Mary Timony is about exactly as famous as she needs to be. Having begun her musical career with DC's Autoclave with Christine Billotte of Slant 6 (and more recently Quixotic), she soon assumed Mary Lou Lord's position in Boston-based Helium, releasing three fantastic pop records and a handful of singles. Since that band's 1998 demise, Timony has sustained herself with side projects and a solo career culminating now with The Golden Dove, her second release. Through all of this, she has remained an inventive, if erratic, songwriter and guitarist, and has largely done so by drawing inspiration from the most unlikely of places.
Mining the fantasy genre for musical and artistic enlightenment isn't without its risks. It's no accident that most artists who've successfully captured legions of fans via Tolkein-esque mass delusions aren't likely to show up on my personal hit parade. And that may be because I lost my taste for bombastic classic rock with proggy pretentions after the 75th replay of Led Zeppelin IV at summer camp circa 1989, but I think it runs deeper than all that. Tori Amos, for example, never sounded quite herself after admitting to late-night debates with 'the fairies.' Call me a skeptic, but I'll take a song about breakfast over one about elves any minute of the year.
Which naturally begs the question of how it is that I've been able to maintain an affinity for Mary Timony's output since the early 90s, despite evidence suggesting that she's a prime contender for Miss Congeniality in the Mythologized Middle Ages Pageant. She's certainly crossed the line into self-indulgent Dungeons and Dragons eccentricity, with her songs' medieval tavern jam sequences and lyrical allusions that walk about two steps shy of Renaissance Faire farce (one part Tolkein, one part bodice ripper). You get the impression she's maybe even entertained thoughts of live shows including such dubious entertainments as multiple costume changes, laser light dragons, dancing knights, skits in Old English, and maybe a lute player or two. But Timony is talented and not easily categorizable by sound. The risk of writing music this complex, theatrical and outright weird is that it often leads to self-indulgence, but when it works, the output justifies the expense.
The Golden Dove, Mary Timony's second solo release, again dons the Arthurian garb. Lyrically, she imbues a contemporary landscape with bizarre manifestations of magical realism, quotes liberally from what I can only assume is a dog-eared anthology from a long past Renaissance Lit class, and sets a 17th century poem to music. Likewise, she makes bold instrumentation choices in songs maybe best left to guitar, bass, and drums, and continues to show the same prog-inspired affinities poorly exemplified by her first solo release.
That being said, The Golden Dove has moments of significant achievement. It shows greater similarity to Timony's earlier work than its predecessor, and to put it simply, it rocks a little harder. "Blood Tree" builds into an uncharacteristically pop chorus, over which Timony croons, "I don't care about you, and whatever you want me to do," before resolving with, "The only boy I ever loved/ Turned into a golden dove/ And moved to California."
Timony's latest incarnation sees her more inclined to catchy songwriting. The eerie, angular, piano-based "Dr Cat" is transformed halfway through with the introduction of a driving dance beat, making it seem the impossibly odd bastard child of new wave and demented nursery rhyme. Many of the best moments, though, are more typical of Timony's work with Helium. The intricate Polvo-influenced guitar (cribbed from one-time Helium member Ash Bowie) and unsettling jangle of the chorus are strong enough to distract you from moments of lyrical reference to talking with animals and the fact that you'll swear you've heard some of the songs before. ("Look a Ghost in the Eye," in particular, is a dead ringer for Helium's "Devil's Tears"). But the first half of the album, dominated by this sort of material, is much more memorable and cohesive than the balladeering second half. These later tracks struggle, despite their comparative briefness and Timony's inviting vocal work.
A small success may be preferable to a small failure, though, and on a larger scale, The Golden Dove is a better than average album. It's just that Timony has long outshined 'better than average,' and I'd so infinitely prefer bearing witness to what she might be capable of achieving with 'totally fucking awesome.'
