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"Gracie has been asking me what the songs are about," she says. "So I’ll say, ‘Well, some of them are just stories. That one’s a little bit about daddy, a little bit about us.’ I’ve been trying to be honest without getting too into it." She laughs when she says that she and Fisher have "sort of a high-functioning denial when we’re working together. We treat it very blue-collar, just working on structures and parts and logistics, and then later — later, maybe, he’ll sort of talk about it. But I think it’s not anything he hasn’t heard from me in a more long-winded way. He’s very graceful about it. He never seems embarrassed or worried about how it’ll come across to others. Which is kind of weird because he’s a very private person."

On one of Whiskey Tango Ghost’s loveliest tunes, the countryish "Just in Case You Quit Me" (with Frank Black sideman Rich Gilbert on steel guitar), Donelly looks back wistfully to her wild youthful days: "Were we magic and dizzy? Were we deadly and blue? Were we riding high . . . when I was young and ballsy and true?" But she vividly recalls being uncomfortable in the spotlight, back when Belly briefly became an MTV staple. "I was really drunk when Belly was happening. I didn’t enjoy the scrutiny. There was also this kind of confusion at every turn: why? Why is this happening? It was a blast in some ways, and in some ways, we did have so much fun, and we loved each other very much, initially. There’s nothing like the feeling of being in love with your band mates and traveling the world. But for me it got exhausting, and I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I fell into the whole ridiculous lifestyle. So it wasn’t good for me personally, because I lack restraint in almost every way. It’s hard for me to extricate what was happening to me personally with what was happening to us career-wise. To this day I don’t really know if that was bad timing or if that was really the cause of my issues.

"And I always knew it wasn’t going to last. I just knew it! People around me would be talking about the future, and different levels of achievement, and the next step. And I just sort of knew that the door had fallen open for some reason, and it didn’t feel to me like that was a permanent situation, like it did for others. I took it for the fluke that it was. I know that sounds so negative, but it’s not a source of pain for me, so I don’t feel negative saying it."

For a mid-career artist with a young family, it’s a luxury to be able to record pretty much as she pleases. In the past year, Donelly has performed several shows with her stepsister Kristin Hersh, including a small batch of final-farewell gigs with Throwing Muses; she’s guest-starred on the new Mission of Burma album; and she’s written two albums of new material. The second, comprising politicized songs that were left off Whiskey Tango Ghost, will be recorded live at manager Gary Smith’s new club/studio in Vermont at the end of the summer. "It was hard to yank those songs off. Because I did have a crisis of conscience, this being a time in our history when making an autobiographical album is maybe a little selfish. I’m as politicized as I’m capable of, because I don’t do that very well. It definitely could do more harm than good coming from me. But they’re songs sort of dealing with the shame and culpability that I think we’re all sort of experiencing on the national level."

Donelly is doing a very short tour now that Whiskey has been released: London, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Gracie will be along too, with perhaps Boston’s most rockin’ nanny — Heavy Stud’s Melissa Gibbs — along to help out with childcare. Donelly’s low-key pace seems to suit her. "Honestly, for my personal temperament and soul, this is so much better for me. And I know that sounds like a justification: ‘No, really, I love being obscure!’ But it’s a better place for me. I consider myself to be very lucky to have been on the same label for 20 years, to still have this core of people that buys the records when they come out."

Not long ago, Donelly was talking to her manager and the subject of this summer’s Lollapalooza fiasco came up. "We were both like, ‘Aren’t you glad you’re not in the music business?’ I don’t know whether that’s a sickly or a healthy way to think of myself, but that’s kind of how I feel — I feel so removed from it in almost every way."

Tanya Donelly appears this Wednesday, August 11, at the Paradise, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call (617) 562-8800.