Marnie Stern - This Is It And I Am ...

With the horrendous title "This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That" (supposedly a quote from the English philosopher Alan Watts) and a cover deceptively innocent, the amazing guitar player and songwriter Marnie Stern, considered by many a true shredder, presents her second album, a frantic and noisy record in which the New Yorker does not beat around the bush and from the first moment shoot an attack of riffs, power chords and an endless series of guitar pirouettes. Stern gives no rest or truce and with no company but runaway drums, a shy bass guitar and some occasional keyboards, she creates 12 songs with a swishing and visceral sound, with complex and volatile structures that change from moment to moment. With the same sense of chaos of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (a much focused sense of chaos, paradoxically) and a tapping technique that will have proud even to Eddie Van Halen, Stern does not hide her impeccable technical level but unlike many of their male counterparts, she does not falls into the typical "look-i-can play thousand-notes-per second", and avoids the excess (the John 5 kind of excess, for example) going well beyond guitar pyrotechnics to make songs, chaotic and intricate yes, but well-defined songs that without losing the sense of melody goes from punk and hard rock to RIO and noise even touching experimental. "This Is it. .." is a vertiginous and exciting album in which this girl shows that there are many female guitar players. Female guitar players such as Marnie Stern, not so many. -CORANNIEIT-

Marnie Stern, This Is It and I Am ...
Kill Rock Stars Records, 2008

Links:
Official Website (at Kill Rock Stars)
My Space Website