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

LA RECENSIONE

Women and math-rock: a rather cerebral combination.

Marnie Stern is a friendly and charming New York girl who plays the guitar quite virtuosically, to the point that Kill Rock Stars signed her after simply listening to a demo. Her guitar style is strongly characterized by the use of tapping, a technique that allows her to play many notes and which, she herself is keen to point out, she wanted to learn «because of math bands like Don Caballero and Lightning Bolt, not Steve Vai or other ‘80s metalheads». For this reason, she never plays solos, but limits herself to phrasing.

"This Is It...", with its title borrowed from the English philosopher Alan Watts, is the second LP, released by Kill Rock Stars in 2008 and produced by Zach Hill (Hella), here also as a drummer and keyboardist. Marnie's music is very complex, layered, articulated, thanks to her intricate guitar riffs and Zach's drumming, which sounds like a simplified Damon Che or Kevin Shea. It can be defined as «math-songwriting», as Marnie also handles the writing of lyrics and music. Essentially, she is a singer-songwriter with a particularly shrill voice, who sings very catchy melodies laid over instrumentals that draw heavily from the noise/math of the aforementioned Don Caballero and Lightning Bolt, and, of course, Hella. An example is "Ruler", a fundamentally pop piece if it weren't for the convulsions of the drums and the chaotic guitar intertwinings. A peculiarity of the sound is the cleanliness of the voice as well as the guitar: Marnie prefers not to use distortions often on her Jazzmaster to enhance the mile-long riffs played with tapping.

"This Is It..." is certainly a very technical work, but melodic, energetic, and sunny.

Compared to the previous "In Advance Of The Broken Arm," it is more mature and original, less comparable to the math bands that influence her and more oriented towards the indie-rock of Sleater-Kinney and Erase Errata. However, it lacks creative and fun titles like "Plato's Fucked Up Cave" or "Put All Your Eggs In One Basket And Then Watch That Basket!!!".

 A fresh and vital album, perfect for spring.