Much Music Interview 1995
Spring (April 24th) 1995 in front of El Mocambo, Toronto, ONT, CAN
By Much Music, I forget the VJ’s name
“(my tape cuts in) …so far this is the most honest moment I’ve captured on tape. Helium is a trio from Cambridge, Massachusetts made up of Mary Timony, Shawn Devlin, and his brother Brian [sic]. They drove up from the States, got past the border, and are touring by van, with no roadie, no manager. Like an angel of the apocalypse, Mary Timony’s marbelized flat voice and resign write songs about boredom, Levi’s, and a guitar that spits out baby’s bones.
Mary,” The songs start out like, they start out in some remote place, they start as pop songs but then like in playing with a band setting makes them more aggressive and weirder noises and stuff. I don’t know.”
“People have been fucking with me because just because I say I’m a feminist, they like make me out to be this freak or something.”
Much Music,” A freak?”
“Yeah. And yeah they’re like ‘oh yeah, Mary she’s so angry’. And then like there have been a lot, well not a lot, but at least three interviews that have been really bad, treating me like I’m this weird angry woman. It makes me seem more like a victim, and now I don’t even know if I should talk about it.”
“I just want to be a free person, be able to do what I want to do, and I encourage other women to play music. Or not just to just play music but to do what they want and not to be fucked over by other people or I think it’s important for women to encourage other women, to speak and have voice and do what they want…”
“I’ve always felt (laughs) that I’ve related to the whole idea of like oppressed people becoming violent towards their oppressors. And not because I actually feel like in my real life I could support that but in my head or something that’s the way I find some freedom from it.”
“I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy a machine gun or anything at all, and I don’t think I really could support that in my real life, but I understand where it comes from in the mind.”