“Ruler” – Marnie Stern
(Words/music: Marnie Stern, available on This is It… [title truncated], Kill Rock Stars 2008)

This afternoon, I finally got around to reading Georgia Hubley’s liner notes for her compilation in Merge’s twentieth anniversary SCORE! Boxset, and she starts with an interesting phrase: “I do not enjoy using words to describe what I like about music (or anything, really).”   She then, appropriately, writes a great essay that reveals what she loves (in a peripheral manner).  On a very basic level, I agree with her sentiment – nobody needs to justify why he or she likes something.  Taste is subjective and (as I’m finding) greatly influenced by personal events.  Still, I believe that words can and should be spent on explaining why we love specific things in music (and if I didn’t, wouldn’t that make this blog an exercise in futility?).   I don’t want to make someone like the same things that I like, and I think that sometimes we fall into that trap of trying to “sell” something through the written word.  However, I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out the things that draw me to specific songs and articulate them in semi-coherent sentences – perhaps this is the writing teacher in me drawing the specific connection between writing and the thought process.   Perhaps if I could write songs as well as Yo La Tengo (and more on them another night), I wouldn’t feel this need to tell you, dear reader, about my favorite songs every day.  However, this is how I pay tribute to those songs that I love.

Back to Hubley’s introduction for a minute – sometimes words can’t accurately articulate the experience of hearing a song or seeing a band play.  Personally, I had that experience with Marnie Stern.   After reading reviews, interviews, and testimonials singing her praises, I was intrigued to hear what this “guitar prodigy” sounded like.  Even with these warnings of her furious playing, I was still surprised at the intensity in her songs.  The combination of her lightning quick finger tapping and Hella’s Zach Hill’s physical assault on his drum kit makes Stern’s songs sound like sonic thunderstorms.  I was impressed with In Advance of the Broken Arm, but I can’t say the respect and awe translated into genuine enjoyment – I found that my ears were tired by the time I reached the end of the disc.

“Ruler,” unlike anything on Stern’s debut, stuck with me.  By her second album, Stern learned how to harness her raw sonic power to serve her songs.  In the verses, Stern pushes full-steam ahead, letting the drums, her guitar, and several tracks of her high pitched voice stir together chaotically.  However, Stern pulls back slightly on the chorus by singing in a more relaxed tone and toning down the sonic onslaught (relatively speaking).  Where many of her earlier songs sounded like relentless storms, “Ruler” sounds like a well-developed aural hurricane.  Having a stronger structural arrangement, like a hurricane ready to reach land, makes “Ruler” that much more dangerous, and like the storms, the most dangerous part comes right around the eye of the storm.  Where many could hold out against Stern’s earlier songs, “Ruler,” as Stern’s lyrics suggest, overpowers anyone in its path.

Consider yourself warned, even if it won’t adequately describe what awaits when you press the “play” button.

More on Marnie Stern: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm