CMJ interview June 1995
from Issue #22 by Franklin Bruno
Mary Timony, the head and heart of Boston's brilliant Helium, is speaking with regret and relief of the changes in her band and life between I994's fragmented Pirate Prude and the just-released, more cohesive The Dirt Of Luck (both on Matador). "Recording Pirate Prude was the most pathetic experience. It was really fast- I would record my stuff and then I would go to sleep... That whole record is weird to me, I can't even listen to it." The Dirt Of Luck starts where Pirate Prude leaves off, being simultaneously a less harrowing and more musically satisfying ride. "I think this... record is less hyper-aware. It just feels good, and I had more fun being creative on it." One huge difference is the replacement of original bass player Brian Dunton with Ash Bowie, who also does duty in Chapel Hill's Polvo.
"Before... Helium was like this solid structure, and I'd be reacting against it, or making noise against it. And also it was kind of that way psychologically. Now that Ash is in the band, we intertwine better." Bowie's arrival (the two had previously played together informally) coincided with the up-in-the-air status of Helium at the time. "I didn't really know what was going to happen in terms of who was going to be in the band after we finished recording. First of all, it was just Sean and I recording it at the beginning of the summer, and then Ash came in and hung out in the studio, and it ended up working really well."
Pirate Prude is elaborate in its own way, but more time and care were spent by Timony, Bowie, and drummer Shawn Devlin (ex-Dumptruck) on the new record. "It took a lot longer. We recorded it, and then we scrapped two-thirds of it and did it over with Ash...But we're finally done and we're glad." Whatever the circumstances, Helium this time out is more "together" in every way. Songs that would have taken six minutes to develop now take three, Timony's guitar says more and rambles less, and even Devlin has switched from the foursquare attack that characterized an earlier era of Boston rock to a more fluid style that takes its cues from Pavement's Gary Young and Sebadoh's Bob Fay.
Although it's as easy as ever to find fractured personae and psychic damage on The Dirt Of Luck (see especially the succinct "Superball," in which Timony calls herself "fragile/as an eggshell/and mad as hell"), the growth in the band is matched by a new concern in Timony's songs with the possibility of personal growth and rebirth, or at least escape. Speaking of the attitudes that produced Pirate Prude, she says, "Whenever I wrote songs in that period... in an unconscious way, these themes of being a prostitute keep coming up. I've also had other relationships that end up making me feel really cheap, like I'm being used. I'm really changing now, but that's the way I used to be... In the past year, I've definitely had to change certain things in my life, because I just couldn't survive thinking that way."
"Pat's Trick," the first single, is as good an example as any, with its references to May fairs, seed planting, and lost innocence. "What's happening in the song is that I'm hoping for a better life... I'm hoping to become alive again." The Pat of the title is Timony's older brother. "I wrote it after talking to him, because I was really depressed, and he also was, and we were like, 'How are we going to get ourselves out of this situation?' So it's kind of a song about hoping to grow. It sounds so corny!" (It's worth mentioning that, in conversation, Timony is both determined and self-deprecating, nothing like the formidable vengeful personae she projects in her songs, which makes their intensity all the more impressive.)
Of The Dirt Of Luck, Timony says, "There are themes that run through it, but it's not quite so regimented and structured [as Pirate Prude] because I felt like I had more of a chance to communicate through the music. But there are themes. What I was talking about in 'Pat's Trick' is in a lot of the songs, about feeling dirty and dead and hoping for a regeneration. A lot of it comes out in these weird religious references that don't mean anything,
The title figures of songs like "Trixie's Angel," "Medusa" and "Skeleton" alternate between being embodied by the singer and being external figures that help the singer escape or outgrow her situation
The play of self and voice is as deftly ambiguous (though not always as clear) as in the work of such poets as John Berryman or Sylvia Plath, not to mention the songs of Kristin Hersh or Polly Harvey.
Quizzed about such tactics, Timony admits, "I'm definitely singing about myself. Even if I do adopt a personality, it's another way of explaining my little experience... Sometimes a personality feels good to take on because it expresses a certain thing. In 'Skeleton,' I imagine going crazy and becoming the devil, because I'm so angry."
Upcoming plans include moving, more collaborative songwriting with Bowie (the shoegazy "Baby's Going Underground" on The Dirt Of Luck being the first fruit) and, finally, a full tour for a band that's been playing Boston and New York for years, never making it west of Chicago. If reports are any indication, the Helium live experience is as compelling as the band's records. Timony and company may even include some of the scarier parts of Pirate Prude, despite her reservations. "We'll play 'XXX' and 'I'll Get You, I Mean It,' but we don't actually call them by those names on the set list, because it's so weird for me." As, undoubtedly, it will be for us.