Interview
Sleeping beauty
Throwing Muses and Belly vet Tanya
Donelly revives her solo career with a
ravishing new album
By Peter Terzian
Tanya Donelly admits that her new solo album, Beautysleep,
is "pretty damn slow." Much of it was recorded while she
was pregnant with her daughter, Gracie Bee. "When you're
pregnant, your tempo really shows down," Donelly says.
"We actually sped up some of the vocals afterward."
Gone are the adrenaline-rush pop tunes Donelly crafted for
more than 15 years: first as a supporting member in the
influential Throwing Muses, then in her own star vehicle Belly,
and later on 1997's excellent but overlooked solo debut,
Lovesongs for Underdogs. Her new album is a dreamy, drowsy
record filled with moonbeams and dark angels, shadows and fog.
But while many grown-ups will find it gorgeous and dramatic,
it's a little too slow for Gracie, who is now almost three.
"She likes fast, loud songs," Donelly says. "She loves the
Ramones and the Rolling Stones. Sometimes, I'll ask, `Don't
you want to listen to mommy's pretty music?' She'll say,
`When are you going to play a fast song?'"
Gracie makes her recording debut on Beautysleep, playing
toy piano on one track, but the bulk of the accompaniment
came from Donelly's extended musical family, all veterans of
Boston's alternative rock scene: former Throwing Muses drummer
David Narcizo, multi-instrumentalist Rich Gilbert (the Zulus,
Frank Black and the Catholics) and Donelly's husband, Dean
Fisher, who was in the Juliana Hatfield Three. The same
group worked on Lovesongs, although Donelly never intended
to form a longstanding association. "My whole plan was to
use different people on every song, but once again, I find
myself in a band," she says with a smile. "But it's nice,
because we all have other things that we do. Nobody's
committed to each other, but everybody wants to be there."
Performing with family members is business as usual for Donelly,
who began playing music in Rhode Island with her stepsister
Kristin Hersh; they formed Throwing Muses with Narcizo in
1983. Donelly shared guitar and vocal duties with Hersh and
wrote a song or two on each of the group's first four
albums. When her output outgrew the band, she left the
Muses and, after a brief stint launching the Breeders with
Kim Deal, formed her own band, Belly, in 1991. The group
was welcomed by radio and MTV in the newly alternative-
minded post Nevermind age, and supported by the single
"Feed the Tree," Belly's debut album, Star, won critical
raves and was certified gold.
Surprisingly, the group's 1995 follow-up, King, was met with
almost complete indifference. it was the music world's loss:
Fearlessly romantic and muscular, King is one of the great
underrated albums of the decade. Still, internal tensions
grew, and the foursome broke up a year later. "Part of the
problem was that we literally toured for two years straight,"
Donelly explains. "The first half of that was so much fun,
and then it really went downhill. Physically, I was shot -
I weighed 89 pounds. We just got at each other, and it all
fell apart. It's much more peaceful between us now."
Lovesongs for Underdogs carried the stigma of King and went
largely unnoticed. "The hopes were high," she says. "There
was external and internal pressure [for the album to] perform,
and it didn't, and so I felt it very acutely. I think it
took everybody - including myself - a long time to realize
that [the success of Star] was a fluke and not my destiny."
If Beautysleep offers a new beginning for Donelly, she's also
had plenty of opportunities to revisit the past lately. Hersh,
Narcizo and bassist Bernard Georges recently played live
as Throwing Muses for the first time in half a decade, with
Donelly joining her former band on a few songs. "We were both
in tears, and in hysterics," says Hersh. "We've been playing
together since we were 14, so it's automatic. It just felt
like home, like where we all should be." (There are rumors
that Donelly and Hersh might also reunite on a future studio
project.) And late this spring, Rhino will release a Belly
hits-and-rarities compilation. "I dreaded every single step
of getting it together," Donelly admits. "And once I sat
down to write the liner notes, I realized how much I love so
many of those songs."
This trend of reconciliation and rebirth has brought things into
perspective for Donelly over the past couple of years - and
if she wanders off course, Gracie is there to keep things in
check. "She corrects us constantly about what's the proper
thing to do in any given situation," the musician says. "When
we sit down in a resaurant, she hands me the knife and says,
'I'm not supposed to have this.' It's like she's raising herself."
Gracie's precocious wisdom and Beautysleep's effortless grace
promise bright futures for all of Donelly's offspring.
Beautysleep is out now on 4AD.
