Mary Timony was that shy girl next to you in class who drew unicorns on her notebooks and intimidated with scary, intense poetry. Yet she was too creative and weird to be accepted into the goth chick click, so instead she started her own band. Helium posed as a stellar guitar band, but had closets bursting with unsettling nightmares of goblins and witches. Perhaps to save her hapless bandmates from the therapy bills, Timony decided to take off on this particularly intense flight of fancy on her own. Mountains expands on the prog pop leanings of Helium’s 1997 The Magic City, painting the songs with a watercolor rainbow of harpischord, viola, pennywhistle, piano and maybe even a glochenspiel. The song titles read like chapters from C.S. Lewis novels — “Dungeon Dance,” “Poison Moon,” “Painted Horses,” “The Fox And Hound,” “Rider on a Stormy Sea.” Timony spins pretty involving surrealist yarns herself, but occasionally the music begs for a full band like,well, Helium. And while she has proven to be a master of constructing catchy hooks out of unusual minor-key chords, not enough can be found on this meandering album to hang one’s cape on. It’s certainly a pleasure to slither alongside Timony’s snaking voice into never neverland. Let’s just hope that once she returns to Earth, she plugs in her guitar again and help slay the dragons that might follow her back.
September 17, 2025
Chameleons – Arctic Moon (Metropolis)
September 1, 2025
Lathe of Heaven – Aurora (Sacred Bones)
