SOUNDTRACK: EX HEX-NonCOMM (May 15, 2019).
I really liked Mary Timony’s band Helium. I’ve followed her over the years and now she has this relatively new band called Ex Hex.
Punk rock veteran Timony is known for her work in 90’s bands Helium and Autoclave, plus supergroup Wild Flag, while her co-frontperson in Ex Hex, Betsy Wright, also plays in Bat Fangs. The trio is rounded out by drummer Laura Harris, also of The Aquarium, and although they played tonight as a four-piece, they retained their effortless sense of cool.
Ex Hex is the most commercial sounding music she’s made and I found their first album a little boring. They were kind of straight ahead punk pop songs that might have been revolutionary in the 90s but are kind of staid now.
The newer songs, however, are more a little more complex and more interesting as a result.
“Don’t Wanna Lose” comes from their first album. It’s got reverbed guitars and a simple melody. It sounds a bit like Sleater-Kinney, which isn’t too surprising since Timony was in Wild Flag with Carrie Brownstein before forming Ex Hex.
“Tough Enough” is slower and a bit more classic rock sounding. In fact, all of the songs here feel more big riff classic rock than the simple punk of the first album. “Rainbow Shiner” has a big metal riff. It’s complicated and cool and makes you want to raise your fist in the air.
I don’t know if Timony is the only person doing guitar solos (it looks like Betsy Wright is also playing guitar). But “Good Times” opens with a lengthy guitar solo, which I assume is all Timony.
“Radiate” is a bouncy song with twin guitars and a quiet middle part. They end the set with my favorite track, “Cosmic Cave.” This one specializes in lots of reverb an echo with spacey flanging sounds at the end.
This set make me want to bust out rips again and see if I was missing something. But also to get It’s Real where most of these songs come from, because I liked what I hear.
[READ: May 20, 2019] “Chemistry”
A policeman told a crowd he was Looking for a retired chemist. His daughter had dropped the man off at the cinema but when the movie was over he was no where to be found.
The crowd was in the Road House which stood next to the cinema.
I enjoyed the way the characters were set up. The cook, Keith Lyon, felt mystified at his life. He was in his forties and spent all day filling plates and having empty plates return.
It was as if a joke had been played on his life, thought he could see the humor of it and it hadn’t made him bitter.
A customer in the restaurant suggested the man got bored and left the movie early, “I might do that.”
“What you might do is beside the point,” said the policeman. “As you’re not missing.”
No one was a suspect in the Road House, the policeman was looking for volunteers to comb the nearby forest where they think the man went. (more…)