“It's an imaginary place... it's a fantasy,” says a 27-year-old Mary Timony, swirling a paintbrush. The year is 1997, and Timony is on MTV’s “Indie Outing” explaining the title of her band Helium’s new album, The Magic City, while adding strokes to a ceramic teapot. “I was going to paint it all brown, because I thought it would be pretty... but then I decided maybe I'd make little stars. A blue teapot with yellow stars.”
Surrounded by stacks of blank plates and mugs, Timony riffs on some of her inspirations, like outer space and faraway places. She seems bemused, if not a bit confused to be there. In those years, everything was moving quickly. By Magic City’s release, Helium had made a name in certain corners of indie rock as one of the decade’s most influential bands. "It has been fast," shetold Chickfactor in 1993, an interview that also covered a recent palm reading and a school project on witches.
Outer space, palm readings, and witches only skim the surface of Mary Timony’s vast palette of influences. Over the years, she’s created her own musical world—one that’s slated for re-appreciation next week, when Matador reissues Helium’s two albums, plus a rarities collection. Timony’s approach was built on ripping up her early musical education as much as defying the conventions of D.C. punk and Boston indie rock. She has long treated guitar-playing with conceptual depth, pairing instrumental technique with equally intricate wordplay across a number of projects: first Autoclave, followed by Helium, her solo work, various brief side projects like the Spells (her guitar duo with Carrie Brownstein), supergroup Wild Flag, and these days, Ex Hex.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Timony developed her classical music foundation at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where the teachers have sincecalled her a prodigy. She saw her first show in 1985 (Beefeater and Rites of Spring at the Chevy Chase Community Center) and spent the rest of her teen years immersed in the spiritual experience of Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses gigs. But for all her musical proficiency, Timony remained mostly a spectator in the male-dominated D.C. punk scene. It wasn’t until she went away to Boston University and returned to D.C. on holiday breaks that she started her first band, Autoclave, with Christina Billote (later of Slant 6 and the Casual Dots). The two had been jamming together since ninth grade, but what they brought to their angular guitar riffs was fresh and crucial at the time: a feminist energy. They released two EPs on Dischord and were an extreme rarity on the label’s dude-heavy roster.
“I went through this period after Autoclave where I kind of wanted to unlearn everything I’d ever learned and play really minimal stuff,” Timony toldShe Shredsin 2014. “I didn’t care about technique, I didn’t care about good equipment, I just had, like, a freak out. That’s kind of what was going on with Helium. I just wanted to play noise; I didn’t want anything to sound good.”
With that ethos in mind, Helium formed in the summer of 1992, with Shawn King Devlin on drums and Brian Dunton on bass (later replaced by Polvo’s Ash Bowie). They were an inventive trio, becoming known for the medieval sounds and challenging tunings/time signatures they incorporated with post-hardcore angst and college-rock melodicism. Tours with Belly and Liz Phair led to a Matador deal, eventually amounting to three EPs and two full-lengths, 1995’s The Dirt of Luck and 1997’s The Magic City.
Post-Helium, Timony spent years mostly focused on solo recording, distilling her expressive guitar-playing and becoming a full-time guitar teacher in D.C. Her solo three albums (plus one as the Mary Timony Band) are both deeply personal and political (“Get your laws off my body,” she sang a decade ago on “Pause/Off”); she's said that making these records helped her get through difficult times. So while her most critically acclaimed post-Helium work has been with Wild Flag and Ex Hex, she never stopped writing smart, sharp songs on her own.
When Timony debuted Ex Hex in 2014, it felt a stark departure for her to be playing such straightforward, hook-heavy rock and roll in standard tunings. But it also made sense for someone whose own musical growth came from paring things down. “I studied guitar and viola and upright bass,” Timony says in that 1997 MTV clip. “I guess I got kind of sick of that and decided I just liked to play simple, easy music.” Clearly the definition of “simple” varies, as anyone who has appreciated Helium records can attest. Ahead of their reissues, we asked some of Timony’s former bandmates, famous fans, and successful students to discuss her influence on indie rock.
Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney + Wild Flag:
“In the early and mid 1990s, every musician I knew was obsessed with Helium. The Pirate Prude EP and “Pat's Trick” played on repeat at nearly every gathering I attended. And we didn't just listen to these records—we discussed them, the worlds they opened, novelistic and strange. Who was this Mary Shelley or Angela Carter with a guitar? Fur and feathers, fairies and fangs. In Olympia, Washington, many of us were writing songs that were the equivalent of bloodletting: This is the sound a wound makes, this is the screech of a scar. But Mary Timony was always more kaleidoscope than microscope, creating magical worlds replete with weaponry or sorcery. In her songs, sadness and alienation were not embodied, they were subterranean, they were alien, transferred and transformed. A heart's tale and female narratives minus a distinctly human form. In this way, the music was freeing, achingly familiar yet otherworldly. Oh, and the guitar playing: Timony, that woozy wizard.”
Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag + Quasi:
“One of my life's great honors has been to play in a band (Wild Flag) with guitar god Mary Timony. Magical and mysterious, Mary's talent and beauty are unrivaled. From the moment I saw Helium's captivating video for “Pat's Trick” on MTV's ‘120 Minutes,’ I was hooked. Who was that girl, stunningly cool, leading the band, wielding her fuzzed-out guitar with utter confidence? And her voice—spirited and fragile within the same breath. Sleater-Kinney toured Europe with Helium in 1997, and I watched every single Helium soundcheck and show. I was enthralled with Mary's guitar virtuosity. Her nightly transformation from a sweet, kind, gentle girl to the larger-than-life performer just never got old. It still amazes me to this day.”
Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz + Sad13:
“I first encountered Helium on the What's Up Matador VHS, then I found a used copy of the Superball+ EP. I got hooked quick. While I'd long been enamored by Matador's ’90s oeuvre, Mary Timony was especially exciting because, more than any other guitarist, I could hear myself in her playing—or at least, I could hear myself as I wanted to play guitar. I wasn't yet familiar with many women who played the kind of knotty, adventurous, technical parts Mary conjured up. While seeing my gender represented in an obviously male-dominated league of Heroic Guitarists was really exciting, I related even more to her use of medieval-sounding scales and chords. I'd grown up playing classical music and was always trying to incorporate that part of my music education into rock songs. And here was someone who'd already done it perfectly.
Her solo albums show an even more adventurous talent for arrangement, particularly The Golden Dove, which has been one of the most influential records to me—the songs are creepy and sad and surprising. It's amazing to me how Mary has been able to explore so many genres across her various projects and albums. She does jazz, pop, post-punk, madrigal-tinged classical guitar, prog, and classic rock riffs with equal fluency. She's also a kind and funny person, which was apparent to me when we toured with Ex Hex, and also from how highly her students think of her, several of whom have gone on to become wildly creative and talented songwriters themselves.”
Eva Moochlan of Sneaks:
“Mary is the kindest soul. She offered me so much support and guidance in the making of my album It’s a Myth. I really enjoyed everything about working with her—the setting in her basement, using her brown bass, her cat Burs, Jonah Takagi [who recorded It’s a Myth alongside Mary, his partner]. I really appreciate her energy and her style of teaching. I've only observed briefly, but I can see it. I also absolutely love Helium, especially their fab song “Superball”—the visuals, just everything is so rad.”
Lindsay Jordan of Snail Mail:
“Mary is definitely a trailblazer and an innovator in the guitar world, in that she has a distinct style of writing and playing, which shines through in whatever genre she is conquering at the time. From Helium to her solo stuff to Ex Hex, the music obviously differs in style, but there is a consistently unique quality to all of her work that I really love and always find myself listening while looking for songwriting inspiration. Her lyricism is also so vast and expansive, it sort of takes you to another realm. I think anyone can pick up a guitar, but it takes someone with a really special eye for music to create their own universe of technique. On top of all that she can totally shred!”