Song of the Day: Helium “Baby’s Going Underground”
Helium was a Boston-based indie band that served as the primary songwriting vehicle for singer/guitarist Mary Timony. The group ran from 1992-1998, turning out a pair of delightfully feminist Sonic Youth-influenced LPs and a number of EPs along the way. Featuring occasionally free-associative lyrics that were both poetic and often shot-through with real intent, in a lot of ways Helium were like a better version of Pavement and probably deserved more notoriety than they got during their too-brief existence.
“Baby’s Going Underground” is an album cut from their 1995 debut LP, The Dirt of Luck and is a free-flowing guitar freak-out of a track that is held together Timony‘s sharp songwriting. The song features sheets of distorted and oddly-tuned guitars colliding with Timony‘s slightly obtuse indie space poetry. The song eventually segues into majestically rolling waves of sonic dissonance as the band holds on for dear life. Exhilarating!