Mary Timony Looks Backwards and Forwards on “Untame the Tiger”

An early theme of this music year is that the people I associate as being part of the indie old guard are making more compelling songs than I’ve been hearing from the younger generations. Mary Timony’s newest solo album, Untame the Tiger, feels career-defining, strengthened by the experience she brings to the table — not just as a songwriter, but as a human being who has actually lived a fascinating life that is worthy of reflection.

Timony broke out somewhat into the mainstream with her band Helium in 1993; their 1995 album The Dirt of Luck is a quintessential 90s rock album with crunchy guitars and a sullen attitude that feels like a Gen X time capsule. The band took a fascinating left turn on 1997’s The Magic City, with Timony showing an increasing interest in medieval fantasy themes and progressive rock influences while still maintaining some of the typical 90s alternative style. Most of Timony’s career since has felt like a push and pull between these seemingly disparate influences. Solo records like 2000’s Mountains and 2002’s The Golden Dove were almost alienatingly aloof flights of fancy as Timony continued to delve deeper into the fantasy themes. Her most recent project, Ex Hex, was back to more straight-forward guitar rock and received more favorable responses from most, though I found myself somewhat longing for the weirdness of her other music.

Untame the Tiger feels like the most successful combination of Timony’s many ideas yet. It is listenable because of Timony’s songwriting and lyrical guitar-playing, but also has her sense of musical exploration running through it. And unlike the recent Ex Hex albums, which were more good times rock music, this has a serious personal touch and is at times quite poignant.

The opener, “No Thirds,” shows a lot of Timony’s gifts. The longer run time and her spaced-out guitar playing supports lyrics about feeling like a lost wanderer who still remains optimistic about finding an oasis in the desert. A lot of Untame the Tiger feels similarly themed as Timony balances the feelings of nostalgia and regret with the desire to continue exploring life while solving its riddles. “Summer” is a more straight-forward catchy garage rock song about wanting to keep living in one specific moment; “Looking for the Sun” shows her dreamier side as she sings about trying to find the light in dark times. The saddest song on the album, “The Guest,” is a pretty real exploration of loneliness and the inability to maintain relationships, punctuated by a plaintive classic rock guitar solo.

But what really makes this album rewarding for me is that Timony also mixes some of that Magic City quirkiness in, especially on “The Dream” and the instrumental open to the title track. Her singing has a naturally original and head-in-the-clouds presence that I find hard to articulate — she sings in a somewhat unaffected way that is very distinct and it can work in either straight-forward rock or dreamy psychedelia. Untame the Tiger is a mix of both, often in the same song, and so for long-time fans there is a feeling of everything coming together here in a really satisfying way. I’m not sure if this is Timony’s best album (mostly because I worship The Magic City), but it’s certainly her most affecting.

Why Chelsea Wolfe Stands Out

Chelsea Wolfe is one of those artists who has set a high bar for herself, and seven albums into her career it’s easy for media types to shrug off her music as “more of the same.” She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She arrives as her first solo release since 2019’s Birth of Violence, which is the longest break Wolfe has taken in her career, and that time gap has helped illustrate the stark difference in ability between her and the majority of artists who have been putting out music in the interim. While this album is not particularly new ground for Wolfe, it’s comparatively a revelation to hear an artist with actual personality and songwriting ability throw every part of herself into a project.

This isn’t just a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder: the visceral intensity and passion in Wolfe’s music is obvious, and it’s to the point that it makes it seem like other artists don’t even try. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She is in the blend of electronics and doomy folk that has typified a lot of Wolfe’s work, and it’s always a dynamic sound with a lot of fascinating tensions. The beauty of Wolfe’s voice is often clashing with the industrial ugliness; sometimes there’s an “angel of doom” vibe as her vocals float above the chaos. And even when Wolfe’s songs are more quiet and calm, such as the trip-hoppy “Salt,” there’s a haunting surrealism on display that makes it feel unconventional.

