Taking Sides: Belly's "Star" vs "King"

Ramzi, I'm looking at you.

KING.

not even close. i like star but king is really one of my favorite records from that '90s alt-rock era. i can listen to "now they'll sleep" 10 times in a row.

between the two-a yiz i may have to look into this "belly"

i just now listened to half of king on the way home (including "now they'll sleep" twice). yup, still sounds good.

There's a lot of great moments on "King," and the highs are really high, but for me, "Star" just holds together better as an album, as a sort of statement of intent by Tanya Donelly, and as an outgrowth of what she had done on the previous two Muses albums. And while I like Glyn Johns, there's just a certain darkness on "Star" that just appeals to me a little more than what Johns did with "King."

star craps all over king. beyond 'now they'll sleep', the latter does not all that much for me

thanks alfred. there's no question here. the sound of star is far more unique, textural and ephemeral than the live band feel to king. and pancakes is dead on with the darkness. songs like Low Red Moon, Full Moon Empty Heart, Sad Dress, Untogether, Slow Dog and Witch are easily some of the most enthralling moments of Tanya's career.

full moon empty heart is an incredible song

and by ephemeral i mean ethereal, obv

i mean, there's just nothing like the mood she sets in Low Red Moon when she screams "now i've got strong arms -- strong arms for a girl" or "low red moon, how can you sleep like a baby? sleep like a baby"

i'd probably go 'star' just because i listened the shit out of it when i was younger

i love a lot of songs on star, but overall it feels wispy and unfocused compared to king. the lyrics seem more adolescent -- part of their charm, admittedly -- like she was emptying out all the notebooks she'd kept since high school. where king is all growed up -- the title track, e.g., is a completely adult vision of sexuality. and i think king perfects her fractured song structures, all the signature changes and everything.

plus of course it just rocks harder.

also i saw belly on the king tour, atop a three-band bill with teenage fanclub and that dog. good show.

Pancakes OTM upthread, but, damn, "Super-Connected" and "Untitled and Unwise" are amazing, especially the latter, on which Donnelly sounds truly witchy.

"King" used to be one of my favourite songs when I was a teenager...though now I'm thinking "Red" wz prolley even better...

so i saw belly on the king tour, atop a three-band bill with teenage fanclub and that dog. good show.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Sunday, February 22, 2009 6:09 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'd be there when the doors opened for that one!

red was always my favorite song on king. and super connected is great. and the bees song routinely made me cry.

i love a lot of songs on star, but overall it feels wispy and unfocused compared to king.

wispy and unfocused = atmospheric and somewhat sprawling, which is what makes it fucking amazing. it definitely still has "focused" pop nuggets tho.

I really don't know which of these albums is better. I'm listening to Star now for the first time since it came out, and I used to adore it back then. I've played King many times over the years. I'm just not sure one album is really better than the other one.

God, Low Red Moon is devastating. Just devastating. Very goth, too.

Oh no, White Belly is killing me. Oh no. I'm worried there will be more songs towards the end here that will kill me, too. White knuckles, edge of seat. Speechless.

i know, i forgot to mention White Belly. yum

and that Slow Dog is just a perfect jangly gtr pop song, to the T

not to mention Someone To Die For!

(that's what it's called i think)

it's just -- the songs on Star breathe a lot more than King's do. you can feel the weight of her emotion in all the room on the album.

God, Low Red Moon is devastating. Just devastating. Very goth, too.

― Gothy McGoth (Bimble), sábado 28 de febrero de 2009 19:31 (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Quoted for truth.

UGH YES.

WANNA KNOW WHY I CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT

is that your final answer?

"Feed the Tree" was my fave song @ age 14, I heard it the other day and it was an IV of giddy puppy love. How the hell did I forget abt that song? I got Star and it is so good an album. I didn't even know they did that song; I assumed Belly was some shit generic Sub Pop act bcz of their album covers.

It's not on either of these albums, but I'm listening to the song "Sweet Ride" and it must be the most beautiful thing Belly have ever done

also the cover oh 'hot burrito #2'

anyway, King is a solid record; 'Star' is some kind out of-of-the-nowhere masterpiece

I love them both -- quite different albums.

Love King, never been able to get into Star much.

just the reverse for me. King does nothing for me at all. I prefer Lovesongs for Underdogs to it. Star ranks with the best Muses albums.

Recently listened to Star for the first time in years and kind of fell for Every Word, this odd assembly of three or four simple (and barely connected) parts, but each one is great, especially the “these chairs / these eyes” section.

Star def has the benefit of being, I assume, a backlog of songs she'd had in her pocket from years with the Muses that never made it to those albums.

King has always been my fave, though as much for the Glyn Johns production as the songs (I love the songs on Star, too). I liked them as a chunka-chunka rock band.

Oh hey I said more or less the same thing on this thread 8 years ago. How time flies.

I forgot where I read it but let me paraphrase my memory:

Pod was released on 4AD (Kim's label) but because of label contracts Tanya couldn't get any song writing credits, and Star was released on Elektra with Kim not getting any song writing credits. Supposedly the demo reels of Star are labeled as "The Breeders - Star".

Weird, cos Star was on 4AD in the UK, and the Pixies were on Elektra in the US I thought?

I am on Team Star btw. King was a big disappointment, and I didn't like the first solo album at all (never listened to anything after that)

Give the first solo album a second chance. I did last month after years of dismissing it as wan.

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but I really liked the lead song Bum off the Sliding & Diving EP that came out before the album, so I was looking forward to the album, only to find the version on the album was nowhere near as good and the rest of the album was worse. But yeah, that was 20 years ago, I might think differently now!

