Throwing Muses “Throwing Muses” (1986) / <i> 4AD</i> (British import)

On a list of the best college-alternative-indie-whatever youcallit albums ever released, Throwing Muses’ debut ranks with R.E.M.’s “Murmur” and the most accomplished albums of the Replacements, Violent Femmes, Husker Du and Sonic Youth.

There was no obvious precedent for “Throwing Muses.” The Muses did gather strands of influence from the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Devo, B-52’s, Yoko Ono and other underground icons. The Rhode Island-bred band also appreciated a good folk-rock melody and was open to the pleasures of a galloping, countrified beat. But the Muses (founders Kristin Hersh, Tanya Donelly and David Narcizo were still in their teens when they made the album, and bassist Leslie Langston was only slightly into her 20s) emerged with something distinctively and strangely their own.

“Throwing Muses” is an album of constant dips, turns and reversals, in which hard, driven guitar passages evoking a race through a dark and scary tunnel can give way suddenly to lovely, gently rueful ballad singing. Hersh, the main singer and songwriter, is the one doing most of the tunneling (Donelly, who went on to front Belly, contributes one song, the haunting, ethereal “Green”). Hersh’s lyrics are oblique shards of imagery and symbolism; most of the time she seems to be fighting off night fears of being blanketed by some unidentified psychosexual dread. Her voice makes vivid the barking fear of a madwoman being set upon by her worst demons, but it can subside into a quiet, intimate zone of emotional weariness.

Dread may have been the album’s keynote, but a fresh listening reveals a good deal of humor as well. The slyness and exaggeration in some of Hersh’s vocal contortions suggest that she could momentarily distance herself from the woes being enacted and gain a wry, self-mocking perspective on her Angst .

Throwing Muses has had fine moments in six subsequent studio albums and EPs, and Hersh comes off well on her current acoustic solo detour, “Hips and Makers.” But the first one cuts the deepest and will be well worth the import premium until somebody has the sense to issue it domestically.

(Kristin Hersh plays Friday, May 6, at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $17.50 (714) 496-8930.)

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