I just find myself really attracted to beautiful music lately. That’s sort of what I would like to aspire to in the future. I’ve been listening to things like Wilco (pauses), well their quiet stuff, Vic Chesnutt and Victoria Williams. You know, beautiful songs. People like Gram Parsons.

Aug ’92 I borrow a compilation called ‘Independent 20’ from a friend on a snowboarding holiday. There’s a track on it by the Throwing Muses. It has a point where the singer’s voice hits the chorus and she sings the guitar line. It takes my breath away. This is Tanya Donelly’s contribution to the Throwing Muses’s stunning album ‘Real Ramona’.

“I’m proud of everything that I’ve done. Definitely. My timing has been very fortunate and I do feel really good about my history.”

Tanya Donelly has been part of a lot of music in her time. Her musical career started with the Throwing Muses where she played back up to the schizophrenic outpourings of her half-sister Kristen Hersh. The Throwing Muses were the first American band to sign to 4AD and, along with The Pixies, were part of a wave of bands that made the pre-Nirvana American underground scene the birthplace of alternative rock.

Since then she played in The Breeders with ex-Pixie Kim Deal on ‘Pod’, before forming her own band, Belly.With their first album, ‘Star’, they produced one of the most perfect albums of guitar pop and they were one of the first ‘alternative’ bands to do well in the proper charts.

Feb ‘93 Belly have just released ‘Star’ which has just gone in at number two and surpassed all expectations. They are playing a packed ULU and the crowd is waiting for a massive gig. Belly come on and start with two slow ballads ; a wonderful version of ‘White Belly’ and then ‘Low Red Moon’. Although this goes against all instincts it is superb and I still remember it now.

“It was really exciting and we had a great time. Yeah, we had a blast, but the scrutiny that’s involved after something like that happens to you is unbearable, really unbearable.”

At that point Belly seemed to be a gang. After their ULU gig I remember them coming back on stage with cameras and taking pictures of the audience and it didn’t seem like a group of people who had been in bands before, it seemed like a band who were doing all this for the first time. However, after recording ‘King’, their second album, they split up dramatically leaving each band member feeling bitter about how things turned out.

“We’re just getting to the point now where we’re comfortable with each other again. We’re slowly getting there. We’re all from the same home town and our parents all know each other and stuff. So, fortunately it’s not the kind of situation where you break up and you never see each other again and you have all this loss and regret for the rest of your life because we couldn’t get away with doing that even if we wanted to. I mean we see each other all the time and we’re getting to the point now where we’re calling each other up just to hang out with each other, which is nice because I do miss them.”

Belly was often thought of as Tanya Donelly’s band, but in reality, as they were all close friends beforehand, it belonged to them all. When there is this much invested in something and it comes to an end then it’s going to hurt.

“After Belly broke up I just fell apart completely for a couple of months and I didn’t touch a guitar and I didn’t listen to music and I didn’t want to have anything to do with anything. Then when I started playing again I found it really difficult. I started to realise then that I have to write everyday to keep tapped into the source all the time.”

When she did start to write again what emerged would become the basis for her new album .

Sept ’97 I’m in Tanya Donelly’s tour bus doing this interview and she’s just made a reference to the kind of music she wants to play. I ask her if she thinks she’s mellowing out. She laughs, leans forward and says ‘I think so.’ in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Being a solo artist is good. It’s very different. The biggest luxury that it affords me is to choose anybody I want, whenever I want them, for the rest of my life. Well, not anybody I want, but my options are unlimited now which is really nice.”

Tanya Donelly’s first solo album is called ‘Lovesongs For Underdogs’. It’s very good. It has those moments of pure Tanya Donelly pop on it like the single ‘Pretty Deep’ and ‘Bum’ but where it succeeds most is in the slower songs. ‘Mysteries Of The Unexplained’, ‘Acrobat’ and ‘Manna’ all ebb and flow gently, letting Tanya’s voice do the work and creating the atmosphere needed on a record called ‘Lovesongs For Underdogs’.

“I think with this record I sort of started to realise what my strengths and weaknesses are. For me I feel coolest when I’m playing a slow one and that’s when I feel I’m singing the most and those are the ones that always come out on the first take and just make me feel good.”

“I actually sequenced the record really methodically. I started it off with ground that I’ve already covered before and ended up with what I want to do more. More voice driven, ambient kind of stuff where you can’t tell what the instruments are.”

However, this new direction isn’t going to be a complete change of track, as we’ve all seen what happens when people start to think they can appropriate music which doesn’t come to them naturally.

“I don’t think you can make big jumps because it’s so painful when that doesn’t work and it falls apart. I watch my peers sometimes do that. Sometimes trying to make a trip hop record or a techno record and it’s just ... well, if it doesn’t come naturally to you then don’t try to do it just to sell records. That’s just the worst kind of failure.”

What comes out of this interview, though, is the fact that Tanya didn’t feel that she had the complete freedom to take her vision as far as it could go. It seems that the American record company would have liked a little more ‘easy to sell guitar rock’.

“Next time I’d like to have less outside voices. It’ll feel closer to my heart. I’m not going to really listen to anybody else next time. The people who played on the record aren’t the problem. It’s the people who don’t play music that are the problem”.

“To refer back to those higher voices, there are other people who have higher goals for me but I let them by ambitious for me because I am completely comfortable with doing this. And, you know, the less that you want, the more freedom you have which I’m learning now”.

This freedom means choosing whoever she wants to work with. There are numerous people who appear on the record including David Lovering from the Pixies, David Narcizo (the best drummer in the world) from the Throwing Muses and Tanya Donelly’s new husband, Dean Fisher. These last two also make up part of the band that she is touring with now.

“It is different (than with Belly) because the dynamic is really different. First of all, all these people are not hired hands, they’re friends of mine, well they are hired hands but they’re friends of mine. I’ve known everybody except Elizabeth for at least a decade so it’s very comfortable. It’s not like employer-employee type of relationship. This is the most adult band I’ve ever been in. Everybody’s kind of got their shit together for the most part. There aren’t any fragile egos or ...”

What comes after those three dots you can only guess, as it’s obviously a private thing, but for all the scars from the break up of Belly, Tanya Donelly seems remarkably together now. She knows what she’s going to do next, how she’s going to do it and who’s not going to pressurise her into doing something different

Sept ’97 Tanya Donelly comes on to the stage at the Leadmill and rather than launching into ‘Pretty Deep’, or one of the fast songs of her album she plays two old ones with just an acoustic guitar. Her voice rings through the Leadmill sending shivers up the spine.

Some things don’t change.

Tanya Donelly was talking to Ben, in October 1997.