Mary Timony

Untame the Tiger (Merge Records) is Mary Timony's first solo album in 15 years, and I am in love with it. It's so good, from start to finish. For the uninitiated: Timony's bands have included Helium, Autoclave, Wild Flag, and Ex-Hex.  All fantastic. Last year Rolling Stone named her #95 on the top 200 greatest guitarists of all time.  She's revered among guitarists.

To get to this stage of excellence, Timony's process involves writing garbage.  "The only thing that works for me is writing a lot of bad stuff I really don't like," she says. Timony writes in the morning then sets it aside. "The most important part of my process is that I have to forget everything I just did, then go about my day. If the song comes back to me, maybe three hours later, then I can judge it. That new person that I am who hasn’t written the song has to judge it.  And 99 percent of the time, I don’t like it."

All the garbage just gave us one hell of an album.

*Here's my recent interview with Carrie Brownstein