Originally published in Verbicide issue #3

For those of us who have long-awaited a release from the former front woman of Autoclave and Helium, this record is sure to please. With the exception of a few appearances by former Helium member Ash Bowie on percussion, all instruments are played by Mary Timony and Christina Files, who plays percussion during live sets. Though Mountains is mostly without former Helium musicians Bowie and Shawn Devlin, Files and Timony fill the void nicely, with Mary playing delightful songs on the keyboard (such as “I Fire Myself,” “1542,” and “The Fox and the Hound”), a track featuring the violin (“The Hour Glass”), and catchy tracks with superb guitar riffs, such as “The Bell” and “Rider on the Stormy Sea.”

Lyrically, Mountains isn’t as “spacey” or thematically fantastical and medieval as Helium’s last release (1997’s The Magic City), nor are they as blatantly angry and angst-ridden as earlier recordings (such as the Pirate Prude EP). Rather, Timony’s lyrical quality has developed to reveal a mature, poetic sense of contrast between happiness and destitution; hope and despair; fantasy and reality. My personal favorite song, “I Fire Myself,” concludes with the lines, “In the dawn the demon spoke/In the saddest voice,…he said/‘Can you see love through a telescope?/The end of fear, and the beginning of hope?’”

Anyone who loves and misses Helium shouldn’t hesitate to purchase this album.

(Matador Records, 625 Broadway 12th Floor, New York, NY 10012)