Mary Timony – Ex Hex / 2005 Lookout / 11 Tracks / http://www.marytimothy.com / http://www.lookoutrecords.com / Reviewed 22 April 2005
The first thing to really notice about Mary Timony (besides the fact that she was in Helium, a band that broke up before I was really cognizant) is the fact that she does a hell of a Lu Reed imitation on tracks like “Silence”. Seriously, the way things were couched, besides a little more generous recording and production, the aforementioned track feels almost as if it should be on a Velvet Underground album. The interplay between Devin Ocampo (Medications) and Mary is absurd – just listen to the mixing of virtuosic guitars and the doubling of that sound by Devin’s synth on the lead-out from “Silence”, making the track a misnomer as the mass gradually grows louder. Some of the lyrics on “Ex Hex” are just completely inappropriate to the dreamy, washed-out vocals that Mary makes eirself known for; take this sample from “In The Grass”: “I was on the busy, trying to get off, jamming to the Fat Boys when I was lost.” Tracks like “Pirates” really burst out of the typically-quiet sound that Mary crafts during the majority of “Ex Hex”, moving more to the arena rock of the seventies; taking snippets from The Who and Kansas, Mary knows how to rock.
The second half of “Ex Hex” is on a whole much more intense than the first half would necessarily let on. “Hard Times Are Hard!” is a slower but still heavy track, using Robert Plant-like guitar riffs to push forward Timony’s own Reed-styled vocals. Continuing the same general sound for “9X3”, Mary’s vocals jump from oddly couched to just oddly rhymed; the theatrics used during the track, including the incorporation of chimes, really delineate it from the rest of the fare. Moving her influences up a few years, “W.o.W.” has a guitar line which seems to be retooled from Metallica’s “Fade in Black”, re-contextualized to make for a more nuanced track than the Metallica influence would typically indicate.
The harder tracks on “Ex Hex” are really where Timony shines; when the more nuanced tracks dominate, a certain inertia presents itself. There is nothing to continue listening for; everything seems unnecessarily circular and slow-paced. The dichotomy between hard and light really becomes untenable when the two paths really hold two different standards, and really make listening to “Ex Hex” a daunting endeavor. Perhaps if Mary infused all of eir tracks with the same soul, the effect could be minimized. As it is, however, “Ex Hex” is at best unbalanced and at the worst a mess.
Top Tracks: Silence, Pirates
Rating: 5.7/10