Tanya Donelly's forte is that she doesn't lie. She doesn't stretch the truth.
Realising that information is the best form of disinformation, she drops clues to lead you astray. Like tea
leaves, horoscopes or answer-phone messages from errant lovers, anything you damn well please can be
read into her songs.
But as her first solo expedition, Lovesongs For Underdogs, reinforces,
her lyrics aren't ambiguous because she's evading interpretation; rather, she's trying to foster as many as
possible. Her confession in "Goat Girl" - "I wanted a lion but got a man who wanted a gazelle" - may
actually be pretentious, meaningless or both, in context though, it sounds like a heartbreakingly accurate
expose of 1990's affairs.
Of course, there's nothing new here but then Donelly's talent was always
to startle us with the old. To shed fresh light on the familiar, the average, to make us realise just how
compelling normality can be, to make us value the unvalued.
