pod

The Breeders brought the essentials and burned the field completely with the scrabbled salty spawn of this glorious sparking hot wire supersister sideproject.   Sisters Kim and Kelley Deal performed under the name during the early 80's in Dayton, Ohio.  Feeling overshadowed by Black Francis in The Pixies, Kim revisited the moniker when she decided to record with Tanya Donelly from 4AD labelmates Throwing Muses (who was likewise eclipsed by her step-sister Krisin Hersh) after the bands had toured together.   A demo tape recorded with violinist Carrie Bradley (from Ed's Redeeming Qualities),  bassist Ray Halliday, and three different drummers (David Narcizo, Mickey Bones, and Carl Haarer) led to a deal with 4AD (the label for both The Pixies and Throwing Muses) for which label head Ivo Watts-Russell gave them a budget of $11,000 to record an album.   

Watts-Russell explains:   "If you’ve met Kim, you understand why a record where she got more of a focus than she did in the Pixies would be fun to do. She’s an eccentric woman, very individual. I wouldn’t say that anything she decided to do would have been okay, but pretty much anything she decided to do would have been okay."

At this point they brought in Josephine Wiggs from The Perfect Disaster to play bass.   Producer Steve Albini agreed to helm the project and suggested Britt Walford from Slint (who assumed a pseudonym for the project) as a drummer.   Following a week of rehearsals at Wiggs's house in Bedfordshire, England; they recorded 'Pod' in ten days at Palladium Studios in Edinburgh, Scotland.   The sessions featured Kim Deal on lead vocals and guitar;   Tanya Donelly on vocals and guitar;  Josephine Wiggs on vocals, bass, and Spanish guitar ;   Britt Walford (credited as Shannon Doughton) on vocals and drums;  Carrie Bradley on violin;   and Michael Allen on backing vocals.     


Deal demurs:  "Being from the Midwest and Ohio, I’ve been in basements when I was 17. No girls allowed in the band, definitely. I heard a lot of mustachioed riffs. I love Black Sabbath...There are people who really know how to work a fretboard and have spent years in the bedroom learning “Black Dog.” I prefer melody. If I had to choose between a simple melody and a really complicated rudiment sitting in the middle of a good song, I would prefer a simple melody every time...Pixies fans didn’t know about the Breeders. Maybe they did in England, but I don’t know. Josephine said, 'Because of the goodwill Kim had from the Pixies, she went ahead with Breeders.' And I don’t recognize that. I don’t think Pixies fans knew. For the longest time I don’t think people realized I was the same person."

 'Pod'  charted at number seventy-three in the Netherlands and number twenty-two in the UK.  Donelly would leave the band and Throwing Muses to form Belly.  Donelly jokes:   “The devil refuses to do business with me.  I’ve been very lucky to know the people I’ve known, and to choose and be chosen by some incredible songwriters and musicians and artists, starting with my amazing kickass sister and then all the good things that followed. I am always very consciously grateful for this, corny as that sounds ... [The formation of Belly] had more to do with the logistics of everyone releasing their songs. We had our outlets for that. There was never a point where I ever expected to start releasing those kinds of songs with Throwing Muses specifically. The Breeders was a different story. The genesis of that band was going to be that Kim would have an album and then the next one would be my songs. And in fact all of the demos for Star say “The Breeders” on them. Like, on the reels and on the boxes. Because that was supposed to be the second Breeders album originally...It was unnamed at that point, it wasn’t called “Star,” but those songs were all demoed under the Breeders name and Kim actually played on a few of the songs.








"Hellbound"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m_HPFUjbb0




"When I Was A Painter" / short interview / "Iris"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXYjys3bI1k






'Pod' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpSpZ2Q17Fc




All songs written and composed by Kim Deal, except where noted.

