Belly - Shiny Days

Tanya Donelly was born on July 14, 1966. A native of Newport, Rhode Island, she's an American girl chasing the dream of becoming a real musician. While still very young she moves with her family to California, where they frequent the hippie communes of San Francisco. Musically active from the early '80s, at just fourteen she starts writing songs and performing with her stepsister and peer Kristin Hersh (Tanya's father married Kristin's mother after both parents divorced) in small venues along the East Coast. Another move, this time to Boston, and Tanya and Kristin christen their artistic partnership "Muses," putting on an essentially acoustic, spoken-word-tinged show in the vein of what Patti Smith had already done.

Tanya Donelly + Kristin Hersh = Throwing Muses

In 1985, while still in high school, that idea evolves into the first embryo of Throwing Muses, with the recruitment of Black bassist Leslie Langston and drummer David Narcizo. The quartet's sophisticated harmonies soon win over the people at 4AD, an event that will allow the fledgling Throwing Muses to become the first American band to sign to the British label. By the end of 1986 the debut album is already in the can, with Tanya on guitar and backing vocals, a role she'll keep for the band's first four records, stepping away right after The Real Ramona (1991), the very album that will open the doors to a measure of success for them.

Donelly's compositions are simpler and more conventional than Kristin's, who is in fact the true leader. Tanya will rejoin Throwing Muses for their self-titled 2003 album, which marks the band's return after a few years on hiatus, during which Hersh had pursued a solo career. Their paths will cross again when Tanya agrees to open the East Coast dates of Throwing Muses' 2014 American tour.

Tanya Donelly + Kim Deal = Breeders

Before stepping away from the Throwing Muses experience, the hyperactive Tanya had already given life to the Breeders project, alongside Kim Deal of Pixies (her sister Kelley joined later, precisely to replace Donelly), with the aim of better developing their own ideas, a process made easier by the fact that both of their main bands were signed to 4AD. The Breeders idea wasn't a mere off-the-cuff side project, but rather a fully realized compositional unit, an outlet for the urges that remained repressed within their respective main bands, where the dominant figures were Black Francis (in Pixies) and Kristin Hersh (in Throwing Muses). Tanya and Kim managed to set themselves apart from the riot grrrl movement, then dominant in the female-fronted music world, becoming spokeswomen for a less shouty kind of existential unease, and in the process gaining solid visibility thanks to the warmly received debut Pod, produced by Steve Albini. Pod proved decisive in helping define a languid indie-rock sound, capable of combining indie-rock melodies with noise fragments. Not long after, the end of the Pixies adventure made the Breeders Kim Deal's main focus.

But this time too Tanya will leave early (getting the timing wrong, perhaps?), probably frustrated at finding herself once again in a secondary role within the group's hierarchy. The material she was writing for the Breeders' second album (which would become their landmark record, Last Splash) would become the starting point for the debut of her new creation, which she would name Belly, conceived this time without the help of other leading ladies.

The start up takes place in Boston in December 1991, when Tanya joins forces with bassist Fred Abong, who had already played with her in Throwing Muses, and brothers Tom (guitar) and Chris (drums) Gorman, all of whom she knew from high school. Tanya actually began working on the Belly project three years earlier, right after wrapping up the promotional tour for Hunkpapa, setting aside some sketches she felt didn't fit the Throwing Muses sound, working out a hypothetical synthesis that would somehow cross Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks and the typical alternative-rock sounds in vogue in the early '90s. Reports say Belly's first show dates back to March 14, 1992. That same year brought the signing with 4AD and the quartet's debut with the explosive Ep Slowdust, which introduced the world to their full potential.

From the early EPs to the success of Star

Slowdust was an immediate, extraordinary success with both audiences and critics, topping the UK indie chart, buoyed by some of the tracks that, re-recorded, would go on to grace the band's first album. Chief among them, the propulsive "Dusted", a true instant classic of early-'90s alternative rock. But "Slow Dog" and the more structured "Low Red Moon" were already establishing an aesthetic built on indie-rock guitars and pop melodies, playing a decisive role in spreading sounds that would become absolute touchstones for the entire decade.

That November, the Ep Gepetto repeated the success, giving Belly further visibility and paving the way for their debut album, which would arrive just a few months later.

Finally, in early 1993 came Star, which, boosted by the perfect single "Feed The Tree", climbed to number two on the UK's mainstream chart (number one on the independent chart) and went gold at home. Belly became a bona fide success story, and the songs from Star were all over American college radio.

