And in fact, she shows up in the Washington Post today! Sounds to me that, if she does hit DC, it will be at the Sushmere.
Quick Spins
Wednesday, August 11, 2004; Page C05
Quick Spins, Washington Post
Wednesday, August 11
WHISKEY TANGO GHOSTS
Tanya Donelly
Move over, Norah Jones and Alicia Keys: Tanya Donelly, indie royalty for a couple of decades, is upping the adult-vocal ante. While her confidently rendered yet delicately beautiful collection of songs is too friendly to kick the younger songstresses to the curb, it shows the benefits of experience over youth.
Right off the bat, as Donelly intones over gentle piano chords, "I have lost something on the way, and I can't explain," she lets simple description and rich vocals carry the themes of "Divine Sweet Divide." Tension between the ethereal and the mundane creates the album's exquisitely evocative mood.
Donelly often employs magical imagery, in these songs and elsewhere, but it's the earthly descriptiveness of "My Life as a Ghost" that makes the song's title line so eerie. The album bears no producer credits, but whatever powers were involved placed Donelly's light soprano high in the musical mix, with any waiflike frailty superseded by a mature sound and attitude. Over its course, as its tracks become more instrumentally complex, the musical effect is somewhat blunted; by Track 8, "Golden Mean," the brushy percussion and shimmery guitars sound a little like Coldplay -- and a little cold. But the tense vocals, jangly guitars and hand percussion in an almost baroque arrangement of "Story High" remind the listener that Donelly has breadth as well as depth. She's a chanteuse for the ages.
-- Pamela Murray Winters
