Marnie Stern
This Is It And I Am It And You Are It And So Is That And He Is It And She Is It And It Is It And That Is That

A Norman Records recommendation (6th February 2009)

This record left our Brian feeling ecstatic.

Bloody hell what a great album this is! We didn't review the CD when it crashed weeks ago but Marnie Stern's unfeasibly titled LP has arrived on wax complete with download. If you, like me, had a dislocated jaw after the sonic onslaught of her last shredder of a record, you'll be in convulsions with this one. Managing to carve out a very unique sound for a female performer, her guitar playing is nuts, like totally virtuoso but completely schizoid & alien. It's like if an eternally riffing Slash were in At the Drive-In doing PCP enhanced Beefheart covers with this possessed & sassy lass belting out some mercurial shit thinly disguised as vocals. Or Sleater-Kinney do King Crimson but with a back pocket full of icy chewing gum. Her speed finger-tapping style rips the bloated heart out of histrionic metal solos and blows some urgent euphoria into them, Zach Hill's olympic jazz flecked math drumming just tops off an already exhilarating cake of championship art rock & visceral angular punk. The songs are often beautifully poppy & adrenalised, impossibly detailed and unbelievably wired. If this woman & her equally dextrous chum are the new face of prog then I'm voting for it. Thankyou K records!

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What their label says...

 "A lot of people think everything has to do with luck and timing, and I just don't think that's
true," says Marnie Stern, pounding a bar counter to punctuate the word don't. "There are
actors that work for 20 years and fade in and out of fame. Keeping in there is the important
part."
 
Don't worry; Stern hasn't dropped her trusted Electra guitar—or "bitchin'" double-neck
Epiphone—for a steady regiment of self-help seminars. The New York Times-endorsed, Pitchfork-approved (one reviewer
called her "pure Technicolor in a glutted, black-and-white scene") vocalist/guitarist knows what she's talking about, though.
After all, she dealt with nothing but blank faces in the early '00s, as the New York native struggled to get noticed among the
Strokes/Yeah Yeah Yeahs explosion in the Lower East Side and Brooklyn.  
 
"Developing my own style took years of taking risks," says Stern. "I know my voice is high, but singing like Yoko Ono was
unbelievably embarrassing for me at first. I didn't even want my best friend to hear it. She was like, 'Come on, Marnie!
Show people your silly side!' And I was like, 'Are you kidding? Do you know how annoying that sounds?'"
 
Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times (now at The New Yorker) was one of the first critics to celebrate the Stern's
quirkiness and the carpe diem cuts of her debut, In Advance of the Broken Arm, writing, "Yes! It's hard to muster a more
nuanced response to Marnie Stern, a previously obscure shredder and yawper who has just released the year's most
exciting rock 'n' roll album."  
 
While her first full-length had the focus of a bullet train from New York to Boston, Stern's second LP—the endlessly-titled
This Is It... (blame an Alan Watts essay)—is a pop record for an alternate dimension, where hooks and choruses are sent
careening through a cracked kaleidoscope. That includes everything from the chirping chorus line of "Ruler" to the luscious
riff-raking leads of "Crippled Jazzer."  
 
Stern's new one is also deeply personal compared to the conceptual leanings of her previous work. She wasn't comfortable
with that angle at first, but she quickly found a balance between bloodletting and keeping things universal.

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