Hunkpapa by Throwing Muses

Hunkpapa, the third album from Throwing Muses, arrived on 4AD in 1989 and gave the Newport, Rhode Island band a UK chart placing at number 59. Step-sisters Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly still split the songwriting, the guitars and the singing, Leslie Langston played bass, and David Narcizo kept up his odd, cymbal-free drumming.

This is the one where the Muses bent a little toward conventional rock, and it split the critics. The New York Times noticed the drift, Trouser Press found it chilly and ordinary, and Robert Christgau heard the words move from bad poetry to obscure poetry, a step up but not a big enough one. Others heard a band that had found a stronger groove, as the Rolling Stone Album Guide did, and NME ranked it 33rd among the year's albums. "Dizzy" is the track that turned up on a countdown, all jittery, lurching momentum.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.