Marnie Stern
The Comeback Kid

LA RECENSIONE

Album of the month: game, set, and match for Marnie Stern and her brand new The Comeback Kid.

Brief synopsis.
Marnie started playing the guitar at her mother's suggestion at 15, because her mother thought it seemed cool.
Marnie enrolled at NYU, journalism faculty, because her mother thought it was a promising field for her future.
And so on, you get the idea.
Nothing seemed to go wrong in Marnie's life, but at the same time, nothing seemed to go the way she truly wanted (no kidding!): "At 21, at the end of university, I told myself: I will learn to play guitar for real, I will learn to write songs, and I will be a musician." The rest is history.

Born in '76 and raised in New York City, Marnie Stern is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist with an immediately recognizable style, but still very hard to define. Imagine a somewhat quirky math rock, a jam session between Pete Townshend on guitar, Satomi Matsuzaki (Deerhoof) on vocals, and Kid Millions of Oneida on drums (you don't have to imagine this part because the drummer on The Comeback Kid is indeed the Oneida drummer).

Have you imagined it? Now try to define it... Not easy, right?

Marnie debuted with Kill Rock Stars in 2007 after sending the record label a particularly interesting demo. Her debut album was released the same year and immediately received public and critical acclaim. From there, it was an uphill trajectory.

By 2010, Stern had already accumulated a following and resonance, regularly being included in lists of emerging artists to watch, including Rolling Stone's list of "The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (in 2008 she practiced guitar at least 8 hours a day!).

In 2023, Stern returned with what is her fifth studio album, 10 years after the previous one. The album was produced by Jeremy Gara of Arcade Fire and was released in November 2023 on Joyful Noise Record.

Marnie has always declared herself a fan of Bob Dylan, PJ Harvey, and Sleater Kenny... terrifically varied tastes she developed when she worked in a library and would take home a considerable amount of rental CDs (it seems not all of them were returned). But if you're interested in what I hear, well, I hear art-rock at times progressive and hysterics worthy of Lightning Bolt and Deerhoof, rhythmic obsessions à la Oneida, and, perhaps more like youthful moods than real influences, something like Television and Talking Heads. With forays into power rock (Forward) and neo-psychedelia: in Working Memory I had to check that the record needle hadn’t gotten stuck in the same groove. Poetry!

Prediction: we'll find her high in the rankings of the best albums of 2023!