belly

jangle rock? shoegazer?..

biography from www.4ad.com

"Donelly and her mates render a haunting avant-folk-rock sound that provides sonic and psychic space for Donelly's surreal meditations on birth, mortality and sexual longing." Rolling Stone

"Erotic, funny and direct...repeatedly evokes the terror as well as the magical innocence of fairy tales." Q Magazine

"Belly are a band you can really get your teeth into; thrashy as hell yet adorably transfixing. Casually they flit between kitten and killer, between a caress and a Cleopatra grip." NME

So singer, songwriter, guitarist and alt-rock goddess Tanya Donelly has requested that this old journo from her past write a little something to introduce this singular collection of songs from her late, much-lamented band, Belly. I couldn't be more flattered; Ms. Donelly (actually she's a Mrs. and a mother now, having married Juliana Hatfield's former bassist, Dean Fisher, a few years back) is the smartest and least pretentious rock star I've ever met. And, goddammit, pop music doesn't get much more seductive, poetically adventurous and full-on rocking than the catalogue Belly cooked-up during the course of just two albums (1993's Star and 1995's King) and a handful of B-sides during their four year career.

From their breakout hit, Star's jangly ode to r-e-s-p-e-c-t Feed The Tree (a song that propelled Tanya to Gap ad iconhood, the album to gold status, and the band to double Grammy nominations), to more ethereal fare such as King's exquisite, piano-driven Judas My Heart (heard here in French as Judas Mon Coeur), Belly was that rare band that you could dance to, scream to, or oh hell, lie back and just dream to as you tried to pin your own personal interpretations to Tanya's famously fanciful and twisted lyrics of love, lust and wayward children who decapitate dolls (that would be the delightfully insouciant Gepetto).

Named after Tanya's favorite word because, as she said back then, "It's both pretty and ugly" (and make no mistake, the quartet's quirky songs always consisted of exactly that paradox), Belly was a band in the truest sense: the secret to their success lay in the mix of personalities. First there was the lead muse herself - a shy, pretty, self-confessed "art chick" with hotshot credentials (by the time she formed this unit she'd already co-founded the legendary, post-punk Throwing Muses with her step-sister, Kristin Hersh as well as helped Kim Deal launch The Breeders). Then there were the Gorman brothers - childhood "skate-punk" friends of Donelly's who'd each spent time in Newport hardcore bands. Tom, lead guitarist and eldest of the two, brought his brooding intensity and power-pop licks to the table while Chris, the surfer boy drummer with an art degree, contributed his endlessly inventive rhythms and served as the band's graphics director. Last, but certainly not least, was the final addition and Muses’ bassist Fred Abong’s replacement, Gail Greenwood, another Newport native and rock-chick extraordinaire (she once had a broken arm set at a right angle in order to keep show dates) who's headbanging yang proved to be the ideal foil to Tanya's moony yin.

Unfortunately, "The force that pulled this group together and made it good - the differences in our personalities - was ultimately a centrifugal force, and we flew apart," says Donelly today. After an 18-month world tour in support of the criminally under-appreciated King (a sonic masterpiece crammed with shoulda-been hits) the foursome quietly called it quits (though Tanya still has an ever-percolating solo career and recently released her second album, Beauty Sleep). But - and the shimmering proof is in your hands - Belly's legacy lives on. Though for many the most familiar song here will be Feed The Tree, for my money the group's finest hour was the whirling, shamelessly hook-happy Seal My Fate. I'll always remember wandering an hour late into one of the band's New York Roseland shows while that number served as my glorious entrance music. And there they were, a wonderously user-friendly, pop-band-with-brains faithfully united in art and rock ‘n’ roll: Chris, shirtless and pounding away; Tom on the sidelines, as always, laying down one deliriously, echo-laden riff after another; Gail, swinging her red, white and blue hair and straddling her guitar like a latter-day Lita Ford; and in the middle of the hurricane, Tanya gazing soulfully skyward as she crooned, yelped and wailed in that astonishingly human voice that effortlessly pulled all the threads of the crazy package together. It was a beautiful thing, folks. And I'm proud as a papa to say I was there. BRANTLEY BARDIN - Los Angeles, California