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Album Review
by SashaS
20-2-2002
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| In search of beauty... sleep |
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Tanya Donelly: 'Beautysleep'
(4AD)
Tanya Donelly bewitches with lyrics, vocals and sounds on her advice-to-women titled album
In a very short succession three albums by respected (and mainly successful) ladies will hit the stores: Alanis Morissette’s ‘Under Rug Swept’ and Jewel’s ‘This Way’ but I will pass by them willingly for this one by the dishy Tanya Donelly. ‘Beautysleep’ is the first album in five years due to a baby-taking care kind of business, an experience that has obviously fuelled and increased her creative fires.
Donelly has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. A founding member of THREE bands that were uncompromisingly weird and yet still stuck in the public consciousness (that’s Throwing Muses, Breeders, and Belly), Donelly’s practically an alt-rock Zelig. Like her half-sister, and fellow T-Muse, Kristin Hersh, Donelly works well with stream of consciousness, playing with words and concepts passionately as if the entire world were a dream sequence.
The previous album, a solo debut actually, ‘Lovesongs For Underdogs’ (1997) was perhaps a tad half-realised but this time it is back to the standard of her last band. There are 11 songs (plus a bonus) on ‘Beautysleep’ that use adventurous-but-beautiful backing that, combined with lyrics, enters one’s head with a determination to stay for the long term.
Each song is a solid magic moment, as splendid-but-delicate as a butterfly… Sailing on the ethereal sees of cheese it casts eminent spells, taking you deeper into surrealism while pointing out the fake sounds of progress. ‘Life Is A But A Dream’ sets the mood with a psychedelic fairytale voiced by a Gothic Doris Day, ‘The Storm’ sounds like a crystal clear brook you sleepwalk around, ‘I’m Keeping You’ uses a marching band drumbeat, alt. country is ‘Moonbeam Monkey’ that visits Tom Waits’s playground; ‘The Shadow’ closes it all so sensually…
Donelly’s backing band come from members of Buffalo Tom, Throwing Muses and Frank Black’s Catholics; her husband Dean Fisher is on bass, also co-producing alongside Matthew Ellard, for creation of a disc that so often hovers other-worldly. Golden (blonde) work…
8.6/10
Live date:
28 February - ULU, London
SashaS
20-2-2002
Tanya Donelly’s album ‘Beautysleep’ is released 18 February 2002 on 4AD
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