To date Matador’s Revisionist History series has set its focus on the hallowed year of 1995 – surfacing critical releases by Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, and Chavez. Today, however, we whirl the dial on the in-house wayback machine and travel toward the future: the year 2000 and Mary Timony’s debut solo album, Mountains, which will be reissued on January 15th.
Remastered by Bob Weston, Mountains comes back to us as a gold foil-embossed gatefold 2xLP and will include the previously unreleased original takes of ‘Return to Pirates,’ ‘Poison Moon,’ and ‘Killed by the Telephone,’ which were delivered along with the original master tapes 20 years ago, but were omitted from the final album. The record is completed by a newly recorded orchestral version of ‘Valley of One Thousand Perfumes‘ produced by composer Joe Wong (Russian Doll, Midnight Gospel) and mixed by Dave Fridmann.
At the turn of the century, Timony (Ex Hex, Wild Flag, Hammered Hulls) was already a celebrated presence in American underground music – a fixture of D.C. and Boston rock ’n’ roll via her work in Autoclave and Helium respectively. By 1998, though, Helium was drawing to a close and Timony was feeling uncertain about the future. “I had never been good at the rock’ n’ roll business, and making a living from being in a band just didn’t seem like it was in the realm of possibility for me,” she writes. “I just knew I wanted to make another record because that was the part of being in a band that I liked the most.”
At the time of its original release, Timony called Mountains, “A Trip to the New Underworld.” “A bunch of hard stuff was happening in my life: family illnesses, people dying, people leaving, relationships ending. I fell into a deep depression,” she explains. “I tried new ways of making music: I tried writing songs without any filter at all, and I purposely didn’t think about what the music would sound like to anyone else. I was only interested in describing what was in my head.” Recorded and mixed in Boston alongside Christina Files and Eric Masunaga and in Chicago with Bob Weston, Mountains found Timony dialing into territory that was barer and more confessional than her work in Helium. Stark arrangements were augmented with newly ornate instrumentation – piano, vibraphone, and viola – and the lyrics were tinted with slyly occult imagery. “Listening back to Mountains now I am struck most by how raw it sounds,” says Timony. “I hear the depression and angst, but also I hear all of that darkness disappearing through the power of music and friendship—and turning into songs during those happy and productive months recording and hanging out in Christina’s loft in downtown Boston.”
Today, you can also watch Timony in the Brett Vapnek-directed short film, Dream Machine (1999).
Pre-orders for the new edition are available now via the Matador store HERE.
TRACK LIST
Dungeon Dance
Poison Moon
I Fire Myself
The Bell
Painted Horses
The Hour Glass
13 Bees
The Golden Fruit
Whisper From the Tree
1542
Valley of One Thousand Perfumes
Tiger Rising
An-deluzion
The Fox and Hound
Rider on the Stormy Sea
Return to Pirates (Kingston St. Session)
Poison Moon (Kingston St. Session)
Killed by the Telephone (Kingston St. Session)
Valley of One Thousand Perfumes (Orchestral Version)
MARY TIMONY BIO
Mountains is a heady brew, resembling a rock ‘n’ roll Paul’s Boutique in its kaleidoscopic majesty.” – Matt Diehl, Interview
On 1997’s The Magic City, Mary Timony took a courageous leap forward with her band Helium, unveiling an unusual new wave-prog rock hybrid which spurred comparisons to such diverse artists as Faust, Pentangle, Gentle Giant, and The Cars. Her solo debut Mountains exposes Timony’s most fascinating music yet.
At times augmenting her bizarre guitar work with piano, harpsichord, and viola, she gives her expansive surreal musings a surprisingly stark musical forum, with a certain punk nihilism and carnal knowledge that would have shocked her Renaissance forebears.
Mary calls the record “A Trip To The New Underworld.” She offers: “For those of you who have come across the underground river of despair in your travels, , do not stand and gawk, but turn away, lest your eyes be burnt out; for those of you who have lived near its banks, know that there are other pilgrims whose ships have sailed in its darkness… Welcome to this record.
It was made in a loft in Chinatown, Boston, during the middle of summer, after 10 and before 7, by Country Life the vegan restaurant, near 12 Starbucks, 10 Dunkin Donuts, and 9 Supersalads, by a family of nesting pigeons, high above wailing buses, rush hour, men in convertibles getting shot with spitballs from the sky, business ladies in sneakers, an art gallery full of grass.
It was made above the rooms of two drummers, and beside four different bands, it was made in the echoing hallway by the broken elevator, the living room, the bedroom with the blue floor, on the fire escape, above the parking lot, below the skyscrapers, during heat waves, on the way to Chicago, in a rented white Jaguar, across from the hoodlum-kid hangout, next door to Sal, until 4 in the morning.
