Chicago Sun Times Interview

Following 1997's hypnotizing and ridiculously underrated "The Magic City" by her Boston-based trio Helium, Mary Timony takes a solo bow with the new album "Mountains" (Matador), though the music is very much in keeping with what she has always delivered: languid and entrancing vocals, enigmatic lyrics full of pagan mysteries and Wiccan imagery, and a complicated musical tapestry that interweaves psychedelic rock, punk and Renaissance Faire pageantry.

"I just felt like doing a solo record, having a little freedom and not staying tied to the band type of sound," Timony says. "I also wanted to do something kind of mellow and low key and with less pressure. This one was recorded for the most part in my friend's loft here in Boston, and it was a really fun project instead of paying a lot of money and going to a professional studio and stressing out."

Onstage, Timony is delivering her new songs as part of a duo with a friend on drums and herself on vocals, guitar, and keyboards. This spare instrumentation makes for a rawer sound live, but the album is full of enough viola, grand piano, and harpsichord filigrees to justify many critics' comparisons to vintage progressive-rock bands like Jethro Tull and Renaissance. It's a tag that Timony neither embraces nor denies.

"The only thing that's deliberate on the record to me is that the instrumentation is more acoustic," she says. "I don't really ever have any deliberate influences with my own music--at least I really try not to, because it bugs me if I know I do and I feel like I'm not doing anything new.

"It just comes naturally to me, that sort of folkie fairytale thing. It comes more from songs I heard when I was little, or stories. When I'm coming up with a part, I'll just be messing around with my guitar and an image will come to my mind of a place or a location, sort of like a dream. I imagine this location and write a lyric about what I see there. The sound will conjure up some sort of visual landscape, and I write the song about what I see there."

Mary Timony plays at Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee, at 10 p.m. May 6. Elizabeth Elmore of Sarge opens. The cover is $10; call (773) 489-3160.

this is from chicago sun times showcase 4/28/2000

thanks to Chris Carlucci for the article. Reprinted without permission.