throwing muses / belly / kristen hersh / tanya donelly

i’m in a throwing muses phase again. a few months ago i finally got into belly (what took me so long?) and realized the whole time i’ve loved throwing muses, i’ve totally overlooked tonya donelly’s songwriting and how fucking amazing she is.

ok, so the quick rundown for those of you who don’t know anything about her and kristen hersh, and their bands:

tanya donelly and kristen hersh are stepsisters. in the 1980′s, they formed throwing muses together, along with their high school friends david narcizo (drums) and leslie langston (bass). yeah, they started in high school! you don’t hear of that too often nowadays. tthrowing muses’ music is something that you really need to listen to in order to fully appreciate because there is so much going on! i definitely haven’t heard anything that matches their style, one of those incredibly unique bands. it took me a while to really appreciate them. most of their lyrics are written by hersh (tanya donelly only sings on a handful of songs of theirs) and kristen hersh’s lyrics are really intense, and from what i hear, are a major outlet for her schizophrenia she has had to deal with. throwing muses is still together but doesn’t play shows or release things as often. here’s a great jam of theirs, “dizzy”:

tanya donelly played with the breeders for a while, and went on to form belly. they’re another sort of indescribably unique band. i have a hard time at describing the sound of bands, so i feel like i can’t even put these two bands into specific genres. we have all this post-punk/shoegaze influence going on right now, where’s all the new bands that sound like belly and throwing muses?  belly has awesome lyrics in the same vein as throwing muses: often cryptic, hard to follow, somewhat surreal. and one of the L7 bassists is in belly! one of my favorite songs by belly, off of their first album “star,” here’s a live version of “dusted”:

kristen hersh and tanya donelly both have pretty successful solo careers also.