Album Review: It's Real by Ex Hex

On Rips, Ex Hex reimagined the instant gratification of rock & roll with thrilling results. On their second album, Mary Timony, Betsy Wright, and Laura Harris take a deeper dive into rock's transporting powers. At once tighter and more complex than Rips, It's Real reflects the two years Ex Hex spent touring in support of their debut, as well as the year it took to craft the album in the studio (one key piece of gear was the Rockman, an amp that Boston's Tom Scholz developed in 1982).

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With the first Ex Hex record, it felt as if Mary Timony was finally beginning to receive her dues. Already a cult favourite as frontwoman of Helium and through her solo output, she'd never quite won the critical acclaim to go along with the plaudits that her devoted fanbase offered up; when she joined supergroup Wild Flag in 2010, meanwhile, her vital contributions to their sole, self-titled LP - one of the highlights of 2011 - were overshadowed by the fact that the band also constituted a two-thirds reunion of Sleater-Kinney. ‘Rips’, though, changed all that, lavished with praise for its no-nonsense, maddeningly catchy power pop, laced with the kind of freewheeling guitar solos that served as stirring testament to the entirely valid claim that she could stake to being one of the most underrated players of her generation.

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The DC punks edge into glam territory, as if their low-ceilinged dive bar is located on a space shuttle. Don your glittery outfits and get ready to mosh Ex Hex's debut album 'Rips' might've been released five years ago, but judging by the way it sounded - joyous, fuzzily euphoric punk rock-- you wouldn't be surprised to hear it blaring out from a clapped up Chevy's busted speakers as it roared around Manhattan's East Village in the ’80s. With an eclectic resume in punk-rock - between them, Ex Hex members have played in bands ranging from The Aquarium and Fire Tapes to Autoclave, Helium, and Wild Flag (which also included two thirds of Sleater-Kinney) - this Washington, DC band knows more than most about timeless, freewheeling punk rock.

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The other side of that coin, fortunately, is, just as with the band's debut Rips, their sophomore outing transcends mere derivation to play with such honest-to-goodness authenticity that Ex Hex could easily be filed right alongside their obvious blueprint influences of turn of the '80s power pop and new wave. It's Real displays the same exuberance and professionalism - not to be taken as a dirty word here, but as testament to the band's seemingly effortless knack for arrangement and execution - as its predecessor but adds a handful of different moods and textures. Mood, in fact, is an operative word for It's Real for, while Rips burst with incessant, riff-laden joy, there are brooding undercurrents to several of its songs.

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During her days leading indie-rock stalwarts Helium during the 1990s, Mary Timony specialized in oblique angles. Listen to "Superball," the single from 1995 breakthrough The Dirt of Luck: it drifts into focus as Helium studiously avoids a direct riff. This elusiveness meant that her sudden shift toward bold lines and primary colors came as something of a shock when she unveiled her power-trio Ex Hex in 2014.

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Take a look at the music video for "Tough Enough" — the lead single from Ex Hex's sophomore LP It's Real — and you'll get a pretty good sense of where the band are at. Showing the trio as they survive the fallout of nuclear war, only to perform thudding, slinky rock in the wasteland, the song is, in the band's words, about "forging ahead through whatever storms are happening, 'cause you don't really have a choice." It's Real is a brash, stylish manifesto of this ethos, as Ex Hex respond to contemporary frustrations with a smiling sneer and ….

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Ex Hex's 2014 debut, Rips, sounded like the greatest old garage-rock cassette comp you'd never heard, which made sense given the Washington DC trio's lineage: Mary Timony, Betsy Wright and Laura Harris spent years at the rock & roll coalface in other bands (Helium, Wild Flag, The Fire Tapes, The Aquarium) before joining forces, and those hard-earned experiences gave their exhilarating take on rough-and-ready 70s-style guitar pop even more strut and swagger. What stood out most of all - even more than the choruses (big), the hooks (bigger still) and the riffs (actually ginormous) - was how fresh and fun it all was, a rioutous mix of teenage kicks, skeezy pricks and dirty licks. "You stole my wallet and passed out on the kitchen floor," sneered Timony on the scuzzy blast of 'Waterfall', stuck at the world's lousiest party but still having a ball.

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Throughout her long career, guitar hero and singer Mary Timony has often seemed like the wayward child of another time. In her days fronting Boston college-radio darling Helium as well as later solo outings, she often channeled a cross between Hildegard von Bingen and Chrissie Hynde, as likely to turn out a medieval drinking song or progressive punk headspin as anything else. Most recently, she's been playing alongside guitarist/bassist/singer Betsy Wright and drummer Laura Harris in Washington D.C; by their powers combined, they are Ex Hex, and they love rock 'n' roll.

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O ne of the standout debuts of 2014, Ex Hex's Rips was a joyful homage to late-70s/early-80s power-pop, most notably Cheap Trick and the Runaways. It also served as a good showcase for the talents of guitarist Mary Timony, once of Helium and fleetingly brilliant indie supergroup Wild Flag. The follow-up, long in gestation, fails to reach the same heights.

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It's Real by Ex Hex Rips, the modestly perfect debut record of rock and roll lifer Mary Timony's band Ex Hex, was characterized by an absolute economy of production. It had the DNA of classic rock, but its attitude was pure punk. Accusing Rips of mere nostalgia peddling missed the point; it pulled the same stunt with 80's arena rock that the Ramones pulled with 50's teenybop pop: strip it down, speed it up.

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