If I had to simply sum up the kind of music that appeals to me the most, it would probably be something like “catchy rock n’ roll that doesn’t fuck around”.  If I had to give you a similarly brief summation of what Rips, the debut album from Washington D.C. trio Ex Hex sounds like, it’d probably fall pretty closely in line with this description.  And sure, I realize that simple melodies set to loud guitars in a glam-meets-garage type of manner is not really groundbreaking by any means, but I think that’s beside the point.  Because in my eyes, joyfully energetic rock albums are the kinds of things that make life worth living, and though they might be the kinds of albums that sound simple in theory, most bands rarely pull them off with the kind of natural bravura that we hear on Rips.

Despite being a band for barely over a year, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ex Hex sounds as fully formed as they do, since they’re composed of a few D.C. indie vets led by Mary Timony.  I first became aware of Timony when she was part of the indie rock supergroup Wild Flag, who put out their only album (which I loved) in 2011, and sadly won’t be putting out anymore since their announced breakup earlier this year.  But from what I can gleam, Timony’s experience trading guitar licks with Carrie Brownstein on top of Janet Weiss’s thunderous drums in Wild Flag reawakened the kind of all-out riffage and innate sense of fun that she exudes in Ex Hex.  And despite the fact that Wild Flag was seen mostly as an offshoot of Sleater-Kinney, I’m now starting to get the sense that Timony’s hummable guitar solos and witchy vocals are what made me like Wild Flag so much, and possibly what makes me like Ex Hex even more.

The fact that I bought this album on CD, and thus have gotten a lot of play out of it in the car, probably also explains why this album has been such a welcome addition to a world in which good driving music can be hard to come by.  Because simply put, Rips never stops rippin’.  Song after song continues to top itself in terms of delightful rockitude, even when it decides to slows things down (relatively) with something like “Hot And Cold”, the album’s lead single.  Rips even employs one of my favorite tropes in rock albums, which I’ll refer to as the “late album overcompensation”.  Meaning that late into this album, just after bringing things as far as you think this kind of band could possibly take it with an all-out rocker like “New Kid”, they figure out another way to triumphantly chug along with the next track “War Paint”.  It’s an idea that could probably also be applied Timony’s career so far, as she’s been doing good stuff for quite a while now (including her ’90s indie-alt band Helium), yet on Rips it sounds like she’s just getting started.

Favorite Tracks: “Don’t Wanna Lose”, “Hot And Cold”, “New Kid”

The world is a vampire. The systems society has put in place intending to protect people have been perverted by opportunists, sycophants, and psychopaths looking to walk all over the little people. Everything is broken, and anyone could find themselves with their very life in the balance at any moment. At least, that’s the world, or at least the America, that Gone Girl, David Fincher’s darkly comedic latest mystery, is set in.

Because if I told you there was a movie starring the likes of Ben Affleck, The World’s End‘s Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Casey Wilson, and Missi Pyle as almost exactly Nancy Grace, you’d think it was a comedy, wouldn’t you? In some ways, this movie is exactly that. One of the things that makes Gone Girl such a pleasure to watch is that it manages to showcase not just the frustration, terror, and uncertainty of a horrible situation, but the absurdity of it as well.

Ben Affleck is Nick, a regular guy who co-owns a bar with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) and comes home one day to find his wife has disappeared. As the search for her begins, Nick finds himself under increasing scrutiny as the media, community, police, and even his family begin to wonder if he’s got something to hide. Nick’s just one of those guys that outwardly seems too great – he’s too smooth, too cool, too handsome – someone people basically want to hate. Which is why Affleck, who people do seem to desperate for a reason to hate, is so great for this role, and delivers one of his best performances.

As does Rosamund Pike as Amy, the eponymous missing woman. Watching her side of the story is equal parts depressing, horrifying, and infuriating, and it all works because Pike is so good at playing such a damaged character. It’s undoubtedly among the year’s best performances and deserves more positive attention than she’s been getting. One of the biggest complaints I’ve read is that people feel the movie doesn’t explain enough how Amy came to be broken the way she is, but I say that ambiguity makes her all the more interesting.

More than anything, Gone Girl is another showcase for how slick and thrilling David Fincher can make a movie. He finds something in every scene that adds the extra weirdness or humanity or memorability that helped keep me interested as a viewer. I remember a scene with Margo storming out of Nick’s house and on the way she briefly leans down to pet Nick’s cat. It’s such a bizarre touch, to throw off her dramatic exit like that, but it’s the way people actually behave. And it made me wonder how important that darn cat was going to be in the grand scheme of things.

But in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters save the story people want to here. Gone Girl could have been a good murder mystery, but what made the movie great is the way it deconstructs the stories people tell themselves. But to try to explain that without spoiling anything would be quite a challenge, so instead I’ll say go see this damn movie, it’s not doing super great in the box office you jerks!