Throwing Muses
Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
Excerpted from Melody Maker, November 2, 1991
Written by Everett True. Photos by Michael Lavine
Melody Maker is published by IPC Magazines
THE BREAK-UP
This isn't what I expected. I'd come over to Providence with Tanya Donelly, Kristin's half-sister and former guitarist with Throwing Muses, searching for the story behind her (and bassist Fred Abong's) recent departure from the band she's played with for pretty much all her adult life and I'm greeted with stories of jacked-off ostriches, the latest grisly murders, "lobster boils," and how David nearly got brainwashed on a recent trip to New York. No recriminations, no harsh words whatsoever.
It almost seems as though the split (which occured just before February's "The Real Ramona" album and tour, but was kept quiet on both sides, so as not to affect sales) was completely amicable, and this fact-finding trip is a waste of time: as far as meeting three such delightful, talented folk could ever be considered a waste of time.
The last ever Tanya Donelly / Throwing Muses interview takes place in a fish restaurant 10 minutes drive from Kristin's house. They aren't upset or maudlin or sentimental. They're precisely the opposite, in fact, excited at seeing one another again.
Does it feel weird without Tanya in the Muses anymore?
"Nothing feels weird about the Muses anymore," Kristin replies. "Throwing Muses seems to be a name for music now, instead of a name for a number of people. So much horrible stuff has happened to us, that none of us wanted to be in this band anymore. We all wanted to start afresh, but to give up the name Throwing Muses had earned for itself seemed almost self-indulgent."
(The horrible stuff Kristin's referring to is both business and personal: their old manager, her "bi-polarity," a former lover who was suing her for both money and custody of their son, and so on. Tanya also split from a long-term boyfriend earlier this year.)
Did you feel that the Donelly incarnation of the Muses had naturally run its course?
"Mmm," replies Tanya affirmatively.
"Yeah," reply David and Kristin simultaneously.
"It's not even musical differences," explains Tanya. "It's not even that dramatic. It's more like, direction. I want to do my own songs, but Throwing Muses is Kristin's band. In the beginning, that wasn't a problem. I'd write four songs a year as opposed to Kristin's 28, but now she's come down in quantity and I've gone up a little, so we're kinda equal."
What made you decide to finally leave, Tanya? Did you wake up one morning and think, "That's it. I'm no longer a Muse?" Did Kristin's solo dates (towards the end of last year) have anything to do with your decision?
"No," she replies. "It had been coming for a while. The decision was made before 'Ramona,' but I love that record and didn't want to sabotage it in any way. It was the kind of thing where you can't figure out what's wrong and then you realize it's because you want to do your own stuff."
And The Breeders is Kim Deal's thing, right?
"Yeah," the guitarist replies. "I always end up getting involved with strong women, and of course people like that are attracted to each other. But then it turns into a mini-struggle, and it's too bad it happens, but it's unavoidable really."
Was Kristin expecting it?
"I think so," Tanya replies, "She was great. Of everybody, she was the most understanding. Me and Kristin grew up together, we've been through familial upheavals that are far worse than this. My friendship with her and my sisterhood with her are far more important than this. We were fine about it; it was everybody else who got all emotional."
Does it feel strange, no longer being a Muse?
"No," she says. "If I'd quit at the end of the tour, then it might have done, because it would have been such an amputated experience. This way, we all had time to get over it. And the tour was amazing, because we knew it was our swan-song, and it was fun because it was our secret."
What was the high point of the Muses for you all?
"Probably the final year," Tanya replies. "It was so chaotic and so emotionally-charged, but it was also the most fun I had in the band. I'm a complete believer in change now, so much that I could see myself going overboard in that respect. There's something that's so freeing about it, and I've always been a person petrified of it."
Do you feel "Ramona" was your best album?
"No," replies Kristin. "It's very realized, and that's a great thing. But I really like 'House Tornado' for that reason too: it had very appropriate production, the songs are very realized and stylistically, they're very intricate."
THE SINGLE
The final release from the Donelly / Hersh Muses is "Not Too Soon," a four-track EP which also includes a rocking remix of their one Top 40 hit, "Dizzy" and a gently bewitching version of The Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry." As a choice of song, it seems a trifle ironic, considering it was one of two Donelly compositions from "Ramona."
"Oh, that was done beforehand," explains Kristin. "We wanted to finish this record - we'd kill our parents for this band - and we didn't want to risk anyone letting the record die because the band had changed."
But if "Not Too Soon" is to be swan-song, a better swan-song you could hardly hope to find. Described by Chris Roberts all those months ago as "The Go-Go's on acid," it's a sublime moment of pop perfection, both sparkling and unsettling, a magnificent example of how magical the Muses could be, even when turning their hands to the straight pop genre. One that gives hope for the future of both Tanya's and Kristin's new ventures.
FUTURE PLANS: KRISTIN AND DAVID
Kristin and David have already been working with Leslie Langston (the original Muses bassist), and they're planning on going back into the studio before Christmas, perhaps with Bob Mould - "And we'll sell a lot more than Tanya's record!" Kristin shouts over in the direction of her half-sister, where she's playing indoor basketball.
Are the future Muses songs going to be noticeably different?
"We do have our own realized style," Kristin says. "So whatever step it is, it is in some direction, but I can't tell you what it will be."
What's the influence on your songs right now? Having a baby?
"Most of them were written before the baby was born," the singer replies. "I never have a good answer to that one. They don't seem to have a lot to do with my life, how I sing them might."
FUTURE PLANS: TANYA AND FRED
Tanya and Fred will be working with Christopher and Thomas Gorman, brothers ("Male models!" exclaims Tanya). As yet, the band are nameless. They're planning to enter the studio at hte start of next year, with an EP to be released sometime next summer. As with the Muses, Tanya's band will continue to release records for 4AD. "The songs are written," Tanya reveals. "There are too many actually, but we haven't sat down together to work them through yet. 'Honeychain' (from 'Ramona') is like a bridge between the old stuff and the new. It's not as poppy as it was in the past."
Don't you want to be a pop star?
"No way!" she exclaims. "I thought I did for the longest time, but now I just want to be in a band that does my songs. I can honestly say it's not something I think about anymore. I want to be in a good band, because I've already been in two really good ones, but I don't want my face plastered everywhere. I'm the ugliest person in my new band, definitely."
What are the new songs about? Upheaval?
"Not so much," she replies. "A lot of them are stories -- I make up fairy tales all the time. One is about an old man who takes his heart out and throws it into the ground and a big red oak tree grows up and spins around."
(Laughter)
"Then there's one where a little girl rides her bike down the stairs and slams out her front teeth. So when she's buried, she's buried with her teeth. That comes from when I was a little girl and I had two little silver teeth, because I rode my tricycle down two flights of steps when I was three, for some reason, just took off and rode it down. When I'm writing songs it feels like there's a river which goes by me and I can pick out whatever I want from it."
THE FINALE
So, thrown by a lack of acrimony and sadness on either side, off we all go into the Rhode Island sunset to take what will be the last ever Muses photo session featuring Tanya Donelly. The sun is close to setting, geese are formation flying overhead and the reservoir is suffused with an incandescent glow, as if it knows it's witnessing something momentous, beautiful and poignantly sad. The end of a little era.
I stoop down to skim a stone across the water, and David admonishes me, warning, "Throwing rocks into the reservoir is just one way to get arrested in Newport, being a vicar and killing a whole family and stuffing them in the boot of your trunk is another."
Throwing Muses: four ordinary people creating perhaps the most extraordinary music in the world. And, maybe, from now on, there will be two extraordinary bands where there was but one.
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