Tanya Donelly
Tanya Donelly is New England’s consummate indie artist and can lay claim for the formation of three critically salient bands, starting in 1984 with Throwing Muses. In that group, formed with her half-sister, Kristin Hersh, her creative vision became a defining element of the alternative era as she created music that was both challenging and engaging using a mix of off-beat tempos and stark lyrics. More of The Clash’s Mick Jones to Hersh’s Joe Strummer, Donelly played lead guitar while sharing the vocals and her songwriting showcased her innate melodic sensibilities.
After four albums with the Muses, she formed The Breeders with Kim Deal of Pixies in 1989; the two had met when Throwing Muses toured with Pixies in Europe. Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain cited The Breeders’ first album, Pod, as one of his favorite records of all time. The band later recorded their best-known song, “Cannonball,” but by then Donelly had put together a band with former Rhode Island classmates in which she was fully in charge: Belly.
That group’s debut disc, 1993’s Star, featured the single “Feed the Tree,” which hit #1 in the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album reached #2 in the UK Albums chart and was nominated for the Best Alternative Album Grammy in 1994, the same year that the band was nominated for Best New Artist. The album went gold, selling over 500,000 copies in the US and over two million worldwide. In 1995, Belly appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.
After recording just two albums with Belly, however, Donelly broke up the band in 1996 and went solo, recording four albums and several EPs between then and 2004. She stepped back for a number a years to raise a family while occasionally performing live, then reemerged in 2013 with five self-released EPs called The Swan Song Series, recorded with a artistic partners including Bill Janovitz (of Buffalo Tom), John Wesley Harding, Dean Fisher, Rick Moody, Damon & Naomi and Robyn Hitchcock, among others. The series wasn’t her actual “swansong,” though, as she reunited Belly in 2018 to record the LP Dove and toured with the group to support it.
(by Oedipus)
