''The Grotto'' is the sixth solo album released by

Kristin Hersh Kristin may refer to: * Kristin (name), a Scandinavian form of Christine * ''Kristin'' (TV series), a 2001 American sitcom * Kristin Peak, Antarctica * Kristin School, a school in New Zealand See also * Kristen (disambiguation) Kristen may re ...

. It was released on 17 March 2003 on 4AD records, simultaneously with the Throwing Muses (2003) record. It features

Howe Gelb Howe Gelb (born October 22, 1956, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer based in Tucson, Arizona. Projects Gelb's approach to music is collaborative and he has recorded with a number of s ...

on piano and

Andrew Bird Andrew Wegman Bird (born July 11, 1973) is an American indie rock multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. Since 1996, he has released 16 studio albums, as well as several live albums and EPs, spanning various genres including swing musi ...

on violin.

produced the album as well as playing all other instruments. The album peaked at #39 on the US's Billboard Top Independent Albums Chart.

Critical reception

''The Grotto'' was met with "generally favorable" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 75, based on 14 reviews. Aggregator Album of the Year gave the release a 74 out of 100 based on a critical consensus of 5 reviews.

Track listing

References

External links

The Grotto at 4AD

The Grotto at the official online store

Three free songs at the artists site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grotto, The 2003 albums Kristin Hersh albums Sire Records albums 4AD albums