{"id":3655,"date":"2014-11-04T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=3655"},"modified":"2014-11-04T16:33:41","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T21:33:41","slug":"ex-hexs-rips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/ex-hexs-rips\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex Hex’s Rips."},"content":{"rendered":"

My ranking of the top 50 free agents<\/a> (with capsules on each one) is now up for Insiders, along with the first of six buyers’ guides, this one on starting pitchers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ex Hex is the new project for longtime alt-rock guitarist Mary Timony, who first rose to prominence in the very out-there Helium in the early 1990s (where her cherubic face clashed with their love of dissonant sounds) and more recently surfaced in the one-and-done supergroup Wild Flag, which also featured Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein. (And boy do I love Sleater-Kinney’s newest song, \u201cBury Our Friends<\/a>.\u201d Welcome back.) Timony’s newest project, Ex Hex, is probably her poppiest one yet, a power trio writing simple, punk-tinged, mostly upbeat songs that never sniff four minutes. Their debut album, Rips<\/a>\"\"<\/i> (iTunes<\/a>), is basic, and a little surprising from a former Helium member, but very catchy, to the point where it would have been great summer listening \u2013 there’s a definite Beach Boys vibe to the vocals \u2013 had it come out a few months earlier.<\/p>\n

Ex Hex’s formula is pretty simple: One hook per song, with a big chorus, lots of power chords, and some high-gain guitar riffs for accents. You could split the album into two parts \u2013 the uptempo power pop tracks that hint back to early post-punk acts like the Slits, and the slower tracks that expose the lack of technical difficulty in the guitar lines. Fortunately, there are very few of the latter, because Ex Hex’s real appeal on Rips<\/i> is when they just let ‘er rip like a high school garage punk act, just with better production. Opener \u201cDon’t Wanna Lose\u201d comes in with a bang and hits on all cylinders, banging drums and reverbed-up guitars, before the power chords arrive like a souped-up \u201cMama Kin,\u201d but with a dash of riot grrl in the lyrics. \u201cNew Kid\u201d gets in and out inside of three minutes and never lets up its pace, even when it’s just Timony over the drums and hand-claps, leading into one of the album’s best choruses, full of roll-the-windows-down-and-hit-the-gas energy from start to end. \u201cWaterfall\u201d has the same kind of electricity, built on a basic blues shuffle compressed into four bars, although it has some of the album’s more insipid lyrics (\u201cYou took me to a party and you\/hid behind the door\/then you stole my wallet and passed out\/on the kitchen floor\u201d), certainly Rips<\/i>‘ biggest weakness.<\/p>\n

<\/a>When Ex Hex slows things down, it sounds like demo territory, stuff that probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. \u201cOutro\u201d closes the album in contrary fashion \u2013 we just rocked out for most of the last thirty minutes, so now you give us a slow-dance number to end it? \u201cHot and Cold,\u201d the first single from the album, borrows its main riff from Tommy James and the Shondells\u2019 \u201cCrimson and Clover\u201d and follows the mopey chorus with huge guitar bends that seem lifted from \u201cMy Sharona.\u201d The Knack might be a good point of comparison for Ex Hex, skinny ties aside; Ex Hex has that kind of intensity when they let it rock, but part of why \u201cMy Sharona\u201d was a hit was that it was all hooks and no slack. Timony and company may have wanted to vary their output a bit, but simply slowing down the same three-power-chords and a chorus framework doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

Ex Hex’s Rips<\/i> doesn’t fit with the rest of Timony’s history, opting for simpler, more commercial sounds, but doing so successfully thanks to strong hooks and tight song structures. Her ex-boyfriend, Ash Bowie, got his old band Polvo back together a few years ago, releasing Siberia<\/a><\/i>, an album as relentlessly complex as their pre-work, last autumn. We all get older in our own ways.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

I’m heading out on vacation on Wednesday, which will make posting here sparse and my presence on social media sparser. I’ll still try to get a Top Chef recap up later this week, and there will be a new ESPN Insider column from me almost every day while I’m gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My ranking of the top 50 free agents (with capsules on each one) is now up for Insiders, along with the first of six buyers’ guides, this one on starting pitchers. Ex Hex is the new project for longtime alt-rock guitarist Mary Timony, who first rose to prominence in the very out-there Helium in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[779,852,747,790],"class_list":["post-3655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2014-in-music","tag-music","tag-post-punk","tag-power-pop","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3657,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3655\/revisions\/3657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}