Tanya Donelly

Genre pop Publisher Beggars External Links Tanya Donnelly Beggars

If nothing else, Tanya Donelly is assured of her place in music history. In 1983, she formed the Throwing Muses with step-sister Kristin Hersh, which became the first American band to be signed to the prestigious British label 4AD, and one of the biggest college-rock bands during the 1980s. Not satisfied with this, she left the Muses at the start of the 1990s, forming The Breeders with The Pixies' Kim Deal, and releasing the seminal album Pod in 1990. Donnelly's time with The Breeders was short-lived; she left in 1992, and formed a new group, Belly. With their softer and more pop-inspired outlook on rock, their early singles were a success in the UK, and their first album, Star, was a worldwide hit. After the release of Belly's second album in 1996, Donelly decided that she wanted to go solo. Two albums followed: Lovesongs for Underdogs in 1997, and Beautysleep in 2002. Her third album, Whiskey Tango Ghosts, recorded in Boston at the end of 2003, is an attempt to strip away the baggage accumulated over twenty years in music, and a concentration that showcases her vocal talents. The result is a spartan, country-sounding record, often with nothing more than a piano accompanying her vocals, . It's a journey of eleven deeply personal songs of love, of loss, of growing up and coming to terms with what you have and what you are as your youth begins to slip away.

The tone of the album is set with the opener, "Divide Sweet Divide." Delivered with just Donelly's vocals and a piano, it's a downbeat response to a lover's pleas, wanting her to share everything with him. She needs the sense of separation, the divide spoken of in the title. The next few tracks build up the backing and themes slowly; "Every Devil" introduces a guitar alongside the piano, and "Whiskey Tango" includes drums, all while examining love and relationships. This is an album that is in no hurry to say what it has to say, preferring a slow burn rather than a frenzy of emotions.

It's not until the fifth track, "Butterfly Thing," that all the instruments come together with Donelly's voice to produce a wonderful song about the unlikely subject of chaos theory. It threatens to turn into a standard rock ballad at many points, but, in keeping with a lyric that promotes inaction: "If it's true a wire runs through each thing we do / Then I better stay in my room", it never takes this easy option, instead preferring to go in a different direction. This quirkiness makes it the stand-out song on the record.

Things take a change for the disturbing with "My Life As A Ghost." It's about growing old and accepting what you've become, but there's something very unsettling with how the song explores the idea; it's joyful about no longer having to fight life's battles, instead looking forward to when she can "lay my shield at your feet" and finally surrender, while a languid piano plays in the background.

Although Whiskey Tango Ghosts is not an album with lush and dense instrumentation, there are some additional sounds in the songs which lift them out of the normal country-tinged sound. The gentle Hammond Organ in "The Center," the driving percussion backing in "Story High," and the ethereal backing vocals in "The Promise" are examples of this; deft touches which make the songs much more interesting than the standard country fare.

The album comes full circle with "Fallout", which strips the sound back down to a guitar and vocals, and returns to the divide spoken of in the first song. Donelly's tired refrain of "I still want you / I always do / I always will / Is that enough?" feels raw and emotional, and ends the record on an unresolved note, as we wonder what the narrator's lover will say in response to this final plea.

Whiskey Tango Ghosts is an interesting experiment, and Donelly should be commended for taking a new approach to her music, but it doesn't completely work. The second half of the album is more interesting than the first; while Donelly has an excellent voice, it isn't as strong as, say, Neko Case's, and so it needs accompaniment, which the first few tracks on the album lack. As such, these songs tend to run together on a casual listen. Take time to explore it, however, and you'll find a rich lyricism and many gentle sounds to while away the icy-cold winter months.