Marnie Stern returned earlier this month to play her first show in nine years, supporting Les Savy Fav at Knitting Factory at Baker Falls, and now she’s announced her first new album in a decade. The Comeback Kid is due out on November 3 via Joyful Noise Recordings. Speaking of her time playing guitar in The Late Show with Seth Meyers‘ house band, The 8G Band, between records, she says, “I expected that all those years of playing other kinds of stuff would have influenced me—and it didn’t at all! I was fully back where I was before.”
“It was so great to be able to start being myself again and when I would think, ‘Oh, is that too, too weird?’ I’d remember I’m allowed to do whatever I want!,” Marnie adds. “This is mine. It’s me. 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.”
The first single is “Plain Speak,” which finds her frenetic finger tapping in fine form. “‘Plain Speak’ keeps a positive attitude in the face of frustration,” she says. “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!” Hear it below.
Marnie will celebrate the release of The Comeback Kid with an NYC show on November 4 at Knitting Factory at Baker Falls. Tickets go on sale Thursday, August 31 at noon, and it’s her only upcoming show at the moment.
MARNIE STERN – THE COMEBACK KID TRACKLIST
1. Plain Speak
2. Believing Is Seeing
3. The Natural
4. Oh Are They
5. Forward
6. Working Memory
7. Il Girotondo Della Note (Ennio Morricone cover)
8. Til It’s Over
9. Nested
10. Earth Eater
11. Get It Good
12. One And The Same