Marnie Stern has the cheekily titled “The Comeback Kid” finding the 45-year-old picking up right where she left off, serving us a heady mix of restless riffs and nervy rhythms that reveal the steady strokes of a seasoned songwriter. After years of painting by the numbers as a regular member of the 8G Band on The Late Show with Seth Meyers, the effervescent new record is a return to form for an artist ready to dive back into a more boundary-pushing sonic approach: “The sound is hard to hear, right? / You can’t take it,” she wails on the blistering single “Believing Is Seeing,” upping the ante with her trademark maximalism. “What if I add this! And this! And this!”
But it’s not all big additions on “The Comeback Kid”. While its singular collision of math-rock and post-punk is most cogently expressed at the top of the volume dial, Stern’s long-anticipated follow-up continues a trajectory that has found the artist occasionally playing down the hi-octane, Eddie Van Halen-style guitar assault on which she first built her name.
Beginning with the mid-album cover of Ennio Morricone’s “Il Girotondo Della Note,” these songs increasingly find mileage in shade and nuance, with more spacious and straightforward arrangements like the side two standout “Til It’s Over” living effortlessly alongside livewire meltdowns like “The Natural” and opener “Plain Speak.”
On the latter, she offers a potential explanation for tapping the brakes on her trademark style: “I can’t keep on moving backwards.” Pound for pound, Stern’s latest offering is as urgent and electrifying as anything she’s managed in the 16 years since her disarming debut. With the record dropping via Joyful Noise, Stern walks us track by track through the release, detailing how most of the lyrics were born from getting back into the writer’s seat—this time around with a couple of kids to keep an eye on.
1. “Plain Speak”
Sometimes you feel like things are conspiring against you. You keep working at something, and you don’t get the results you want. That’s what this song is about.
2. “Believing Is Seeing”
I would love to do a concept record. This is conceptual, but also more literal. I’m walking through the steps of writing the song. At the same time, I’ve always wanted to create my own universe in a song. This is me taking a stab at it.
3. “The Natural”
My favourite part of writing songs is adding guitar elements in and out and trying to lock them in together until they click. This was me blending a riff at the beginning that I didn’t really love, and trying to toughen up the song with some grit.
4. “Oh Are They”
I never thought I would be able to put vocals over this. This was me trying to do less tapping and trying to pull in some classic rock. But I like the guitar parts a lot.
5. “Forward”
This has an old-school classic rock feel, and I like its simplicity.
6. “Working Memory”
This is about trying to keep your cool when your kids are going bananas!
7. “Il Girotondo Della Note” (Ennio Morricone cover)
The original sounded messy and composed at the same time, and I loved all the voices floating above. So I tried to cover it and add a bit of myself in there.
8. “Til It’s Over”
I don’t usually write songs like this, and sometimes I really like to. I wrote it on the bass. Sometimes I try to approach the songs from different angles to try and snap my mind out of its usual patterns, and the bass helped.
9. “Nested”
I worked on this song for years. There’s something very sad about this song and very melancholy to me. When I hear it, it reminds me of all the time I spent on it and I’m not sure if that makes me feel happy, or drags me into the memories of all the times I worked on it.
10. “Earth Eater”
This was me trying to get the guitar lines as concise as possible while still trying to find a vocal line on top.
11. “Get It Good”
I’m really proud of the feel of this song. The guitar parts play with time signatures and took me a long time to come up with!
12. “One and the Same”
This is another melancholy one. I really tried to come up with a decent melody line on this one. There’s a lot of tapping buried underneath that I like a lot.
The Fat Angel Sings 