Mary Timony

Continuing the mystical, prog rock vibe of Helium's No Guitars and Magic City, Mary Timony conjures up Mountains, a collection of songs more akin to the Brothers Grimm's stories or C.S. Lewis' -The Chronicles of Narnia than anything in contemporary indie rock. Sparkling vibes, flutes, woozy vintage keyboards, and mandolins give songs like "The Bell," "Whisper From the Tree," and "An-Deluzion" a distant, dreamlike quality, which is the album's greatest strength and weakness; this collection of spooky girl music is so fragile and insular that it demands the listener's full attention, and some people -- Helium fans included -- may not want to put in that much effort. That's their loss, though, because on repeated listening, delicately gripping piano ballads like "Dungeon Dance" and "I Fire Myself " reveal themselves as songs of sadness, frustration, and hope couched in fairy-tale terms, while "Poison Moon," "Rider on the Stormy Sea," and "The Golden Fruit" are subversive rockers from a damsel in exile, not distress. The dreamy, elastic guitar workouts on "The Valley of 1,000 Perfumes" and "Tiger Rising" recall Helium's Pirate Prude, but Mountains has a closer sisterhood with Cindy Dall's Untitled -- another album of witchy chamber rock that is often hypnotic, if you're a willing subject. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide