If there was a competition for the face of the 1990s, Tanya Donelly would certainly be in the running. For the first half of the decade she pouted from the cover of every conceivable music magazine. Her Marilyn looks helped, as did the fact that she was in three bands: Throwing Muses, then Belly and grunge era supergroup the Breeders.
That all seems a very long time ago. Donelly has taken five years out to have a baby. The face, however, is bearing up well. As for the voice, her crystal murmurings would charm the most virtuous Catholic priest out of his cassock.
Of late her appeal has become - in Spinal Tap terms - more selective. Nevertheless, the intimacy of this rare appearance is lapped up by her fans.
In her art (and in Throwing Muses), Donelly was always overshadowed by her less cute, weirder stepsister Kristin Hersh, whose bipolar disorder caused her to have hallucinations and seizures. But Donelly grew up in the same apparently LSD-soaked commune, and her songs were not without disturbance.
Now, though, with an almost content second solo album, Beautysleep, she seems rather happy. At one point she calls out: "I'm staring at somebody's face because the light is shining on your glasses. Don't be frightened. There isn't a restraining order on me!" When someone shouts "Marilyn", she sings a whole verse of Candle in the Wind hilariously appallingly.
It's left to her songs to conjure up the spookiness. She can pen a wonderful line ("I'm unstable, you seem able"), and there's plenty of material here that suggests, for example, that Catatonia didn't steal only from Blondie.
Donelly, though, would never get a job in quality control. Wraparound Skirt is a hideous dirge, and there are two too many dull country numbers, although The Storm and Keeping You are glorious. Donelly fits in with neither today's scene or aspects of her past, and Belly's track Slow Dog intrudes like an abusive, unexpected guest.
Perhaps her message now is that it will be all right in the end. This is certainly the view of her audience: ageing indie kids who queue up for autographs, which she dispenses with a becoming smile.
