Man, it's gross when mom and dad act cute together. She has to grab his butt every time he's brushing his teeth, and he always has to shout upstairs for "one last kiss!" before he heads out the door. Or there's the way she sings to him in the kitchen, "Let's just gaze in the space between your face and mine," and then they smooch 'til everyone's sick. It's great that they have marital bliss-- most couples sure don't-- but do we have to watch it?
"Suddenly I'm in a sea of honey pouring down on me," sings Tanya Donelly, and I'm glad she's enjoying that Bath & Body Works gift certificate. All this cooing has the intimacy of a living room music session, with Donelly and hubby Dean Fisher leading a mostly acoustic set of guitars, piano and pedal steel. (That's the Throwing Muses' Dave Narcizo on drums, but he's mostly passing through on his way to borrow the weed whacker.) And as always, Donelly gives us her exquisite punky-pop soprano, which stands on its toes to scratch off a piece of heaven.
But even if her solo work has grown calmer and more domestic over the years, she's still handy with a ballad-- especially in the stunned ache of "Divine Sweet Divine" or the melody of "Every Devil". The title track moves with a nice sashay, but as on her other solo albums, she frontloads the breathtaking songs: Whiskey Tango Ghosts stays satisfied, to the point of sounding undifferentiated. The choice to record this with a small ensemble and spare production makes it cozy, the swells of passion never hit as hard as they should, or sound as lush as they did on 2002's Beautysleep. Donelly sings about a love so strong that she almost loses herself in it, but the music doesn't follow her.
It's hard not to compare this album to her half-sister Kristin Hersh's acoustic set, The Grotto, which came out last year on 4AD: Both use stripped-down bands, but more importantly, both albums are focused on marriage. Hersh's record prodded the difficulties and tensions in any relationship, healthy or otherwise, and caught the times that you doubt how healthy it is to begin with. By contrast, Donelly sings as if she's just a week past the wedding and they're still unwrapping each other like presents. Her marriage is her balm. She hints at bad memories and anxieties-- the "devils" and "ghosts" that float through the lyrics-- but that's all firmly in the past, and her husband is the rock she can turn to, the presence that saves her from rattling around the house alone.
Tanya Donelly has earned her contentment. But where does she go from here? Even to a married guy like myself, whose take on the ties that bind falls somewhere between the Hersh and Donelly perspectives, Whiskey Tango Ghosts' happiness overplays its hand. The note of doubt cast by the last song, "Fallout", barely sinks in before you hear the bonus track-- a brief a cappella performance of "Dona Nobis Pacem" ("Give Us Peace", for those of you who missed glee club), where Donelly's seraphic voice ushers us away from a domestic scene cast in a snow globe, whose glass must not, will not break.
