The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

A Belly Full: Tanya Donelly's Favourite Albums
Emily Mackay , May 2nd, 2018 08:12

As Belly release their first album in over two decades, Tanya Donelly guides Emily Mackay through 13 favourite albums, from Leonard Cohen to The Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush to Iggy Pop, The Bunnymen, Mary Margaret O'Hara and more

Leonard_cohen____various_positions_1525182611_resize_460x400

Leonard Cohen  – Various Positions
This is the one that everyone's like, "That's the dilettante choice." But I love it. For one thing, 'Dance Me To The End Of Love' is my song with my husband. That's our story, sort of. And 'The Law' is one of my favourite songs he's ever written. Maybe possibly my favourite song. Obviously 'Hallelujah''s on here. 'If It Be Your Will', I can't get through it without crying. I spent a lot of my adult youth trying to find a spiritual home, which required lots of homework, and reading, and visiting places, and trying to figure it out. And I've come to a place where I know that that's not for me. Unfortunately. I have my own cobbled together framework of what I believe, belief system, but this album I feel like was so important to me during all of that, in terms of another person who sort of ... It felt like here's another soul that's sort of going through the same endless list of questions. Before you know that list actually is endless. It really had a huge impact on grounding me during that search. And he does in general, to be honest. Not just his music, but also his prose and his poetry. I came back to him almost as often as to any world wisdom that I was looking into at the time. But this book sort of is a distilled version of that time of searching. It's hard to come to a point where you're like, "This is going to be internal and that's it." That's a hard place to come to, but it is my place.