It took me a little while to hear the music in this music. At first and even tenth listen, Marnie Stern sounds more dedicated to experimentation, or newness, or maybe just weirdness than to melody or even song structure. Her ideas appear, collide, and disappear - she's less an architect than a demolition-woman. She presents a hook or riff and then destroys it or offers it up already cracked. The one thing consistent about In Advance of the Broken Arm is her ability on the guitar. She wails. Wait. That sounds too much like Jimmy Page ripping his heart out for the audience. We need a word that means technical assholery for it's own sake. Right - she shreds.
Cool as this may sound, her strategy often conflicts with her ability. The rhythmic fuckarounds on "Grapefruit," "Absorb Those Numbers," and "Logical Volume" don't really pan out, and the some of the over-dramatic changes in the otherwise fun "Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and then Watch That Basket!!!" don't add anything to the song. Actually, most of the (frequent) tempo changes on this album seem less a part of the song than a failed transition to some other, unconnected idea. I started to feel like she was showing off not her fingers or her soul but her brain. LAAAAME. Even the song titles are over-intellectual. "Plato's Fucked Up Cave" is not valid unless you're going to talk about The Republic. Marnie Stern, you are not talking about The Republic. Is she a guitar god(dess) or an avant garde indie artiste? Van Halen or Deerhoof? Actually, those are probably the closest two reference points here. I hope that divide can be bridged, but Stern has only hinted at that possibility.
Luckily for us, those hints come reasonably often. Some of these careening ideas actually do rock. "Precious Metal" starts with a series of tapped patterns that honestly rule. And "Put All Your Eggs..." breaks into a circular, melodic refrain that sounds like good Animal Collective. It's even a little anthemic. These moments of real rock and roll energy, it should be mentioned, could never have happened without the super-raw drumming of Zach Hill (Hella). There probably weren't a lot of drummers capable of keeping up with her. He's an excellent choice.
Actually, most of the songs have just this kind of transcendent moment. As if by accident, they'll flip over and show their fun, future-rock underbellies. Some do it more often - the closer "Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling" sort of kicks ass, filled with snippets of what could have built a great Sonic Youth song. It even ends with a chant - "We Must Dream On!" she sings. It's no accident that sounds like Aerosmith. Sure, we all know Aerosmith sucks, but everyone with a beating heart loves "Sweet Emotion." Too bad Stern spends most of the album acting too smart for classic-rock style songcraft. And it's not just the abstract time signatures or the atonal riffs. She has this infuriating tendency to start speaking in the beginning or middle of a song. Dear Marnie: You are not Otis fucking Redding, so please stop talking in the middle of your songs. At the very least, try to keep these interludes listenable. Really, the absurdity of her lyrics soars beyond my threshold of discomfort when they're at the top of the mix, sounding like an impassioned book reading. "Around you is a solitude trilogy," she says. What the fuck? If words like these are worked into the pattern of the song, I can ignore them. These, however, sound like a lecture at a liberal arts college, and they make me want to pass out. I don't know whether to hope she's being sarcastic or not.
In conclusion: I have this friend who loves metal. Not just any metal - he loves metal that talks about dragons and spells and shit. Trying to decide whether or not to attend a concert by the (seriously awesome) band Dragonforce, he asked a fellow enthusiast what to expect. The guy said only one word: "shred." I wish I could have kept this review that short, but Marnie wouldn't let me. She does shred - she shreds hard. Unlike past shredders, though, she doesn't keep her work focused on the shred. This could have been amazing - imagine how good Eddie or Jimi or Yngwie would have been working with real songs - but it fails. So instead of just focusing on what she CAN do, she fills her songs with infuriating, smarmy gibberish and look-how-bright-I-am dischord. An album or two down the line, this may produce some great music, but for now, she might want to study some well-written tunes. I'm thinking soul, or maybe good country. The kinds of music where the whole idea is the unity of the instrumentation, the words, and the mood.
See also
Plato, Solitude Trilogies, Otis Redding, Things That Occasionally Rule
