Beautysleep

Beautysleep

While it's tempting to suggest that Tanya Donelly tore a page from her stepsister and former Throwing Muses partner Kristin Hersh's songbook for the excellent but overcast <I>Beautysleep</I>, the observations culled here clearly owe to the vagaries of life (and motherhood) rather than the demons of mental illness. Even for a singer-songwriter as versatile as Donelly--contrast her trailblazing, protofeminist punk with the Breeders and the technicolor splatter of Belly--<I>Beautysleep</I> is a simmering stunner, filled with dusty corners, fickle rhythms, stark images, <I>and</I> a haunting duet with late Morphine singer Mark Sandman. That song, the minor-key epic "Moonbeam Monkey," is all the more unsettling thanks to Donelly's own gauzy voice, which stalks the song as much as sings it. "The Night You Saved My Life," meanwhile, seems to float by on a pleasant cloud of acoustic guitar until the lyrics sink in. And the woozy, spooky "Another Moment" is probably the best song the Cocteau Twins never wrote. Instruments such as mellotron and glockenspiel keep the oddball quotient high, but <I>Beautysleep</I>'s real payoff is Donelly's angular songwriting. She seldom holds back the curtains to reveal sunshine, but she makes the most of the candlelight at hand. <I>--Kim Hughes</I>