When: 7.30pm on Thursday 1 & Friday 2 October 2026
Where: Hallé at St Michael’s, 36-38 George Leigh Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 5DG

We’re delighted to welcome Kristin Hersh back, for two intimate shows at St Michael’s!

Over the last three decades, Kristin Hersh’s prolific career has seen her heralded queen of the alternative release. Returning with latest solo record, Clear Pond Road, released in September 2023, the album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, plush with layers of atonal, edgy-dreamy strings and mellotron.

It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking, an elegant piece of personal reportage. It’s a sensuous, life-affirming statement, a very personal memoir; it’s the a blossoming of a true icon of independence.

In 2018 Hersh announced a new partnership with Fire Records that made possible the release of her acclaimed tenth studio album, Possible Dust Clouds. Since then there’s been new releases from Throwing Muses (Sun Racket, 2020) and 50 Foot Wave (Black Pearl, 2022) along with new book Seeing Sideways (2022).

‘One of indie rock’s most fascinating figures’ according to the Guardian, Hersh has released over 20 solo records, with Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave to date. She is the author of an acclaimed memoir — based on her teenage diary — about a particularly eventful year, titled Rat Girl (or Paradoxical Undressing in the UK), which was named #8 on Rolling Stone’s 25 Greatest Rock Memoirs of all time. She later released her albums Crooked (2010), Wyatt at the Coyote Palace (2016) and Throwing Muses’ Purgatory/Paradise (2013) as groundbreaking books of music, artwork, essays and lyrics. NPR Books said of Hersh’s latest work, Don’t Suck, Don’t Die, about her friendship with the late Vic Chesnutt: ‘Not only one of the best books of the year, it’s one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written.’

Previously, the juxtaposition of light and dark has been essential to the drama of Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave, but this new record is something of a departure: more inward looking. Produced and performed by Hersh, Clear Pond Road is quieter yet more outspoken, its inventive musical logic underpinned by the ambience of field recordings.

‘Passion sounds less angry here, more grateful, I think,’ Kristin says, ‘sweeter, sadder, and somehow no less alive. Honestly? It’s a love story and its erratic heart rate reflects this. As textured and raunchy as real life songs like these can get, the sonic vocabulary is delicate, so I had to respect that and keep it grounded with car engines and rain in New England, then whistling ducks and wind chimes in New Orleans. Which sounds wistful, like a blurry photograph.’

Most recently, Hersh has returned with a new Throwing Muses album, Moonlight Concessions.

These concerts takes place in Hallé at St Michael’s – a former Roman Catholic church, which was founded in 1859 and became the heart of the Little Italy Community in Ancoats.

These are 14+ shows. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult. 

These shows are co-promoted with Please Please You and the Brudenell.

Book tickets now: Thursday 1 October | Friday 2 October

Attend on: Facebook