King

BELLY: “King” (4AD)

IT SEEMS clear at this point that the benevolent critical glow bathing Tanya Donelly and the inexcusably pedestrian music of Belly is entirely reflected.

It’s an easy mistake to make – her style does bear some slight superficial resemblances to those of her former bandmates Kristin and Kim (Deal, in the original, godawful incarnation of the Breeders), so you can understand why some insecure, overly tolerant people would be afraid to summarily consign her whole body of work to the dumper, just in case some of the wild-eyed soul of the former or the surreal, gleaming Pop perfection of the latter might have rubbed off on her, and they just haven’t managed to figure out where, yet. Well, it hasn’t. King is bland shite and a waste of everybody’s time.

Tanya Donelly is, on the evidence of her songs, one of those constantly, distressingly agreeable people, who smiles too much and thinks “If you can’t say something nice . . .” – she has, essentially, sold her soul to Gary Lineker. She is, for a pop singer, criminally level-headed. The contrast with her Cantonaesque half-sister, whom every second of the day overwhelms, is most unflattering; the quintessential Hersh lyric is “I’ve scaled the mountains, skied the valleys/I’ve done the highs and the lows,” (from ‘Houdini Blues’) while Tanya has settled in, and settled for, the foothills. Which is fine, emotional extremes are scary, disturbing places, but I don’t wanna hear about it. Life’s way, way too short.

The themes of her songs – nothing at all – are reflected by her band, who play a form of suitably vigourless jangly bollocks that is quite mesmerising in its lack of ingenuity. Combine all this with the Donelly vocals – pure, unsullied, at times angelic but more often just sterile and expressionless (she sounds like Natalie Merchant, and that, from me, is the final insult, 10,000 Maniacs being the spawn of Satan and all) – and you have a record to which I will never return . . .

Which leads me straight to the great big cop-out. Two songs out of eleven cut it, just. During ‘Now They’ll Sleep’, the single, Tanya spits, for once. “You know the shape my breath will take before I let it out” is a fine line, a sharp kick in the nuts for a very special friend with whom she has become deathly bored. The slight but mildly turbulent ‘Untitled and Unsung’ is the opposite, a purring seduction (“I know your heart/I want your pearly hand in my hair/We make a strange and furious pair/I know your heart/It’s just like mine was,”) with not only a slinky lyric and a good tune, but an OK arrangement also. Will wonders never cease?

What really bothers me about King is its lack of daring. When you’ve sold a million records and are financially secure and artistically independent, it becomes your beholden duty, on behalf of The Kids, to mess with some heads. Even Bongo knows this. King doesn’t. It doesn’t uplift, doesn’t depress, doesn’t challenge, it just trundles, and there is no reason for this but Tanya Donelly’s frightening lack of wit and adventure.

Towards the end of ‘Untitled . . .’ she sings “I’m drunk and the world is wild.” Drink some more, woman, or go away, for all our sakes.

• Niall Crumlish.