00:00 - Glorious (Deal, R. Halliday)
03:27 - Doe
05:35 - Hapiness Is A Warm Gun (Lennon–McCartney)
08:24 - Oh
10:54 - Hellbound
13:17 - When I Was A Painter
16:45 - Fortunately Gone
18:33 - Iris
22:05 - Opened
24:36 - Only In 3's (Deal, Donelly)
26:35 - Lime House
28:23 - Metal Man  (Deal, Wiggs)

star

Belly made a beautiful noise with the dreamy jangle pop and foreboding folk of this stellar sanctification. Tanya Donelly had always been the pop counterpoint to her stepsister Kristin Hersh's more intense visions in the Throwing Muses. She had worked with 4AD labelmates the Pixies' Kim Deal to form the Breeders; but after 'The Real Ramona' (her last album with the Muses), she found herself ready to start her own group.

Donelly recalls:   "Throwing Muses started out as a Rhode Island band with Gary Smith who produced us at the time, he’s actually my manger now. He was a Rhode Islander as well and he kind of urged us to go north because there just seemed to be more of a music scene going on in Boston at that time. We were getting a lot of press in Boston already even though we hadn’t reached out yet...And then we got signed to 4AD and things started to really pick up and it became full time for us... I was there a long time. You know, my sense of chronology is very poor. We recorded four records and then a few EPs as well. And I left in 1990...Kim and I formed the Breeders while I was still in the Muses. Originally it was supposed to be a side project. The way we were going to work it was Kim would write the first record and then I would write the second record. But then I left the Muses, and I wanted to find something else full time. Kim stayed in The Pixies for another year. So the group of songs that was going to be the Breeders second record ended up being Belly’s first record."


Donelly got together with her childhood friends Tom and Chris Gordon, who had been in Newport hardcore bands. She also brought in Muses bassist Fred Abong. The sessions were produced by Belly, Tracy Chisolm, and Gil Norton at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, Tennessee and Amazon Studios in Liverpool, England with Tanya Donelly on vocals and guitar; Thomas Gorman on guitar and organ; Fred Abong on bass; Chris Gorman on drums and percussion; with Chick Graning on guitar, slide guitar, and vocals and John Douglass on violin. Donelly says:   "Nashville, that was to be near Chick (Graning, former lead singer of Anastasia Screamed and her betrothed) and we recorded in Liverpool because the studio there was one that Gil Norton wanted to use, so...” After the recording of the album, Abong left and was replaced by Gail Greenwood on bass.

'Star' sold more than fifty thousand copies in the first week, eventually moving eight hundred thousand copies in the US and two million worldwide. The album was nominated for the Grammy for Best Alternative Album and Belly was nominated for Best New Artist. 'Star' went to number two on the UK album chart and number one on the US independent chart. Donelly considers:   “I think that the moments the album songs are not necessary the darker moments of my childhood. I mean a couple of songs, a couple of instances. I am not really obsessed with my childhood feelings but I do pay attention to other children. In a way, all of the childishness and stuff I never let go, I mean I never forced it out of our system, the way some adults are forced to force out of their system. There are only one or two tracks that refer to childhood, one refers to my childhood but, the other track is about other children that I know.”







http://bellyofficial.com/


www.facebook.com/tanyadonellymusic













"Feed the Tree" went to ninety-five on the US pop chart, number forty in the UK, and spent six weeks at number one on the US modern rock tracks chart. The video was nominated at the MTV awards for Best Alternative Video VMA and the band got a nomination for Best New Artist VMA. 










"Gepetto" carved its way to number eight on the US modern rock tracks chart. 







"Slow Dog" ran to number seventeen on the US modern rock tracks chart. 






"Dusted" 









"Low Red Moon" 











'Star' 
full album:



Belly-Star (Full Album) by dm_502099d9e14de

All songs written by Tanya Donelly, except where noted.

1.Someone to die for
2.Angel
3.Dusted
4.Every Word
5.Gepetto
6.Witch
7.Slow Dog
8.Low Red Moon
9.Feed the Tree
10.Full moon
11.White Belly (Fred Abong/Donelly)
12.Untogether
13.Star
14.Sad Dress
15.Stay