Feel It In My Gut: Belly's First Amazing Album in 23 Years

Belly - now

One winter day in early 1993, I stopped by Graywhale CD on the way home from work, as I was likely to do.  Some people go to bars; I went to the record shops.  As I browsed through the music selection, I listened to the music drifting over the speakers.  I didn't recognize it, but it was sweet and haunting and edgy all at once.  I went up to the record store clerk and asked, "What is this playing?  It sounds kind of like Throwing Muses."

The clerk looked at me like I was stupid, as record store employees are wont to do and said, "This is Belly."

In spite of my wounded pride, I bought their debut CD "Star" in silence.  I was no stranger to the music of Tanya Donelly, after all.  I may have been 23 and married, but I had a musical history.  I had owned "Chains Changed" on vinyl, the first Throwing Muses release on 4AD, at age 17, when I was the only person I knew who had heard their music.  I had seen Throwing Muses open up for New Order in 1989.  New Order pushed buttons; Throwing Muses was three girls and one guy, none of them barely over 5 feet, and they rocked the amphitheater.  I had met Tanya Donelly at Zia Records in Tempe, Arizona earlier that day.

I took "Star" home and gave it a listen with my wife.  Little did I know that this record would become one of my favorite records of all time, but definitely in my Top 10 for the whole decade of the '90s.  It seemed to define the '90s.

Tanya Donelly had always been a powerhouse in Throwing Muses.  Her stepsister, Kristin Hersh, had always written songs that were angry and ironic, eschewing traditional songwriting, while Donelly had written towering pop songs laden with hooks, as in the song "Not Too Soon".  This provided an integral balance to the band.

Belly - then

In 1990, Donelly formed the band The Breeders with Pixies' alumna and fellow New England rocker, Kim Deal.  Their debut release, "Pod", was a masterpiece of simple yet driven pop.  As the story goes, "Pod" was material written for the band by Deal.  The second album was to feature material written by Donelly.  For whatever reason, this did not work out, and Donelly left The Breeders, and the material she had written for the second album became the source for Belly's first album.

"Star" was an instant hit.  Anyone who was alive and paid attention saw that the singles "Feed the Tree" and "Gepetto" got regular airplay on MTV and alternative radio.  But the album - especially in retrospect - was much more than that.  It was dark and unsettling at the same time as it was sweet and saccharine.  Droney guitar riffs were offset by Donelly's Snow White voice, sounding like music that might be written by the creepy twins in "The Shining".  In other words, this album is beautiful, manifested in songs like "Angel", "Dusted", and "Low Red Moon", songs that still get heavy rotation in my collection.

Belly's second effort was a 1995 release called "King".  My wife and I loved it.  At the end of 1995, we moved off-grid, and this was one of the few CDs we took with us.  Not as brooding as "Star", it still contained the same effervescent pop riffs and catchy hooks that the previous album did.  It's still one of our favorite records, songs like "Red", "Silverfish", "Super-Connected", and "Now They'll Sleep" still have deep meaning to us, and some of our kids grew up listening to this music.  I guess not everyone felt the same way about it.  In the epoch of grunge, ironically, Belly was not mainstream enough, and Belly broke up soon after.  Not that my wife and I knew.  We were in our bubble in the desert and heard nothing about that until years later. In the interim, Donelly has been prolific and has released a whole collection of solo material, but that body of work is unfamiliar to me.

With revival of all things '90s, it was high time that Belly come together again - after all, their sound is again the "in sound".  Words can't express how excited I was to find out that a new album was coming.  The first thing I did last Friday morning, when I woke up, was the download the new release, "Dove".  And I have been listening ever since!

First of all, for people who are expecting "Star", don't get your hopes up.  Almost three decades have passed between the first album and the latest album.  It has been 23 years since "King".  With so much time gone by, of course Donelly will have changes as an artist.  She has had a lifetime of experiences since then, and she has always been a very honest artist.  Perhaps that is the strength of this band - they refuse to churn out a rehash of the same material.  Every album is a different beast, and that is a good thing.

"Dove" shows a tempered Donelly, not quite so angst-driven or moody.  The songs here scintillate, showing that she has not diminished as a song-writer.  "Mine" starts off the collection with as many hooks as anything she has ever written.  Other favorites include the infectious "Shiny One", as well as "Human Child" with a celestial bridge that separates this song from the others.  Some of Throwing Muses' strongest points where their occasional forays into country music, and "Artifact" doe's just that with amazing aplomb.  My favorite track is "Army of Clay"with its frantic intensity.  The album finishes off with an acoustic hidden tack called "Starryeyed" which demonstrates how Donelly uses her vocal range to create a wave of nostalgia.  And for a moment, I am swept through the decades since I was 17 years-old and have been on a musical journey with this woman since then.  And I am grateful for the ride.

The twenty-three year wait was worth it.  This whole album will be with me for a long time.  I recommend that you get caught up in this swoon with me as well.