TANYA DONELLY, "BEAUTYSLEEP"

I really couldn't bring myself to like Belly.  I could never understandhow Tanya could go from writing songs like 'Green' and 'Honeychain'—andbeing a beautiful, if edgy, foil to Kristin Hersh's life-affriming butbarely controlled mania—to doing bland indie-rock pap and appearing onMTV all the time.  Plus—she hasn't acquitted herself well over theyears: her solo debut 'Lovesongs for Underdogs' passed by like a45-minute Breeders b-side.  And now she's writing songs about being amother.  It doesn't look so good for Tanya.  Well, actually it does—she's finally come into her own, and'Beautysleep' could easily sit along Hersh's 'Sunny Border Blue' or'Hips and makers' as the finest non-Throwing Muses work since theybroke up.
"Life is but a dream" deftly turns mum-rock cliches into aseries of spooky metaphors that flit in and out of earshot over alooped heart-beat and barely-there guitars—a million miles away from"Feed the Tree".  The single "The Storm" sounds like Patsy Cline crooning with Lambchop -it is, in fact, the weakest song here.  "Moonbeam Monkey" seems to holdthe key to the album's heart: featuring the ghostly, disembodiedvocal's of Morphine's Mark Sandman—it segues directly into a recordingof her daughter playing a toy piano, succintly connecting life anddeath, loss and love, creating an aura of dazzled, but far from docile,satisfaction.  Then she rocks out on "Wrap-around Skirt" and yourealise how watered-down Alanis, Tori and Dido actually are.  Its justa shame we had to wait almost ten years for this (its been 10 yearssince TM's "The Real Ramona"!).  Tanya might not have thesame contorted dynamics or righteous fury as Kristin Hersh, but she'sfound her voice and has proved herself to be just as valid andneccessary as her wayward half-sister.

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