ANDY: That’s going to be the takeaway quote from this: “Odd Future are the new old spiritual hymns.” TYLER: [Laughs] I do wonder what’s going to happen next in terms of—are you going to see more of those pop songs that nobody likes but everybody knows? Are those going to become more and more of the norm? LAURA: I wonder if, as social media becomes more and more a part of our culture, in increasingly terrifying ways,
having ubiquitous cultural anthems will start happening less and less. ANDY: Uh, One Direction. Come on. PROPAGANDA: I think social networking is the new A&R now. That’s the movement. We were told at one of our little label strategic meetings that, they were saying, of the twenty-and-unders, 80 percent get their music from YouTube. TYLER: Everything is getting so nichemarket and pulling us apart. You don’t have
to listen to what everybody else listens to. You can find your own thing. If your thing is tribal beats, you can listen to tribal beats all the time, and it doesn’t matter whether or not the radio plays it. PROPAGANDA: It’s the great equalizer from an artist’s perspective. I don’t have a fraction of the budget or popularity that other artists have. But because of things like social networking, we’ve been able to bring this tribe of people.
The Chronicles of Marnia, Stern admits she wasn’t comfortable with the sort of things her quest to be real unearthed. “I like clutter,” she says. “I like everything all jumbled and messed up. I’m sure that’s some way to hide.” So, on Chronicles, she’s trying to come out from behind her guitar. “The singing is clearer, which is hard for me, but I’m glad I did it,” she says. “When the vocals are really upfront in the mix, it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s really hard for me. “ On her new album, Stern is more structured. This makes her front and center, but also, to her thinking, more self-critical. “Is it too saccharine?” she asks. “Does it come across as Coldplay? All those judgments you make on yourself are a disaster. They block you from moving forward.” Stern is good at moving forward, however, and if she’s making any judgments on herself, she does a good job of shutting them down. It’s rare to hear an artist so bound and determined to march to the beat of their own drum, but when you listen to the runaway mine cart of a melody on Chronicles of Marnia’s first single, “Year of the Glad,” you’ll know she’s blazing her own trails. You’ve never heard anything like it. “For a long time I’ve just been trying to dig out the most authentic part of myself, no [SPOTLIGHT]
matter how comfortable or uncomfortable it made me. I don’t even know what this stuff sounds like anymore. I’m just trying to do what I think sounds good.”
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“The problem the last couple years is I was stuck in the same pattern. I’m trying different stuff to get out that pattern. Whether it comes
“ENERGETIC.” That’s how Marnie Stern describes her
Guitarists” list there is) and her own goofball personality which, Stern says, is her muse.
style of music, which is kind of like describing
“I’m trying to put my personality into songs,”
Hammurabi as “old.” Her music is energetic in
she says. “Trends come and go. I’m not really
the way rollercoasters are—dizzying, pulse-
paying attention to them. I’m just trying to be as
pounding and mind-melting. The only real center
authentic as I can.”
seems to be Stern’s wizard-like, virtuosistic
But finding that authenticity hasn’t been
guitar-playing (she’s made appearances on just
easy, as any dig into the core of yourself is bound
about every reputable “World’s Greatest Living
to be. On her newest album, the exquisitely titled
across as different or not I don’t know.” It does.
Marnie Stern Chronicles of Marnia
RELEVANT MAGAZINE
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