Similar to the way each member of Odd Future unexpectedly created such deep legacies for themselves as solo performers over the past decade, it’s interesting to return to the late-’00s math rock scene and trace the trajectories of each of its collaborative members to their present-day successes—whether it’s as drummer for a Beatles offspring–approved noise-rap collective or as guitarist for Fred Armisen’s 8G Band alongside members of Les Savy Fav playing daily gigs on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
The latter credential belongs to Marnie Stern, who’s recently left her post at NBC Studios and announced her long-anticipated fourth album aptly titled The Comeback Kid, arriving over a decade after 2013’s The Chronicles of Marnia. Like her peers Zach Hill and Nick Reinhart who are currently making music for what sounds like the most intense motocross video game ever made, Stern’s interests have changed significantly over the past decade while maintaining plenty of the core sonic concepts that set her music apart from just about any pocket of guitar-rock. Comeback Kid sounds neither like 2013 nor 2023, instead pulling from classic rock tropes (and spaghetti Westerns, evidently) to direct the manic scrambling guitar riffs and miraculously in-sync percussion. The result feels timeless—which seems apt for someone who’s always bucked conventional time signatures.
With the record dropping today 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. Find her writeups and a stream of the LP below, or listen here.
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 favorite 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.
