This  well loved indie band from Boston has put enough little spins on rock music to right a book. Together these very original characteristics create a memorable listening experience. Helium is full of contradictions. The three piece band is classically trained which leads them to a much more structurally interesting sound. In the case of Helium, education has not been ignored. Mary Timony, the lead singer and guitar player, bass player and often drum player (depending on the song), has said that she used to hate bands like the Velvet Underground dismissing their playing as senseless noise. According to Spin magazine however, she has taken her very trained and classical approach to doing something similar - clearly evident in the "noise" laden tracks of the album The Dirt of Luck.
    Very obviously Helium enjoys taking normal instruments and making use of their generic basics. In the video for "Superball" the guitar player, Ash Bowie, is bowing the guitar with a screwdriver and sliding it to the different frets. in listening the sound is very melodic and eerie, but controlled. Songs from the new album The Magic City  tend to make use of a technique where the guitar is played as though an upside down cello.
Typical fingering and technique, from a rock standpoint are replaced with Mary and Ash's innovative ideas:
The drum parts tend to show complexity in their patterns, using triplet patterns often or very strikingly heavy pattern like those in the clip here of "Oh the Wind and Rain." Amerindie Magazine studied and questioned both Bowie and Timony and made some discoveries:

"The recent wave of American indie rock guitarists continues to astound and, in many cases, confound music fans world-wide. Time after time, upon catching a great show at a club, I've heard dazzled fellow enthusiasts murmur, "Wow! How the hell did they do that?" as they made their way up to the stage to buy a CD or T-shirt. Well, not knowing the answers myself, I set out to find them; picking the minds of innovative players for hints and anecdotes on technique, equipment, tunings,
and influences. "

 Mary apparently uses a Fender Bassman amp, and a Paul Reed
    Smith guitar. For effects, she uses a Real Tube
                                  Overdrive, a DOD Chorus, and a Boss Distortion
                                  pedal. She writes in mostly normal tunings but says "Though
                                  I'm in standard tuning, I'm definitely not using normal
                                  chord voicings." When discussing her studio techniques she says they've "gone to great lengths to get certain sounds" This includes messing around with different amps and techniques.  Ash did some "really neat" things on "Baby's Going Underground" and "Superball" by rubbing a screwdriver across the strings like a bow. She also talks about trying to mix guitar signals and hooking guitars up to two very different amps so while one could feedback one could still project for example, the actual playing of the song. Timony claims to be influenced by, Marc Ribot, who used to play for Tom Waits. He has " definitely opened my mind to new horizons." She also says " I guess that there was probably
a time, back in high school guitar class, when I thought that Steve Vai was really cool [laughs]." She concludes that her wish list includes a sitar and an early Moog.
    Ash Bowie, on the other hand has even more elusive styles. He bought an Acoustic tube head for $25 and has been running that through an old Fender Bassman cabinet. Differing from Timony he uses four distinct tunings: E, B, A, G A, F, which he used on the last EP and on the new
album; really low G, normal G, C, C, C, E; A, A, G, D, D; and "Vibracobra" and "Lazy Comet" are in D, A#, A#, A#, D, D. Also, he says they tune down a half-step. Bowie has said he wishes for Dulcimers, bagpipes, a rapper and in in his most uncanny interview..."a human gearbox." A very characteristic choice for this very innovative band.

Here are two sound samples from The Dirt of Luck:.

Superball

Oh the Wind and Rain Clip
 
 
 

The albums chronologically:

from info at
http://www.princeton.com/sbatten/helium/index.html
 and Alternative Press New Music Now, March 1996
and various articles in trade magazines compiled on the web and at Brown Student Radio.

Some helium sites
 
 

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