Hex >> When I feel bigger than life, I hold a mirror up to my breath

☿ Hex - "Mercury Towers" ☿

]]] (First Warning Records / Demon Records / Rykodisc Records, 1989) [[[

Since I don't know a lot about this band, and the members are very wry and articulate, I'll just give a little background info and then a bunch of quotes from them.  Steve Kilbey was the main singer/songwriter/bassist for Australian band The Church; Donnette Thayer was a guitarist/singer in Cali bands The Veil and Game Theory.  Somehow they hooked up and started a little minimalist-pop side project called Hex circa 1987.  They also may or may not have dated; Donnette in a 1998 interview:

"Here's the Starfish story I've been holding out.  After many such conversations, Steve wrote me a postcard saying that he hoped that I would soon be a star, or at least a starfish.  Thereafter, during that period of time, when I wrote to him, I would sign my name as Starfish.  Naturally, I was astonished to see that the title of the record was Starfish.  Steve covered himself though, so as not to get in trouble if these postcards popped up, by adding that vinyl note about droogs and 'The Starfish is [The Church's drummer Richard] Ploog.'  I've been a musician long enough to know that the Starfish very well could have also been Ploog.  But it was me first."

"Taken in a photo booth somewhere on the East coast of the U.S."

She said Steve "covered himself" with that excuse because he was then dating Karin Jansson, singer of Curious (Yellow).  Donnette is also an unabashed math nerd and overall Renaissance Woman and possible genius.  This song is from Hex's self-titled debut album.  I got it in the early '00s, I believe at the CD Warehouse on Veterans Blvd. in Metairie, which was going out of business.  I bought about 125 CDs from them in one day during this clearance sale, and about 75 on another day, all for an average of a dollar.  (You guys had literally like 40 copies of R.E.M.'s Monster clogging up your racks [all with the distinctive orange jewel tray, except for the one with a regular black jewel tray that my sister bought, for which I chided her], and you wonder why you went out of business?)  Few songs can put me in a more chilled-out mindframe than this one every single time.

The lite industrial drum beat is just jarring enough to propel the song without obstructing the delicate vocal and piano/synth parts.  The wanderlustful line "It's only an hour away from here" is very reminiscent of the line "And it's only a day away... We could leave tonight" in The Church's outstanding "Metropolis" from the following year:

The U.S. LP had this write-up on its inner sleeve:

"The music is rich and seductive, a bewitching mix of acoustic, electric and electronic instruments, capped with alluring lyrics.  Call it post-psychedelic rock 'n' roll, future-folk, melodic prose and poetry or musical moods for ultra-moderns, Hex is an indescribably enticing album that will enchant you."

From the press kit that came with promo copies of the LP:

"Hex is neither a group, nor an album, but rather the musical spirit that comes from the union of singer Donnette Thayer (formerly of Game Theory) and Steve Kilbey (bassist and principal singer and songwriter for The Church).

"It really started as an experiment," explains Thayer.  "I'd given Steve some tapes of me singing, and he liked them, so he suggested that we do a song together.  I thought it would just be a fun thing, but after the first song we did" -- "Silvermine," included on the album -- "the music started taking on a life of its own."

Kilbey's prolific songwriting often includes music that isn't intended for The Church.  "I've always wanted to do an album with a female singer, but never found the right one," he explains.  "Then I heard tapes of Donnette, and realized that she was the voice I'd been seeking."

During a break following The Church's Starfish tour, Kilbey and Thayer went into the studio to work on some musical ideas Kilbey had come up with while on the road.  "The music started out as sequences," recalls Donnette, "but soon it began developing its own personality, like some character from a book that gets up and starts walking around the room."  Working in various locations around New York City during the winter of 1988-89, the duo came up with ten songs that seemed to naturally coalesce into an album. 

Says Donnette, "It was strange how Steve and I found ourselves thinking the same. I could really trust the way he'd express what I'd been feeling."

That magic is indelibly impressed into the tracks that became Hex, creating a spell that even brought about a name for their collaboration.  "We were playing Scrabble one night, and HEX came up as a word, and there it was," says Kilbey.

Adds Donnette, "It was worth a lot of points, too.""

She talked further about this story in 1998:

"Ho!  You remember the Scrabble anecdote!  For our listeners who may have just tuned in, Hex came up in a Scrabble game that Steve and I were playing.  Steve had used an X and I placed an E in front of it.  He expected me to spell out SEX, but I spelled HEX instead.  I was hesitant to do this, because Steve uses every bit of inspiration that comes his way.  I was worried that this metal-rock word would haunt me.  It did.  Nothing against the word Hex, it’s a great word with an interesting history and many engaging and hidden connotations.  It just didn’t match the music.  Everybody knows that I play arena rock."

Since it has a languid sound with atmospheric synths and electronic drums, and of course female vocals, a lot of people consider this album to be a forerunner of trip-hop music, but I think that's too much of a stretch, though it definitely has a proto-"downtempo" vibe.  It is certainly quite an unexpected detour from the sounds of their previous bands.  Another great song from this LP is "Fire Island," followed closely by the erotic "Silvermine" and the rustic "Ethereal Message."  I was surprised to find out a year or two ago that there was a music video made for the latter (Kilbey does not appear in it for some reason), so here it is:

I could just watch that video all day long.  Not that it pertains to the music, but wow, Donnette was traffic-accident-causingly gorgeous, despite the Desperately Seeking Susan hair...  Remember, folks: A math geek.  The song "Diviner" from this album was used in the 2003 film Tarnation.  I've gotten most of this arcane info from here and here.  I was shocked to see Donnette say, somewhere on one of those pages, that Hex's first album went double platinum; maybe she meant in Aussie sales or was just joking altogether.  According to my research, double platinum in Australia means 140,000 copies sold, in a nation of around 20 million people.  Hmm.  Paging all math nerds...

Note: The ☿ symbol I used in the song title field is the glyph for Mercury.

Planets with similar climates: Area - "I'll Gather Flowers" (1988), Portishead - "Roads" (1994), Insides - "Skin Divers" (1993), Zero 7 - "In The Waiting Line" (2001), Over The Rhine - "Iron Curtain" (ca. 1990), Suzanne Vega - "Big Space" (1990).