humor he injects into the songs. Like the late, great comedian Bill Hicks, Hamell has a unsparing honesty that's both poignant and side-splitting (see his Choochtown ode to adulterers, drug dealers and other social miscreants, "Go Fuck Yourself"). Despite his blunt take on morality, Hamell doesn't necessarily consider himself political. But that hasn't stopped him from formulating a catchy epigram to help us through these tough times.

"Someone asked, 'What does your philosophy boil down to?' and I'd never been asked that," he explains. "Spontaneously I came up with 'Don't be an asshole.' That's my creed, my motto for everyone. 'What's your politics globally?' Don't be an asshole."

Ed Hamell plays Smith's Olde Bar Fri., Feb. 4, 8 p.m. $8.??