Wolfe’s music is dark, and on the surface it’s easy to categorize her as being a typical depressing goth. This undersells the natural catharsis in the songs, and the themes of hope and pulling through difficult times that sneak into her work. Wolfe has said she wrote this album after achieving sobriety and a few songs like “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” literally deal with cutting ties with toxic elements in your life; others, like “Tunnel Lights,” are about overcoming hopeless-feeling situations and not giving up. She avoids clichés, dealing with these fairly well-worn themes through metaphor, performance, and poetry. There’s no pretending on this album: Wolfe’s authentic emotions are on full display, and at no point does it feel like she is putting on a show to try to seem cool or intelligent.

The best part of Wolfe’s music is that she writes actual songs with hooks. In this dark/doomy musical space, there are so many artists who just make unpleasant confrontational music with no real rhyme or reason to it — there’s an audience for that kind of thing, but I really value artists like this who can put the same feelings into their work while finding that balance between listenability and experimentation. In particular, “Dusk” and “Everything Turns Blue” are legitimately catchy, and that extra layer of craft lets these songs sink in more because it’s actually easy to listen to them over and over. And it adds to the feeling that there is logic and thought in everything; no moments are wasted and the songs properly build up and break down when the mood is right.

While that songwriting separates Wolfe from a lot of the darkness/doom crowd, it’s her intensity that puts her above a lot of the indie singer/songwriter fare currently. So much of it is coffee-house and self-consciously pretty; meanwhile, this is like plunging into an abyss and actually experiencing something that feels raw and human. She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She might be Wolfe’s strongest album, and it shows that she has few equals when it comes to making music that is heavy and emotionally impactful.

On “Sugarcoat,” Blushing Keeps the 90s Dream Alive

Nostalgia is a disease. Constantly lingering in the past is the easiest way to never move forward, and assuming things used to be better often prevents people from enjoying greatness that is right in front of them. That being said: the 90s were pretty awesome, weren’t they? It was definitely the best decade, and I’m not just saying this because it was when I was a child who easily made friends and had no responsibilities.

This band, Blushing, really likes the 90s. They have a song on their new album, Sugarcoat, called “Tamogotchi.” Their sugary bubble-grunge sound is the product of a group of people who believe that the music industry and the world was a better place when Letters to Cleo was a prominent band (they may be right). There is an oddly endearing shamelessness to this whole endeavor — a lot of the presentation and style borders on feeling cynical in its Millennial pandering, but the songs also have a certain charm that makes them feel convincingly sincere.

On the surface, Sugarcoat is a straight-forward pop-rock album that isn’t particularly interested in probing deep into questions about the human condition. There’s not much to say about the individual songs except that there are a lot of bright, catchy melodies, and everything is executed sharply in terms of what the band is trying to do. If you enjoy relatively mindless, fun guitar pop, you will like this album. So instead of focusing on that, indulge me while I overanalyze the nostalgic aspect of this thing.

Because what is most interesting about Sugarcoat is how it (maybe intentionally) functions as a critique of itself. Nostalgia is primarily a result of how our minds remember all the good times and forget the bad ones, and that is also what is happening on this album in all facets from the sound to the packaging. It’s a constant sugar rush of bright colorful hooks and sweet vocals, and it’s all so on-the-nose (again, they called a song “Tamagotchi”) that a sense of darkness creeps in, as the band starts to resemble one of those groups that is a little too happy and you start to think they’re a cult.

What’s really being sold here is a kind of escapism, a retreat for some listeners into the carefree days of childhood. But it’s also a fantasy that at times feels hollow, because listening to this, you’d think nothing bad ever happened in the 90s and everyone was living in some kind of ultra-colorful music video. So there is this constant tension on the album between the pleasurable sounds and the slightly gross way it insists on looking backwards through the most rose-colored glasses imaginable. The funny thing is, this ambivalence is what ultimately makes me want to recommend the album: it has all these catchy songs, and — whether intended or not — there are elements in the music that raise these questions and make it surprisingly thought-provoking.