VIDEO: Marnie Stern, "Ruler"
There's Marnie Stern, the person, and then there's Marnie Stern, the rock band, and it's important to understand the difference. Marnie Stern the person is an unassuming woman who in her early 20s decided she'd start playing guitar. Marnie Stern the band, who come to Church on Monday, are the result, almost a decade later: an out-of-left-field fireball of guitar-and-drums insanity that pits the technical prowess of '70s and '80s guitar gods against the off-kilter oddness of '00s oddballs like Lightning Bolt and Deerhoof."I tried for a while to come up with a band name," the New Yorker tells me on the phone as she and her band comb Seattle for a parking spot, "but I just couldn't find one that I liked enough. It's like getting a tattoo, I needed to find something that I really loved. So I guess I just kind of stuck with my name."
Ms. Stern's journey of rock is an inspiring tale: while she was living in New York City, working an office job and trying to do music, a co-worker casually mentioned that she seemed to be becoming less of a musician with a day job and more of just a person with a dull office gig. Stern quit a week later and began practicing guitar eight hours a day and working up the material that would become her Kill Rock Stars debut, In Advance of the Broken Arm. (Take that, co-worker!) What was this force that altered her life?
"I don't know, there's no answer for that! Something did propel me, I just don't know what it was. I've always enjoyed music, but I think that when I was in school I just didn't think that it was an option. You know, you're told by your family that it's a hobby, but then once I graduated from school, something sort of hit me and I realized that I can do whatever I want to do, so I'm going to do this. And that's what propelled me most."
For someone who decided to lock herself in her room and write songs until she "made it," Stern chose an unusual guitar style, one of the most idiosyncratic and identifiable of the past decade: the two-hand tapping technique, which is often associated with the grossest excesses of '80s hair metal. The result is heavy, intense playing minus the bar chords and standard riffs that have come to be the bread and butter of rock guitar. Instead, her vocals work along with the zany guitar melodies to produce converging and diverging musical lines. (Zach Hill is her drummer/producer on disc, John Reed Thompson the bassist and engineer.) "I think that I had heard a lot of people doing similar things with guitar and vocals, like Satomi [Matsuzaki of Deerhoof]. She does it really well, very texturally. I really like it when the voice goes with the guitar, and that kind of high-pitched way of singing is pretty similar to my personality, which is why I started using it more. It felt more authentic."
And though her music may be overwhelming, it's never evil or dark. "When I'm writing songs, I'm always going for something that sounds anthemic. I really really like that anthemic feel — I like positivity!" She ain't kidding: in "Transformer," off her the album with the unwieldy-yet-awesome title 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 (Kill Rock Stars), a flurry of arpeggiated tapping builds to a tornado of drums, guitar, and voice, as she sings uplifting lines like "I turn this moment into something new, it's true/Are you ready to feel alive?" Her artistic goals come into clear focus in the jarring spoken word of "Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling," the final tune on In Advance of the Broken Arm: "So you see, I am not looking to find a pot of gold/The picture in my head is my reward."
Stern recently made a video for "Ruler," from the new album, and it's a Rocky send-up in which she tapes her knuckles, drinks raw eggs, and punches raw meat. You get the sense that she's finally made it up the stairs of this Balboa-esque musical quest — and that it feels good to be there.
"Of course!" she shouts. "Although it took years and years, it took 10 years to find a voice! It was such an exhaustive process. And I'm happy now that I finally found it, but at the same time I want to try to grow as much as possible. I don't want to be doing some kind of formulaic thing — but you know, I can't force it."
MARNIE STERN + HO-AG + TALK NORMAL | Church, 69 Kilmarnock St, Boston | December 1 at 9 pm | 21+ | $9 | 617.236.7600 or www.churchofboston.com
