It’s been a whole 10 years since we last got a new album from Marnie Stern, but that changes this fall: The guitar wiz has announced her next LP, aptly titled The Comeback Kid, which is out November 3rd via Joyful Noise Recordings. Along with the news, she’s shared its lead single “Plain Speak.”
In the years since her last LP The Chronicles of Marnia, Stern’s kept herself busy around the clock by raising two kids and playing in The 8G Band on The Late Show with Seth Meyers. Thankfully, the time away from the studio didn’t dim the spark that put her on the map in the late 2000s, as she naturally re-adopted her trademark finger-tapped guitar shredding and whimsical math rock melodies.
“When I would think, ‘Oh, is that too, too weird?’ I’d remember I’m allowed to do whatever I want! This is mine. It’s me,” Stern says in a press release. “I’m trying to go against the grain of this bullshit that when you get older, you lose your sense of taste. I want to empower people to not be so homogenous and go against the grain a little bit.”
“Plain Speak” embodies this feeling, mimicking the peculiar liberating euphoria of realizing that life doesn’t have to be taken so seriously. It hints that Stern’s comeback is rare case of an artist who could be past their prime, but has instead mastered the art of evolving while staying true to their roots.
Returning fans will clock all the regular tenets of Stern’s music here — impossibly zippy riffs, odd time signatures, chipper vocals — but they’ll also recognize that she isn’t just regurgitating old material from her heyday. “I can’t keep on moving backwards!” she belts as her fingers fly across her fretboard, a fitting MO as she jumps back in right where she left off.
“‘Plain Speak’ keeps a positive attitude in the face of frustration,” she adds. “Keeping that hope alive is really the most difficult thing for me to do in life, so I try to do it as much as possible in my music. This song is a perfect example of that. Some of the lyrics are backwards, to keep the theme of feeling like you are moving backwards in a situation and no one else seems to give a shit but you!”
Pre-orders for The Comeback Kid are ongoing. Below, see its artwork and tracklist, and stream “Plain Speak.”
The Comeback Kid Artwork:
The Comeback Kid Tracklist:
01. Plain Speak
02. Believing Is Seeing
03. The Natural
04. Oh Are They
05. Forward
06. Working Memory
07. Il Girotondo Della Note (Ennio Morricone cover)
08. Til It’s Over
09. Nested
10. Earth Eater
11. Get It Good
12. One and the Same
