Album Review: Ex Hex – It’s Real


Its Real



In the circular conversation around what rock ‘n’ roll is these days and what its point is, Ex Hex’s debut Rips was a simple yet standout case for the defence, whatever that was.

On it, the all-girl trio of Mary Timony (guitar, vocals), Betsy Wright (bass, vocals) and Laura Harris (drums) picked up a baton now disappearing into a mist of over complication and just did what felt right; it proved to be a rare bullseye for pleasing yourself as the new century carried on making the truth seem fake.

Five years on and all the same arguments are the same even if much of the world around them has changed, however where Rips arguably fitted more into the image of three women making guitar music – angular, understated, hip – on It’s Real they choose to go back to basics.

That’s a phrase admittedly that means a thousand things to a million people, but here the gambit is to amp up the spirit of the movement’s original female torch bearers – The Runaways, Joan Jett, Debbie Harry – and channel their emancipated rawness. Appropriately then, the words to Opener Tough Enough read like they were scratched into a seedy bar’s toilet door: ‘Are you good enough/When it’s time to roll/Gotta let it go’, it chants whilst double denim riffs are laid down with some evident glee.

If these are the new rules of the game it’s a little easier to understand Timony’s claim that she drew at least some inspiration during the process from 80’s cock-rock producer Mutt Lange; the bombastic, epically sinewed Another Dimension throws together cosmic love over flicked power chords and a multi-tracked chorus, fist punches that turn up the collars on Def Leppard’s recherche cool.

It’s a devotion which straddles the blurry line between irony and guilty pleasure, but wisely the more disposable skeletons are kept under lock and key. With flies staying firmly zipped, songs like Radiate and Diamond Drive are truer to the band’s intended design; hard rock with lipstick smeared all over its face, theirs is a swaggering, cigarette butts-n’-soda mantra which partially reclaims a dull acre of a long-side-lined faith.

Admirably unpretentious as this may be, there’s still a tendency for the twenty-first century mind to wander without being overwhelmed with stimulus, and once the basic idea is snottily delivered its frailties are free to manifest themselves; on Good Times and beyond the unavoidable theme is one of minor variations.

In a sense Timony and co. are damned if they do and likewise if they don’t: by aspiring to make something for everyone, they risk that the required chemistry to make that jump isn’t always present. There is a moment where the runes are cast just right however, Medley full of honeyed melodies and a masterful key change, the band accordingly splitting the atom and rising above the confines they’ve chosen.

There’s no doubt that there’s something inherently good in attempting to bring some poise back to a jaded format. As a straight ahead record It’s Real has both sincere intentions and obvious strengths, but Ex-Hex will need to be careful that their new road doesn’t become a dead end.



(Andy Peterson)


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