Kristin Hersh has announced Sugar On Blackstone, a new solo album due September 18 via Fire Records, and shared its opening track, “Dark Eyed Junco.” The song comes with an official video from Fire Records, and it is exactly the kind of bruised, memory-flooded writing Hersh can make feel both intimate and volcanic.
The record follows 2023’s Clear Pond Road and was recorded at Stable Sound Studios earlier this year. Fire Records says Hersh is joined by longtime collaborators Rob Ahlers of 50FOOTWAVE on drums and Pete Harvey of Throwing Muses on cello, which is a small-room setup with a lot of history packed into it.
Hersh tells Stereogum that “Dark Eyed Junco” reaches back to childhood with her brother: “He was a ‘Dark-Eyed Junco,’ and I was a light-eyed weirdo.” She adds that they would play basketball past dark because, after their stepfather moved in, “it wasn’t a home anymore.” That is a heavy frame for a lead single, but Hersh has never needed much polish to make a song cut.
Fire Records frames Sugar On Blackstone around Providence, Rhode Island, and the emotional geography of Blackstone Boulevard and Hope Street. The label’s description points to themes of home, displacement, grief, childhood, and survival — not exactly casual-listening terrain, but very much Hersh’s weather system.
The album is listed as Fire Records release FIRE836, with a limited light blue LP and a Rough Trade sugar marble edition among the announced physical options. Watch the “Dark Eyed Junco” video and see the tracklist below.
Sugar On Blackstone Tracklist
- Dark Eyed Junco
- Moths
- Ticking
- Silver Beach
- Pink Nightgowns
- 101 Run
- Sundial
- Snow White Lies
- Dom In Orange
- '72 Stingray
- Samson