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Like Mary Timony, her counterpart out front of late-'80s/early-'90s pre-Riot-Grrrl femme-punks Autoclave, Christina Billotte has fashioned a distinctly iconoclastic sound at a time when the global village has supposedly reduced rock 'n' roll to merely a million variations on the same theme. After leading Slant 6 to two stand-up albums of Dischord-issued eyeliner-heavy anglo-punk-styled rock-trio-ism, Billotte has taken that outfit's horror-show/horror-in-love thematics and, with her sister Mira in Quix*o*tic, forged the lewd leitmotif into something of more soulful substance. Their second album, Mortal Mirror, follows in the footsteps of their dapper debut, Night For Day, walking in a way that shows that this combo's strange, hard-to-describe take on rock 'n' roll — ranging from dynamic instrumentalism through morbid lullaby — is merely a product of their personalities; this the work of the kind of girls who can cover scat-soul spitter Billy Stewart and doom-rock overlords Black Sabbath on the same album, without pretense. Freeing garage rock from its crutch of distortion, Quix*o*tic are the most skeletal of guitar/bass/drums trios, with single-note guitar lines twanging in the air like the sounds of some frightened surf-guitarist lost in the mists of the graveyard, and the bass/drums battery keeping to the most uncluttered rhythms. Even in such bony tone, the combo are never afraid to drop one if not two instruments out of the mix; often their most impressive efforts come when they cease rocking to deliver some soulful sisters' sing-along over a simple beat. With the Billottes bringing vocal flourishes influenced by '60s-girl-groups and choral soul, Quix*o*tic's ungainly gothic garage-rock can often transcend its own implied limitations, almost stumbling into unaffectedly beautiful moments blessed with an innate grace.
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