Tanya Donelly: Whiskey Tango Ghosts : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On her third solo album, Whiskey Tango Ghosts, Tanya Donelly sheds the shimmer of her old bands (Belly, Throwing Muses) and the gloss of her solo debut (Lovesongs for Underdogs). In the process, Donnelly achieves a different kind of ethereal sound, one stripped almost completely bare. Her sweet, waiflike voice takes center stage, winding gently along minimal instrumentation. Staying mostly in her lower register with only a couple of her trademark vocal trills ("Just in Case You Quit Me," "My Life as a Ghost"), Donelly's singing is surprisingly resonant, standing up to the album's spartan arrangements. Whiskey opens with restrained songs like the whispery, haunted "Every Devil" ("I can turn and be still facing the wrong way/Every devil in this house tries to call me out") and slowly incorporates pedal steel and percussion. By the disc's end, Donelly ramps up to full instrumentation, with rhythms that reflect the slightest hint of the travels in Central America that filled her days in between albums.