Honeychain

Pretty bizarre lyrics A bit nostalgic maybe? Should of been a classic.

It's one of Tanya Donnelly's songs, off "The Real Ramona". (Another fine TM album, BTW!) I was listening to that particular track a few minutes ago since I was playing the CD, so not having played it in quite a while, I played the song again to get a good listen. Even though her half-sister, Kristin Hersh, writes and sings the lion's share of TM's material, it's always nice to hear a Tanya song for a little change of pace. Tanya writes more "pop" sounding, melodically haunting tunes and sings so sweetly innocent to lyrics that are (using Amongthetrees's words) pretty bizarre like warped children's fairy tales or disturbing fantasy stories (imagine if Anne Rice had written those Harry Potter books!). Ironically, "Honeychain" sounds a lot like a Belly song, since Tanya left TM right after they finished recording "The Real Ramona" to play on the Breeders' 1st album, "Pod" before starting her own band, Belly. BTW, that 1st. album they did, "Star", is one terrific album. Even though "Feed the Tree" is my favorite Belly tune, I'd have to say the rest of that album, much like the Beatles' "Abbey Road", has great songs straight through--not a bad song in the bunch.

i like the "warped children's fairy tales" analogy above.

this is actually one album where i like the two tanya songs better than the kristen ones. i always loved her songs, but before there would at least be as many kristen songs i loved as much [if not more, of course].

this is another one of tanya's haunting songs. the image of the old man who misses someone very much [lost love? dead relative?] is something she relates to ["we got it easy" she sings to someone, perhaps in comparison to the old man who has "stared"/longed for many, many years for someone who is obviously gone for good.] i interpret the honey comparison to everyone's life, sweet, messy and sticky.