The Future Is Yourself, Fill This Part In!

Marnie Stern @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 11/28/2008 and Santo’s Party House 11/30/2008 (same setlist both shows)

Transformer / The Crippled Jazzer / Shea Stadium / Steely / Precious Metal / Vibrational Match / Prime / Ruler / Grapefruit / Vault / Every Single Line Means Something

When you consider the fact that a lot of rock and roll musicians don’t play with very many other musicians, and often spend most if not all of their career working with players who they stumbled into by chance — childhood friends, local acquaintances, people who answer ad listings — actual creative chemistry can be sort of miraculous. I’m not talking about just getting along and being able to play together competently — I mean, like, needle-in-a-haystack, artistic soulmate, complete-each-other chemistry. I’m talking about what Marnie Stern and Zach Hill have going for them.

In an alternate universe, Marnie Stern plays with some musicians who aren’t up to her level, and it drags her down. She has to compromise a bit, or maybe it’s the same, and it’s sloppier, or just less nimble. In another alternate universe, she’s paired with players who are just as good or better than she is, but their vibe is more uptight, and it saps some of the joy and thrill power from her songs. In yet another alternative universe, Marnie Stern never gets it sorted with other musicians, and she never really gets anywhere on her own. In our universe, she works with Zach Hill, and he matches her creativity, energy, and spirit without overshadowing her personality.

In concert, they lock in with their second guitarist Mark Shippey on some tight compositions, but despite the demanding nature of the individual parts, they never seem to be working hard. In fact, if you watch their body language, they seems almost freakishly casual. Hill in particular has an exaggerated looseness to his movement that disconnects somewhat from the precision of his performance. At many times through each of the shows, he looked more like a guy hanging out around a drum kit than a dude mercilessly pounding out fills and switching up beats. Stern’s on stage persona is a wonderful blend of silliness, enthusiasm, and intensity. Even when she’s clearly sick, as she was in the Manhattan show, she communicates this pure excitement for rocking out that in my experience is surprisingly rare. It’s so nice to watch a band have a good time, and to be fully aware that what they’re doing is awesome, and that it’s even more awesome that they get to do it.

(This is totally embarrassing in light of how I wrote this review, but uh, that actually wasn’t Zach Hill. Check the comments.)

Marnie Stern “Transformer”

For about two hours after the show in Brooklyn, I couldn’t get the main hook from “Transformer” out of my head: “I cannot be all these things to you, it’s true.” The lyric is terrific in print, but as with any good song, the music adds a meaning words alone could never convey. It’s all in the way “iiiiit’s truuue!” extends out slightly, as if climbing a steep incline and dropping like a roller coaster. There is anticipation and thrill, but also this maybe-unintentional nod to Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill, and having it roll right back down. The thing is, “Transformer” is a song that confronts futility and limitation head-on, and in doing so, sorta games the system, and finds a way toward triumph. In other words, when she sings “it’s true!,” you kinda get the sense that this time, against all odds, Sisyphus wins, and the boulder doesn’t just stay in place at the top of the hill, but instead rolls down the other side and becomes someone else’s problem.

Buy it from Amazon.