With her spare, acoustic-driven solo work, Kristin Hersh sought to distinguish herself from the harder, post-punk sound of the singer-songwriter’s band Throwing Muses. A dozen albums in, she’s successfully carved out her own lane, maintaining a touch of the Muses’s jaggedness while largely eschewing electric instrumentation. While her latest album, Clear Pond Road, isn’t as radically stripped down as her earliest solo efforts, it’s still a departure from 2018’s more rock-oriented Possible Dust Clouds.

Clear Pond Road draws from a wide range of influences: The album’s cello arrangements take a page from the psychedelic pop of Love and the Beatles, while “Palmetto” is infused with the Delta blues in the vein of Son House. In the end, though, Hersh’s acoustic guitar is the album’s driving force, while at the same time avoiding the obvious tropes of roots music.

The album’s production...