The album was recorded over two sessions: the first in Nashville, the second in Liverpool, with Pixies producer Gil Norton at the helm. Aside from the already-familiar singles, which make up its most electrically charged portion, Star contains a couple of acoustic ballads ("Untogether", "Stay") and a few brief sketches ("Witch", a reduced version of "King", which had already appeared in longer form as a B-side) that give dynamism to a tracklist blending guitar-pop melodies with dreamier tendencies — essentially fusing the Throwing Muses experience with the more ethereal Cocteau Twins. It's an essential album in tracing the perfect balance between "alternative" rock and the more mainstream-leaning side of indie-pop. Beneath its sparkling pop veneer, Tanya writes songs with lyrics that are at times morbid and desperate: addicts, murderers, women in crisis — yet the danger is always kept at a safe distance, crystallized into vignettes meant to portray other people's pain in a "comfortable" way.

Star would remain Belly's creative peak, the record where, more than anywhere else, the band managed to distill their traits into a remarkably effective and fresh song format. Tanya, delicate and vulnerable in appearance, is also pretty and photogenic, the perfect counterpoint to the aggressive Courtney Love and the entire riot grrrl movement — media-friendly traits that wouldn't escape the attention of new fans, immortalized in photo shoots and the videos produced to support the singles' promotional rollout.

Star managed to sell more copies than any previous Throwing Muses record, and "Feed The Tree" — perhaps their most important song — earned the band two nominations at the 1994 Grammy Awards, in the "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Music Performance" categories, plus two Mtv Award nods. It's their peak of fame; for Tanya Donelly, it's the first project she could truly call and claim as her own, with herself as absolute leader: this really is her own personal creation.

In 1994, Belly were invited to take part in the Jimi Hendrix tribute album "Stone Free": for the occasion they recorded their own version of the classic "Are You Experienced?".

King and the decline

Right after the release of Star, bassist Fred Abong left the band, replaced first by Leslie Langston, and shortly after — due to her discomfort with life on the road — by blonde bassist Gail Greenwood, previously a guitarist in bands on Boston's hard-rock circuit. With Greenwood in the line-up, Belly stayed on tour for over a year, playing across the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan, and securing opening slots for acts with a bright future ahead, such as Cranberries and Radiohead. Greenwood's arrival gave the band's sound greater drive, and in summer 1994 they began writing material for their next record. King, released in 1995, again on 4AD, turned out to be rhythmically punchier than its predecessor, but with a more "traditionally rock" edge, partly due to the presence of producer Glyn Johns. King amplifies that "melancholy cheerfulness" that had already been the band's stylistic signature, perfectly suited to Generation X kids left orphaned by Kurt Cobain, throngs of post-adolescents with the fumes of grunge still clinging to their skin.

While still combining pop instincts with alt-rock upheaval, the song structures become more "classic", the average running time stretches out, and the quartet pays closer attention to the more introspective moments ("Silverfish", "The Bees"), but despite the presence of hyper-pop firecrackers like "Super-Connected" and "Now They'll Sleep" — not coincidentally chosen as singles — and midtempo tracks of extraordinary, undeniable beauty ("Untitled And Unsung" and "Judas My Heart" become wonderful anthems for broken hearts), the record doesn't quite match the sheer force of the debut album. The quality of the songwriting, which this time the whole band actively contributes to, isn't enough to let King meet the expectations of both band and label: in terms of sales, it gets squeezed between the dying gasps of grunge and the explosion of britpop, which hit American releases with unprecedented force — including acts like Belly, who had in some way gone along with, and partly even anticipated, that kind of sound.

Personal paths

When the results don't come, everything gets harder: personal conflicts and artistic differences began to undermine the band's stability, and by the end of 1995 they announced their intention to call it quits, after the last show of the tour supporting King, at the Dragonfly in Los Angeles. The prestigious Rolling Stone cover, the appearance on David Letterman's hugely popular Late Show, and the numerous shows played on both sides of the Atlantic (they even played in Italy) weren't enough to meaningfully boost the band's popularity. For this reason, in 1996 Tanya Donelly decided to put the band on hold, preferring to focus on launching her own solo career. The result was a series of well-crafted alternative folk-pop albums that established her as a respected cult musician, without ever bringing her a success bigger than the one she'd achieved with Belly.

The EP Sliding & Diving came out right after the quartet's breakup, in 1996, with 4AD confirming her as one of their roster artists, and just a few months later came her first solo album, Lovesongs For Underdogs. It would take five years, though, before the follow-up, Beautysleep, a work with a distinctly singer-songwriter slant, followed two years later by Whiskey Tango Ghosts and, in 2006, by the live album This Hungry Life. In more recent years she's self-released a series of digital EPs called The Swan Song Series, featuring collaborations with some of her favorite musicians and songwriters. The entire series was issued on physical formats in 2016.

