Narc. Magazine Online
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Ben Lowes-Smith discovers Marnie Stern’s new album is a freewheeling chaotic tour de force
Joyful Noise Recordings
Released: 03.11.23
It’s been ten years since Marnie Stern’s last serving of histrionic rock music, The Chronicles of Marnia, was released into the world. Though in the intervening years motherhood has entered her life, her freewheeling, chaotic music remains wilfully youthful, though her personal circumstances and the world at large has changed a lot since 2013, the essence of her art has remained cryogenically frozen.
Astonishingly inventive guitar playing colours these odd, intensely melodic songs; lead single Plain Speak thunders along breathlessly, perhaps the one criticism of the record could be its sheer melodic relentlessness: each one is embedded with a Cardiacs-level of melodic busyness. It’s a tour de force from a true auteur who we are lucky to have producing music again.
