I first read about Marnie
Stern in now defunct music magazine Plan B a few years ago. I had never
heard her music, but in the interview she said that Sleater-Kinney changed her
life. So, of course, I listened to her first album In Advance of the Broken Arm and was blown away. It was
chaotic and glorious and you couldn’t help but smile at the sheer audaciousness
of it. I mean, she’s self-taught and just
listen to her. A year later she released 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, showcasing even more chaos and manic energy, yet also
highlighting the progression of the technical skills which earned her critical
acclaim so early in her career. Then, I think, was when the biggest split in her career
appeared. It was two years before her third album, Marnie Stern, was released and while the chaos factor was still there
we also began to hear something resembling coherence, something you could dance
to, something I could run to. In this respect, I think Marnie Stern’s first two
albums are almost tentative feeling-outs. Experimentation on a grand scale that
worked in its own way and announced an exciting new act who wasn’t afraid to
try something different. On her next two albums, Marnie Stern and forthcoming album The Chronicles of Marnia, you hear a progression towards what
Marnie herself calls an attempt to “make things less nutso.”
This is her first album without drummer Zach
Hill, her first with a producer and the first on which she admits to focussing
on “songwriting. Not guitar playing.”
The Chronicles of Marnia was recorded
over three weeks last year in Brooklyn and in becoming something ‘less nutso’
it manages to strike a balance between the frenetic energy of her previous
albums and a new warmth and cohesiveness to the songs. This much is immediately
obvious when you listen to album opener and lead single Year of the Glad, on which Marnie declares herself “On a mission, the
beginning / New finds and old dreams/ And everything's starting now." It’s
an odd statement of intent for an album she worries may be her last as the
realities of working outside the mainstream in the music industry begin to
raise their ugly heads. Yet, there’s optimism here, a need for something new even if it may be the last. Then we’re
straight into the twists and turns and twinkling finger-tapping of You Don’t Turn Down; you can really
hear just how clear Marnie’s vocals are on this album. Normally muffled under
layers of sound and effects, they’re brought to the fore on this and the following track
Noonan with a searching refrain of
“Don’t you want to be somebody?” There are the layers of guitar and drumming
(ably handled by Kid Millions of Oneida) of yore, but rather than overpowering
and threatening to collapse in on the song they strengthen and bolster as it
progresses. It happens over and over on the album. There are moments where it
sounds sparse compared to previous efforts, yet sparse does not mean boring and
there are still new tricks and elements of the ‘nutso’ abound. Tracks like Immortals zig and zag, and The Chronicles of Marnia revels in
syncopation, speed and all that before we get to prog-rock-anthem Proof of Life. Here, Marnie channels
Bowie through her own unique filter as she pleads with the universe to “give
her a sign” of life. Album closer Hell
Yes is a race to the finish, as joyous a closer as Year of the Glad is an opener. In it we hear Marnie’s new-found
ability to come full circle and relish in the strength of her songwriting as
well as her ability to shred like a motherfucker. Yet, I feel for all this that
the end should be more explosive than it is. I don’t think this is the result
of Marnie Stern having lost anything, but rather it could serve as a promise to
herself that no matter what she says this could never be the last album purely
because it feels unfinished at the end. At least, that’s what I believe.
The Chronicles of
Marnia
is, as the title suggests, an introspective piece of work by an artist who has
never done the same thing twice during an impressive career which she has crammed into
the relatively brief span of six years. Her earlier work may be stellar in
terms of the places she travelled to deliver the soundscapes captured, but Marnie
Stern has looked inside herself and found a universe as intriguing as anything
she has shared with us before. Long may it continue.
Chronicles of Marnia by Marnie Stern is out on 18th March via Kill
Rock Stars.
LD
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