Angie, are you tough enuh-uff/To let it go? asks Mary Timony over sugared electric guitar churn at the outset of Ex Hexs latest, immortalizing a new rocknroll Angie with as much performative heartache and swagger as Jagger, maybe more. Ex Hexs second album is about garage-rock thrust at its core, like prime Stones and their own debut Rips. Like that LP, it draws a through-line from the Shangri-Las to Blondie to Sleater-Kinney to, well, Ex-Hex.
This time, though, pop-metal production shine adds a new meta-textual layer, conjuring visions of the CBGB Class of 76 upscaled to the arena rock of 86, thanks in part to furniture maker-turned indie-rock production swami Jonah Takagi. Its nothing but guitars, bass, and drums, but the sound is huge, bulked up with vocal reverb, choice pedals and amps. The latter includes Timonys miniature Rockman, an iconic tone tool that became a signature of guitarists from Bostons Tom Scholz who invented it to Charlotte Caffey, Curt Kirkwood and the dudes in Def Leppard (see pretty much every track of Hysteria).
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Its Real is mainly concerned with the bruising-ness of love. Every song involves a second-person addressee; lovers are black and blue, emotionally or otherwise, feeling haunted and misunderstood, fading away. Its rough terrain, but Timony refuses to sulk or back down; this is a record about fighting to stay connected, a commendable impulse right about now. Fittingly, the energy never flags, with plenty of familiar gestures to trainspot. Diamond Drive is a pogo-fest with a riff suggesting Lou Reeds Vicious. Medley conjures latter-day Patti Smith, Because the Night in particular; Radiate seems to wink at Blondie; No Reflection echoes Joan Jetts mighty cover of Crimson and Clover; Cosmic Cave recalls the Ramones cover of Do You Wanna Dance? with a non-binary twist.
The set ends with Talk To Me, positing The Ronettes as a hair metal band, which of course they always were. All told, Its Real rejigs rock history in both sound and spirit. It resists pat endings where lovers reunite, or crash and burn, or dissolve, as the hero rambles on to the next town or right-swipe. Instead, ita about sticking it out, talking it out, love as its lived in the world: as struggle and process, not package, as real as the effort youre willing to put in.