Tanya Donelly Discusses the Reunion of Belly, Her Work With the Breeders and Throwing Muses, and Her New Triple Album

— -- Earlier this year, the internet was lit ablaze when it was announced that '90s alt-rock band Belly was reforming with its classic line-up intact, recording some new music and going on a summer tour. The band had broken up shortly after the release of their second album, “King,” two decades ago. Their debut, “Star” had been a huge alt-rock and college-radio hit, spawning a lot of play the singles “Feed The Tree” and “Gepetto.” “Star” was one of the most buzzed about albums of 1993, so much so that when “King” came out two years later, the band landed on the cover of “Rolling Stone.”

In the mid-'80s, Belly’s leader Tanya Donelly emerged from the Boston rock scene with her stepsister Kristin Hersh in the band Throwing Muses. Donelly would leave the band in the early '90s, in the meantime helping Pixies-bassist Kim Deal establish the Breeders. (She was on the band’s 1990 debut album, “Pod.”) Wanting to establish her own voice, she would leave the Breeders and be replaced by Deal’s twin sister Kelley.

After the breakup of Belly, Donelly had a successful solo hit in 1997 with the song “Pretty Deep” from her album, “Lovesongs For Underdogs.” That album was followed by 2002’s “Beautysleep,” 2004’s “Whisky Tango Ghosts,” and the 2006 album, “This Hungry Life,” which was a live recording. After a prolonged period of silence, Donelly quietly re-emerged, releasing a string of EPs dubbed “The Swan Song Series.” These were songs recorded with various friends and her husband, Dean Fisher, of the Juliana Hatfield Three. From 2013-2014, she dropped five separate EPs. Those five collections plus more material are collected on her new three-disc album, “The Swan Song Series,” which gets released on May 20th.

I talked extensively over the phone with Donelly about the “Swan Song Series,” Belly’s reformation, and her career.

You’ve got kind of a double existence going on right now between the reformation of Belly and the “Swan Songs” set!

Yeah. [laughs] It’s a lot.

I figured Belly would come back because of several things that happened. I saw that you were quietly releasing the “Swan Songs” EPs, your husband Dean did really well with the Juliana Hatfield Three reunion last year and you appeared onstage with the Breeders a few years back. Tell me how the Belly reunion happened.

It comes up every five years or so. This time [drummer] Chris Gorman said, “There’s going to come a time when nobody’s gonna care anymore and it’s not going to be an option, so let’s just do it.” So that’s why we kind of jumped on it. And you know, we’re in a different place now personally, so it is much more peaceful, harmonious and fun again.

You see a lot of bands from the '90s coming back and making records that are as good or better than the records they made in the '90s. The Veruca Salt record that came out last year, “Ghost Notes,” was excellent as was Dinosaur Jr.’s album “Farm” in 2009. I think a lot of those '90s-style sounds are coming back in newer bands as well.

Yeah. I think Buffalo Tom’s last record was amazing! That is true. We aren’t talking about making another album right now. We have written a handful of new songs together and we are going to do something with that. The original plan was to release them one-by-one on our website, but then we sort of felt like maybe we should just hang onto it and see what we’re going to do. So it might be an EP or… We’re really undecided on how the new music is going to be released.