I am not sure I understand the way Marnie Stern plays guitar, she puts her two hands on the neck of her electric guitar and move her fingers like a manic woman, a fury on 6 chords, impressively producing a deranged fragmented noisy sound which seems based on a savant technique of her own. A guitar goddess of the indie music world?
Her songs are like violent twisters of sounds, fast and intense, with high-pitched vocals, ranging from Yoko-Ono-like screams (or is it Sleater-Kinney-like?) to more harmonious anthems, which seem to come from a chorus of several crazy and frenetic women.
Some songs begin with an Eddie-Van-Halen-style high pitched solo guitar, then morph into a complicated medley of hard rock, even metal with powerful drumming, repetitive guitar riffs suddenly shifting in any direction, disorienting the listener each time, stopping and starting again like wheels on fire.
I can see her as an acquired taste, as she is a challenging girl to follow, but her constant chatting between the songs, her incessant joking with her bassist, made her so likable Wednesday night at the Echo in Los Angeles, I really wanted to understand her intriguing and intricate songs.
You just have to applause someone who comes with such a unique style, something so original, bold and personal, and has just the courage to be completely herself.
I read she does not think she is a very good guitar player, she thinks she is just an OK one, and seeing how natural, comfortable and direct she was in front of an adoring crowd, I believe her, I mean I believe she is really thinking this, even though she was named one of the Greatest Female Guitarists Of All Time’ by Venus magazine in 2008, ‘Female Artist Of The Year’ and ‘Punk Album Of The Year’ for the 2008 Plug Music Awards. But yes, she is sincere… and bold, discussing how touching the mic with her lips is like kissing a boy, joking about her ‘empty vagina’ or other more-than-you-want-to-know details about her sex life or the lack of. She even started a blog, the Vagina Monoblog, er… some kind of obsession there?
If Marnie is relaxed and candid between songs, she is like in trance when performing them, making all kinds of emotional faces, screaming her guts out, the same way she injects so much intensity, fierceness and passion in her songwriting. Like for example in her song ‘For Ash’ which was written for an ex-boyfriend who committed suicide, something you would not tell when hearing the song, a triumphant chant, a powerful and violent hurricane of boiling and agitated guitars with wildly eccentric vocals, screaming weird and cryptic lyrics,… yes these lyrics are really impressionistic, mysterious, take any of her songs like ‘Nothing left’, ‘Knot that call with a knife/Twist it up rightly so/With a million places/there’s no one saying/it’s better unknown’, or ‘Transformers’, ‘Evolve or die complications/Look at that figure/It’s bringing back a type of pull you can’t make up.
Continue to raise it up’,… she is the anti Bethany Cosentino! At which she directed a few shots in an interview for Impose magazine a little while ago: ‘Ok, Best Coast, I see everywhere. What’s with her? […] So that’s why she got famous? Is she famous? Like what, because buzz is different. […] I heard a song and was like, ‘Are you joking me?’ […] That’s unacceptable, that’s unacceptable. That’s not showing any part, that’s unacceptable. You might as well then be an 80s hair metal band saying ‘I want pussy.’
Marnie is funny and so honest it is frightening! Go see her if you dare.
Setlist:
Nothing left
For Ash
Transformer
Transparency is the new mystery
Risky biz
Shea stadium
The Crippled Jazzer
Vibrational Match
The Things you notice
Cinco de Mayo
Prime
Build Her confidence