Marnie Stern is still talking about her vagina, her lonely depressed vagina, between her violently delivered songs, she is even making up words, telling dirty jokes, which actually don’t sound dirty with her cute nasal voice.
She joked about the ‘vagine’ being ‘lovely’, and the ‘pen…’ being, well, not so lovely, 'like a grave', is this what she said? What is she talking about?
‘I see dead people’, she said half-laughing, half apologizing to come up with such an easy joke in a cemetery. With the help of her bassist Nithin and drummer Vince, she was opening both nights for the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on June 14th and 15th, and seeing how he was enjoying her set on the side of the stage, Kliph, the Flaming Lips’ drummer, is a fan.
Her music is quite hard to get, this was the second time I was seeing her, and I still haven’t made my mind, do I really like this? I am not sure, but I am quite fascinated by her extreme squeaky style. Her songs are raw and aggressive with a strident cry, that she delivers in a scary and discordant manner, with a heavy throbbing sound, a little like a tooth ache you actually enjoy in a certain way. Is it a weird thing to say? But at the same time, it is difficult to understand how her way of running her fingers along the neck of her guitar, delicately tapping the strings, an operation that seems so complex and so scientifically calculated, could give birth to such chaos.
She can do a lot of damage on stage, like a one-woman Mars Volta, but I am not sure her unique style can be compared to anyone.
Singing in high-pitched fast and out-of-breath vocals, she was screaming, yelling, jumping, rotating her hips in an anti-Presley style, violently balancing her guitar which was echoing the vocals in violent blusters, ending in so much distortion it was sounding like a train crash combined with a car alarm.
All her unpredictable songs sounded dramatically angry, but as soon as the songs stopped, Marnie was back to the funny drunk talking: ‘ I realize my brassiere is showing,… Now, in the good old days, it would have been the first step.’
‘Stay tuned for the main attraction’, she said, ‘We are so excited to be here’, and they visibly were, seeing their large smiles. Marnie’s fun, jokingly and engaging personality contrasted so much with the crazy maniac she was morphing into when she was playing her so un-girlie music. It was actually difficult not to like the unassuming confidence of such a guitar virtuoso.