If you were into Mary Timony's art-pop band Helium, chances are you were also into Polvo, or, more specifically, the baroque cathedrals shared member Ash Bowie hewed from his guitar. If you were into Helium and Polvo, you probably loved intricately braided strands of melody and dissonance, art-school meets meat-and-potatoes punk a la the Breeders and Autoclave (Timony's first band), and tight packets of oblique imagery. And if you were into all of that, you were probably turned off when Timony went solo and started mining Tolkien for lyrics and Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute for musical inspiration.
I guess if you're a Boston hipster and you want to check out the Ren Fair, solo is about the only way you're going to go. As a closet "literary fantasy" buff, I can sympathize with the impulse to reclaim the allegorical potency of works like The Thousand and One Arabian Nights from hokey sword-and-sorcery books. Writers like Neil Gaiman and filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki have been instrumental in preserving the rich metaphorical cores of mythological archetypes against the depredations of trite fantasy franchises, but a similar savior has yet to come along in music: Elves are adorable, but even an unabashed Sandman fan like myself can't stomach their cavorting in the context of a song.
If you've been turned off by the ponderous whimsy of Mary Timony's solo output to date and pine for the sweetly sinister discord of Helium, you'll be pleased to learn that Ex Hex is a well-grounded return to form with decidedly terrestrial lyrics about uncommunicative men (on the plodding minor-key dirge "Silence") and the inconvenience of having drunks sleeping on your floor (on the fuzzy rock stomper "On the Floor"). This is raw and raucous rock-- pounding drums, throttled prog riffs and breathy, hypnotic invocations. When Timony dips into fantasy, it takes the form of religious dread, as on "In the Grass": "Even I know the fiery place you can go," she sings into a starry cascade of guitar.
"Return to Pirates" chimes and chugs through knotty chordage; "Friend to J.C." wails like stressed metal; "Backwards/Forwards" nearly plagiarizes the laddering riff from Modest Mouse's "Shit Luck" to close the album with a snarl. Brendan Canty's stark production lays out the rattling percussion, serpentine leads and woozy, serrated chords in a lean procession that emphasizes the songs' dark, rugged beauty. Many of the riffs are righteously medieval in tone, but they rework those tripping arpeggios for a scorched-earth rock setting, without a lute, zither or lyre within earshot.
