Album Review: Ex Hex by Mary Timony

Mary Timony's first two solo albums, Mountains and The Golden Dove, had a mystical, fairy-folk bent that was intriguing (and also presaged the popularity of similarly inspired acts like Faun Fables, Joanna Newsom, and White Magic) but also puzzling to fans of her work with Helium and Autoclave. After moving house, both personally (back to her old haunt, Washington, D.C.) and musically (to Lookout! Records), she returns with Ex Hex, a more straightforward but still delicate collection of songs that sound like exorcisms of past situations and relationships. Even though the album is on a label usually associated with punk and shows off Timony's impressive electric guitar skills, it's not as much of a return to rock as might be expected.

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It’s pretty incredible that Mary Timony scooped everybody on the big psych-folk revival with her magic ‘n’ special unicorn worship solo records, and latter-day Helium output, for Matador. Not incredible in the sense that she couldn’t do it, but more in the sense that she did when she did. I’ve seen Animal Collective pounding on the floor, and Devendra Barnhart braying into a microphone; that type of junk is big business today.

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