Team King. But it was the first Belly album I heard and crushed on heavily, before listening to Star. That probably makes all the difference.

Weird, cos Star was on 4AD in the UK, and the Pixies were on Elektra in the US I thought?

― Colonel Poo, Monday, November 27, 2017 1:32 PM (thirty-one minutes ago)

I may have (read as: probably) mixed those up. But yeah, contracts got in the way of song-writing credits and the read between the lines is that Tanya co-wrote a lot of Pod and Kim co-wrote a lot of King.

I'd love to see those credits!

fwiw Tanya Donelly is credited on Only In 3's, but maybe there was some allowance for 1 song per album or something

I thought Tanya Donelly said the agreement was Kim Deal would write the songs on the first Breeders album, and Tanya would do the second. But after Pod and the Safari EP, Deal was touring with the Pixies and Donelly didn't want to wait so she recorded Star instead. Deal was on some of the demo versions of Star, but AFAIK her work doesn't appear on the finished album and she's not credited on any songs.

All four bands (Throwing Muses, Pixies, Breeders, Belly) started on 4AD and were always on 4AD. So it's odd they wouldn't be able to assign songwriting credits however they wanted, at least in the UK.

yeah Kim didn't play on anything that wound up on star AFAIK

fwiw there's a demo version of "White Belly" up on Fred Abong's website and he writes:

White Belly Demo:

An oldie (1991?). If I remember correctly, this is me on guitar and Tanya on vocals (obviously). I think we recorded this at Fort Apache as a demo that eventually became the full band version on 'Star'. The very cool lead guitar stuff was, I believe, the brainchild of Kim Deal - but I could be wrong about that. Anyhow, I like the spare spookiness of this version, and was always impressed by Tanya's ability to take my basic chord progressions and turn them into a real, fully compsed song. She did the same recently with 'Snow Goose and Me', which is something of a return to 'White Belly' territory.

(doesn't really answer the more general question but I happened to check his site when this thread was revived 2 days ago and it was the first I'd read of Kim's involvement or otherwise)

http://www.fredabong.com/music/

Star def has the benefit of being, I assume, a backlog of songs she'd had in her pocket from years with the Muses that never made it to those albums.

this is prob true but it's kind of weird in a way too as Star sounds kind of... not quite unfinished, but stitched together, unassuming, scrapbooky - in a way more like a hastily assembled album than King.

(I love both but Star is another level of inscrutable charm - though I was p young when I first heard it so I'd never heard anything like it)

Give the first solo album a second chance. I did last month after years of dismissing it as wan.

I need to do this - I dismissed it as a teenager but probably mainly because I was too upset that Belly split up to listen properly.

As a massive Deal fan 1988-present and intensely into Donnelly / Belly about 1988 until whenever King came out (lost me, I'm sorry), I have to say the songs on Pod are 100% Kim with the exception of Only in 3s. I don't need writing credits, they are so obviously Kim. And I don't hear her sensibility on the Star material.

Star def has the benefit of being, I assume, a backlog of songs she'd had in her pocket from years with the Muses that never made it to those albums.

yes and no? like, "Angel" is "Raise the Roses"

(there are probably others, this is just the one that happens to correspond to one of my favorite throwing muses demos)

re: what and how much was kim deal and what wasn't this explains it fairly well imo

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/articles/belly-star-reissue

In an alternate universe Tanya Donelly is widely and unquestioningly regarded as a legend. But we're here.

the single mixes of the King singles, especially "Seal My Fate", are vastly better than the album versions.

I'd go for Star, easily, though. It feels like its own self-contained, mysterious world and there's a sense of stillness and ethereality, like this is a private, peculiar world. King isn't bad but I think Lovesongs For Underdogs is a far better album that does glossy rock better and Beautysleep is when Donelly's voice sounded its best.

I love the "Raise The Roses" demo but it's a totally different thing to "Angel" - even that same guitar riff sounds so otherworldy in the context of Star

I thought Tanya Donelly said the agreement was Kim Deal would write the songs on the first Breeders album, and Tanya would do the second. But after Pod and the Safari EP, Deal was touring with the Pixies and Donelly didn't want to wait so she recorded Star instead. Deal was on some of the demo versions of Star, but AFAIK her work doesn't appear on the finished album and she's not credited on any songs.

All four bands (Throwing Muses, Pixies, Breeders, Belly) started on 4AD and were always on 4AD. So it's odd they wouldn't be able to assign songwriting credits however they wanted, at least in the UK.

― erry red flag (f. hazel), Monday, November 27, 2017 11:19 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I DID NOT KNOW THIS

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW KIM WAS ON KING?!??!?!?! IS THAT WHAT THIS IS SAYING?

sorry but the first solo album is amazing save for like one clunker

second solo album is where it goes a bit off

I knew you'd revive this thread, hon.

Kim isn't on King.

lol well i came here for my bi-annual reminder that no one has ever recorded a song like LOW RED MOON and it still kills

also - .... i had NO IDEA ABOUT THE 2018 ALBUM AND MY MIND IS SHAKING

ok phew thank you for that clarity

Both Belly albums are great but they’re so different

also - .... i had NO IDEA ABOUT THE 2018 ALBUM AND MY MIND IS SHAKING

it's AMAZING, they are 3 for 3 :)

omg the first 2 tracks alone

this is so great and hopeful for me as a life thing to happen

Haha that’s great. Never gave it a lot of time but it’s awesome that you’re discovering this now