BEAUTYSLEEP

Tanya Donelly
(4AD)

RATING: four

Tanya Donelly is especially good at two things: love songs and lullabies. Her underrated solo debut, 1997’s Lovesongs for Underdogs, was just as its title suggested: an album full of subversive love songs that were surprisingly intelligent, richly textured, jagged and beautiful. And so it’s entirely appropriate that, for a follow-up, Tanya now turns her attention to her other specialty. Entitled Beautysleep, her second solo album opens with a track called “Life is but a Dream,” a gauzy, surreal track with a rhythm line that sounds like a sleeping heartbeat and ghostly sounds reminiscent of whalesongs. “Nothing ever ends/ nothing lasts forever,” Tanya sings, and while it’s not the kind of lullaby that put me to sleep as a child, but it’s the kind of philosophical puzzles that I like to torture myself with before bedtime these days. It’s only the first—and by no means the last nor even the best—of the many complicated lullabies for adults that populate this dark dream of an album.

Of course, she’s had some practice in the lullaby business since we last heard from her. Most of the five years between Lovesongs and Beautysleep found Tanya becoming a full-time mother, and it’s this love affair between mother and child that is celebrated in Beautysleep. Two of the album’s most striking songs, the first single “The Night You Saved My Life” and the carrier track “Keeping You,” are love letters to her daughter. Of these, “Keeping You” is the more stirring one: it is a quiet song, serene and sincere, and punctuated with surprising moments. “I’m keeping you,” Tanya murmurs quietly, before the restraint breaks and her heart opens up, singing “My return to wildlife by satellite/ by beautiful moon-shining girl.”

Of course, given the nature of her music, not all the lullabies in Beautysleep are quite so peaceful. “Moonbeam Monkey” takes its cue from the dark folk songs that used to scare children to sleep, and while “The Storm” is far sweeter than its title might let on, it’s still full of the kind of questions that are likely to keep you up at night. (“Moonbeam Monkey” is also notable for featuring Mark Sandman of Morphine, in one of his last vocal performances.)

As a writer and composer, Tanya shows a particular gift for imagery and melody, a great pairing tempered by the alt-rock flirtation with goth and punk that she started with Throwing Muses (where she was second banana to half-sister Kristin Hersh), and peaked during her years with Belly (which she fronted). Solo, she’s only been able to bring out nuances in her music, making her vocals float over the lushly textured, dark melodies of her guitar-based compositions. Her songs are sweet and sharp, inviting and frightening, dark and hopeful all at the same time, in a way that wasn’t always so clear with her band work.

Fittingly, there’s a hidden 12th track on the album that emerges like a dream fragment after the last song, incorporating some images and lines from some of the other songs for an acoustic anticlimax, finally drifting off to silence with a prayer—it’s a fine lullaby to end a fine album of subversive bedtime songs. It’s not for everybody; certainly not for those just looking for something to send their children off to sleep with. Donelly isn’t one for simple and easy; her lullabies are complicated and memorable. —Kristine Fonacier