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Star by Belly
(4AD/ 1993)
There were few bands bigger than Belly during 1993, and Star
was one of those unlikely albums which somehow managed to break out of
the indie/ alternative/ art-rock ghetto to gain the favour of a wider
music buying public. The record subsequently sold in the millions across
the world.
Unfortunately, though I coveted Star, my purchasing power was
extremely limited during 1993 on account of the fact that I was eking
out a meagre living on the dole, with extra revenues generated by bits
and pieces of casual work and my co-ownership of an only marginally profitable
weekend bookstall on Camden market.
I'd chucked in my reasonably well-paid job as a music copyright administrator/
enforcer at the end of the previous year, to spend four months bumming
round eastern Europe and the near Middle East before returning to London
to pursue a far more creatively fulfilling and cash-strapped career as
a writer. I could go on about the follies of youth, but I was in my late-20s
at the time. All's I can say is that Henry Miller, whom I worshipped at
the time, has much to answer for.
I finally managed to procure my copy of Star the following year
from a stall on the other side of Camden Market which seemed to be selling
off excess Mute, 4AD and Sub Pop stock really cheap. I also bought an
Afghan Whigs album (can't remember which), but didn't really take to it
or probably didn't listen to it properly.
Belly had first come to my attention via the shimmeringly sublime single
"Gepetto", but I'd previously been a Throwing Muses fan (Belly's
Tanya Donelly had been a founding member of Th' Muses as well as indie
supergroup The Breeders), who I saw live at Manchester International at
the beginning of 1990. I went with my friend Jackie C and we took some
crap speed, the effects of which were negligible – but it was a
good gig anyway, with The Sundays as support.
So, having stepped out of the songwriting shadow of her half-sister Kristen
Hersh in the Throwing Muses, on Star, Tanya Donelly dispensed
with the unconventional song structures and jarring changes of tempo that
were characteristic of her former band in favour of more linear song stuctures
and a poppier, more expansive and ethereal sound. Which is undoubtedly
why the album shifted considerably more units than anything the Throwing
Muses ever produced.
But listening to Star, I can't help but feel that the miasmic, soft focus
nature of the record results in my attention drifting at times, in a way
that a more discordant and claustrophobic sounding Throwing Muses record
never would. I mean, I can't deny that Star has some truly gorgeous
songs such as the aforementioned "Gepetto", "Feed the Tree",
"Full Moon, Empty Heart" (once used to emotionally-charged effect
at the end of a episode of the hard boiled American cop show Homicide:
Life on the Street) and "Sad Dress", as well as agreeably
rocky workouts such as "Angel", "Dusted" and the fabulous
"Slow Dog" (apparently about a macabre and bizarre Chinese punishment
for adulterous women).
Then there's the dark, melancholic minor key beauty of the closing track
"Stay". Yet, in spite of all of these seeming riches, in the
final analysis I can't help but feel Star to be a little overlong
and – if I'm truly, truly honest – just a tad boring at times.
And that's something which I really had to struggle with myself to admit.
Copyright: Poke-in-the-Eye Publishing 2006