Tanya now lives in Boston with her husband, bassist Dean Fisher (a member of Juliana Hatfield's band), with whom she often performs, and their two daughters. She works as a postpartum doula, a non-medical caregiver who supports women throughout the entire perinatal period.

After Belly broke up, Gail Greenwood spent three years playing bass with L7, before going on tour with pop-punk artist Bif Naked. Since 2002 she's played guitar in Benny Sizzler, a metal project with power-punk inflections. She lives in Rhode Island with her partner Chil Mott, with whom she plays in Benny Sizzler and works in graphic design, as well as being an active environmentalist and keeping two therapy dogs, Bear and Maurice.

Tom Gorman played for a short time with Buffalo Tom, and went on tour in 1999 with Kristin Hersh, before moving to New York to join his brother Chris (responsible for the distinctive artwork on almost all of Belly's album covers) and pursue a career in commercial photography.

The return

But the world hadn't completely forgotten about Belly: 2002 saw the release of the retrospective Belly's Sweet Ride: The Best Of Belly, which had the merit of giving a second chance to B-sides that deserved more visibility, such as "Hot Burrito #1", "Spaceman" and "Sweet Ride". For the delight of completists, the anthology also included the Hendrix cover "Are You Experienced?", a live version of "Dusted", a French-language reinterpretation of "Judas My Heart" ("Judas mon coeur") and "Broken", recorded for the soundtrack of the film "Twister – The Dark Side Of Nature".

Just a couple of decades after the breakup, on February 8, 2016, came a surprise announcement on the band's official website: Belly would return to live performance, with a handful of dates set for the following summer. It was only the first step: during those shows, a couple of new songs were performed, hinting at an actual recording comeback.

Dove came out on May 4, 2018, preceded a few weeks earlier by the single "Shiny One" and by an EP titled "Feel", released for Record Store Day. It's a fun coincidence that the Breeders, led by the Deal sisters, also returned to recording at almost the same time after many years, drawing a parallel that takes fans back in time. For both bands the stylistic axis has shifted very little, and the revival of that era, combined with a renewed vogue for the sounds that defined the '90s, is bringing them back to stages all over the world, including some very prestigious ones, like Primavera Sound in Barcelona and other major festivals around the globe. Twenty-three years without releasing anything is close enough to a geological era, but the 2018 version of Belly are anything but washed up: through songwriting that has remained sharp and engaging, they pick up right where they left off, with the same lineup, Gail Greenwood on bass and brothers Thomas and Chris Gorman confirmed on guitars (plus synth) and drums, respectively.

Dove doesn't sound, then, like the work of fifty-somethings chasing spare change to pay the household bills and their kids' tuition: it shows real punch and songwriting that's anything but dulled — just listen to the sumptuous "Army Of Clay", a post-grunge triumph packed with the kind of guitars that inevitably burrow into your head. There's plenty of brightness in the folds of "Shiny One" (enriched by slightly "meaner", at times shoegaze-tinged guitars) and "Human Child", buoyed by a chorus that leans toward the best of Fleetwood Mac, triggering once again the parallel between Donelly and Stevie Nicks. That college-radio indie-pop attitude shines forcefully again on tracks like "Girl" and "Stars Align", which plenty of emerging American teen bands today could well look to. The presence of several acoustic ballads ("Suffer The Fools", "Quicksand", the closing "Heartstrings") nonetheless shows a certain closeness to Donelly's solo work, pulling the Belly sound toward a certain Americana feel (see also the slide guitar on "Artifact") while avoiding pinning it down within the fenced-off territory of teen-spirit-plated indie-pop.

In June 2021, to celebrate thirty years of their career, Belly released Bees, a collection of b-sides and rarities, gathered together in a single release for the first time. Initially issued for Record Store Day 2021 in a limited, numbered edition, personally compiled by Tanya Donelly and co., Bees contains 19 tracks never before released on official band albums. Most of the included songs originally served as lavish b-sides on the first three EPs the band released for 4AD, between 1992 and 1993: "Slowdust", "Gepetto" and "Feed The Tree".

There's also room for the cover of "Are You Experienced?", recorded in 1994 for the tribute album to Jimi Hendrix, and for "Hushabye Mountain", released as a free download in 2017 and later included on the EP "Army Of Clay", which marked the band's return to recording after more than twenty years away. Bees shows the usual Belly approach: on one hand, perfect indie-pop songs, muscular and guitar-driven ("Sexy S", "Baby's Arm", "Broken"), ideal for tearing up American college radio in the '90s; on the other hand, melancholy-soaked ballads ready to break the heart of any post-teen listener, among them the unmissable "Sweet Ride" and "Hot Burrito #1", among the absolute high points of their discography. Much more than mere outtakes, this is the completion of the work of a project that deserved a far bigger success.

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