As you slip a copy of Mary Timony's 2002 release The Golden Dove into your CD player, it becomes apparent – very quickly – this is no typical indie rock effort. Lutes, pan flutes and strings embellish refined, almost academic, punk melodies. Timony's voice is a siren's call to the rocky crevices of your psyche. Baroque guitar lines sprawl themselves across every verse. Then it becomes apparent: You are listening to what a punk group might sound like had its members been raised on Dungeons & Dragons, Tolkien novels and He-Man reruns.
But that was then. Her recently released full-length, Ex Hex, showcases a sci-fi fan who's grown up – if only a little.
Timony spoke with me recently from Los Angeles. She was on tour with Sleater-Kinney, a group that, because of their greater fan base, has brought Timony's music to many more ears. On her current headlining trek, she's playing songs from Ex Hex, an album that eschews many of the prog-rock tendencies of The Golden Dove and her 2000 debut, Mountains.
Her new direction shows in the choice of instrumentation. Ex Hex features Timony's preference for skronky electric guitars over piano-playing. "I think I just got tired of playing piano," she says. "I'm burnt out on it."
Whereas Timony's previous two efforts found her standing at the crossroads between Yes and the Ramones (if such a crossroads exists), Ex Hex clearly leans toward more straightforward rock. It's a girlish, adrenaline-driven tirade about relationships, religion and the daily trials of being – oxymoron alert – an indie rock star. Wiry guitars bounce around atop layers of fuzzy, Fugazi-esque punk riffs. In short, no dragons are to be found anywhere.
Back in the early '90s, Timony played in the short-lived all-girl punk group Autoclave, which signed to the venerable D.C. label Dischord. (Timony grew up in the city, where she now resides.) It was while studying English and guitar at Boston University that she hooked up with Helium, another influential band in the '90s Northeastern punk scene. She earned her degree, continued playing with the group until '97 and then went solo.
"I think we all just wanted to do something else," she says. "It wasn't what we wanted to do anymore."
As simple as that. About a year ago, Timony moved back to D.C. The music community there appealed to her more, due in part to its size. She wanted to be where there were less people. Because it's smaller, she says, musicians in the scene have to be more supportive of each other. The relocation also provided a chance for her to hook up with The Medications, who are opening for Timony and – for at least one member – performing as her backing band.
Devin Ocampo, singer-guitarist for The Medications, is playing drums behind Timony on this tour. The two-piece attack allows for more freedom, Timony says, though she thinks it also exposes her weaknesses. Mis-stomped pedals, bad tunings, mangled chords – were this a full band, such missteps might go unnoticed (and, truth be told, they aren't all that noticeable). But despite what seems like a handicap, she sounds positively thrilled about laying bare her inadequacies.
"It's a good dynamic," she says. "We really play off of each other – I think it's making me a better guitar player."
This isn't to say Timony is a slouch when it comes to kicking out the jams. In fact, one of her part-time jobs in D.C. is teaching guitar. The fact that most six-stringers in her genre (if folk-fantasy-punk can even be considered a genre) are self-taught makes this all the more impressive.
Timony has another part-time job: walking dogs. It's something the 35-year-old artist picked up from other musicians who tour constantly and keep strange hours compared to others.
The money she's made from touring, dog-walking and teaching guitar helped finance Ex Hex, which Timony recorded with her own money. It's a reminder of the Big Lie believed by so many musicians seeking a record deal – that once signed, the company is going to pay for everything. As Timony can attest, that's simply not the case, even though the label that's distributing her disc, Lookout!, is one of the best-known indies out there.
"Having to pay for this actually helped me in a weird way," Timony says. "It made me reevaluate what I was doing and try to record in a way that was efficient." Her considerable guitar prowess came in handy here, since many of Ex Hex's songs were laid down live, sans overdubs. As opposed to many recording ventures, where a band can cut songs track by track (first drums, then guitars, then bass, etc.), Timony and company had to nail these tunes in real time.
The method also helped Timony as a songwriter. On past albums, she would lather each song with overdubs and extra instrumentation (the aforementioned lutes and harpsichords); yet on Ex Hex, Timony's own budget restricted her.
She is, in other words, an artist who is learning when to stop painting and just put the brush down. In the past, she says, it was always a question of what more could be added. Perhaps that's Ex Hex's greatest virtue: sounding loud and alive without unnecessary filler.
Plus, she sounds great without those damn pan flutes.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2005.
