With the advent of the Internet, it has become increasingly easy to achieve a high level of fame in music without necessarily having to go through the traditional trials of a band. A band can be hyped up from nothing over the course of a few months and find themselves famous, whereas other bands continue to fight in strained obscurity.
There is a certain integrity in suffering and proving you have the will and persistence to play music regardless of success. This brand of integrity has been dwindling in the 21st century, but is kept alive in artists like Marnie Stern.
Abandoning her work in college in favor of music, Stern supported her career with odd jobs for 10 years without even the slightest promise of fame. It seems snobby to say this is the “true” way to make music, but the nobility of such a struggle is hard to deny. I recently got to speak with Stern about what that decade was really like, as well as her recently released third album.
Why is your newest album more based on chords than riffs?
Probably because it was a reaction to the second record, which was a little more flashy and more rock, and I was trying to see if I could write some more traditional songs, and those rely heavily on chords. I was also trying to find different chords as opposed to the big rock ones that were more emotionally charged.
A lot of your music is more melodic than artists you’re compared to. Is that a conscious decision?
Yes, I’ve always wanted to try and blend the experimental side with more transparent feeling. Not to say the other stuff doesn’t have a ton of feeling in it, but I’m just trying to use it in a different way.
In an interview with Pitchfork, you spoke about how you kept playing for 10 years without being signed. What kept you going during all of that?
It was very difficult. I had [my best friend] Bella, who was also going through the same thing, so we connected in that way. The main thing that kept me going was that I was really excited about the work I was doing, and I was really proud of it. That’s really all that matters anyway; that’s how I gain any kind of self-confidence within myself anyway. Feeling proud of what I’m doing. Even though of course I felt insecure, because I had no success, or what most people would consider success. I still felt inside what I was doing was cool, and I was prepared to keep doing that for that rest of my life.
Would you have kept going even if you didn’t get signed?
Yes.
How do you approach your lyrics?
Usually I write down if people say things that I think are interesting. I read a lot, and write down quotes from books a lot. So it’s mainly from books. And sometimes if I’m at a museum and the title of a painting is cool, then I’ll write that down. Stuff like that. But I always write it down, and the title of the song usually comes afterward. Lyrics for me are really tough to place in the song. A lot of the times I have tons of lyrics that don’t sync in the music, which is really frustrating.
So are your lyrics less personal and more of an integration of ideas?
The last two were, but [the new record] was very straightforward and personal and obvious. You didn’t have to read into everything, the lyrics are about love and loss and that kind of thing.
A lot of your songs have sad lyrics, but are happy instrumentation-wise. Do you mean to do something like that?
Yeah, it’s a bittersweet thing. With all of my music and who I am as a person, I’m always struggling against that duality of really feeling overwhelmingly s—ty about stuff, and fighting to try and be positive and make it work. Just like I would’ve kept going with music — I would’ve been kicking and bitching the whole time, but fighting it.
You’ve spoken about being influenced by bands like U.S. Maple and Hella. What about that chaotic style appeals to you?
That it’s half chaotic and half extraordinarily structured, I really like that something can come across as sloppy, but there’s a reason behind it. Also because those two bands as an example were so innovative and different and doing their own thing. … I like the idea of breaking rules. With U.S. Maple, I like that everything feels like it’s falling apart and coming back together. I think it’s really interesting. I think that you can get a lot out of both those bands. With repeated listens, you find more things to latch on to. It’s not the kind of the thing where you hear it once and then every time you hear it, you hear the same f—ing thing over and over. There’s a lot of shelf life in those bands’ songs, and I try and do that. To me that’s really inspiring.
