Also this issue:

Nashville's Back Lot
The Folk Alliance Showcase reveals the gears of the music-licensing machine.
-Mary Armstrong

Keep Moving
The Secession Movement is a band with a plan.
-Paul Burress

Old Gods Alive Again
The Choral Arts Society exhumes our musical lineage.
-Peter Burwasser

Aereogramme
-John Vettese

The Aislers Set
-Sam Adams

Lo-Hi
-M.J. Fine

TV Smith
-Sam Adams

Dysrhythmia
-Paul Burress

March 27-April 2, 2003

musicpicks

Mary Timony

Shhh. Mary Timony's gonna take you back. Way back. Dive under the new wave. Check behind the garage. Try the 17th century, when "I Prithee Send Me Back My Heart" first topped the charts. Closing out The Golden Dove (Matador), "Prithee" -- archaic syntax and all -- is closer in spirit to any modern love song than are spooky chamber-rock fantasies like "Look a Ghost in the Eye." Even when Helium tapped the indie-rock zeitgeist, all Timony's talk of dragons and drowned witches tipped off her heathen heart. So it's unsettling when she drops the metaphors on "Magic Power" and "Blood Tree" to chastise a bad neighbor and a worse boyfriend. A good shock, to be sure, but a small one beside the pedal-steel-and-cello defibrillation of "Dr. Cat." Touring with a band last summer, Timony danced as her coven nearly resurrected the dead. Maybe if we all stay quiet at the Tin Angel, she can do it on her own. On the other hand, go ahead and clap. Supernatural phenomena are best confined to Timony's imagination.

Thu., March 27, 8:30 p.m., $10, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0978.

—M.J. Fine