|
Wed. June 13 In "Sharpshooter," one of the catchiest, most triumphant-sounding songs she’s written, Mary Timony goes after the rock world’s most famous bow-and-arrow hunter, The Nuge. The song kicks off her latest CD, "The Shapes We Make." "Ted Nugent - what you gunna do?," she purrs. "What you gunna do when they come for you?/White tails gunna hunt you down/Do unto you as they’ve been done to." She used to famous for loving unicorns. It seems safe to say she is on the side of real animals – and their ghostly avengers - too. We’re on the phone with Timony from Washington, D.C., her old hometown that she returned to three years ago. At first, Timony calls the song "a little jab at Ted Nugent for fun," but soon adds, "I got really obsessed with how much I hated Ted Nugent. I had this image of all the animals he shoots coming back and shooting him, having this army." Blood curdling songs of vengeance aren’t new to Timony. Back in the mid-‘90s, when her Boston-based trio Helium was roiling and rolling, she married some vicious lyrics to shredding, distorted guitar licks. Helium was one noisy, jarring band and Timony was one sexy, spooky, maybe even psychotic-sounding, siren. "Yes, I’m sullen and withdrawn, and I take out my anger," Timony told me in 1994. Now, she’s in an up mood, laughing frequently. Her new CD is more playful, too. And that follows a path Timony, 36, has been on for a decade or so, beginning with the latter years of Helium, when they shifted from post-punk abrasion to more expansive progressive rock. (Timony says she prefers being labeled a prog-rocker to being "unicorn girl.") She plays the Middle East Upstairs Wednesday June 13.
Looking back, Timony says Helium “ran its course. We’d done a lot together and logistically it made sense to go solo. It was a natural thing.” She had a bit of fear flying solo, but says, “I didn’t really realize how good Helium had it at the time. I didn’t realize it was going to be a lot harder to do my own thing.” She’s talking about selling records. “Creatively,” she adds, “it’s been great. I saw (my solo career) as a continuation of me being creative with whoever was with my musical life at the time. I don’t really analyze things too much about how they’re going to be perceived.”
Timony is adept at gear switching and does so most adeptly on “The Shapes We Make.” Airy passages give way to intense bursts; darkness and light mix and mingle; keys change unexpectedly, but fluidly. It’s both challenging and engaging throughout. Says Timony, of its creation: “My biggest thing was I think I let go of trying to force the music, I had more fun on this record with the songwriting. It’s more collaborative, especially the songs that are more jammy – they’re arranged as a band, and there’s more emphasis on playing really tight.”
She also changed her attitude about playing the rock game. “I could be happy not doing it,” she muses. “I could be happy doing it. It’s not a matter of life or death to me any more. I just want to do it because it’s fun, not because I need to do it.” On the other hand, she adds, “I’d like to keep making records and have people like them and buy them. I’d like to do music for movies at some point. I like teaching guitar.” She has 20 students in D.C. from 5 to 16-years-old.
Her ultimate goal? “God, I don’t know,” says Timony. “But I feel like I’ve finally got a solid thing together. The most pleasurable thing is watching ideas unfold and listening to them back, recorded.”
(This is a version of a story that ran in the Boston Phoenix May 31,) Timony plays the ME Up with Welcome and Great Northern June 13. Starts at 9 p.m. tickets, $9.
472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-864-3278 mideastclub.com
|
