Marnie Stern at Subterranean | Live review

Marnie Stern is a rare thing in the rock world: a showy guitar virtuoso who also happens to rock hard and write good songs. She is the most exciting example of a strain of indie rock that includes Don Caballero and Hella, bands that marry Eddie Van Halen-style extended-technique fretwork with a punk rock sound and ethos. Acts like these often feature throwaway vocals, or dispose of singing altogether. But Stern’s voice is her secret weapon. She yelps and soars as skillfully as she shreds, and on her most recent album Marnie Stern, she’s proved that she’s a pop musician at heart, with hooks everywhere and singalong choruses.

Stern’s origin story is sure to inspire thousands of less-talented young musicians: she decided she wanted to be a rocker, so she recorded a bunch of demos in her bedroom and mailed a cassette to Kill Rock Stars, which promptly signed her to their label. Those recordings can now be heard on the recently released Demo on Dog Daze Tapes, and the rough early versions of her songs reveal an artist who seems to have sprung forth fully formed. The eventual addition of Hella drummer Zach Hill to Stern’s band took an already impressive sound to the next level, with hyperactive beats that smartly attempt to match Stern’s busy playing note-for-note rather than provide a solid backbeat.

Hill, working on other projects at the moment, was absent from Saturday’s show at Subterranean on Milwaukee Avenue, but the replacement drummer did a competent job of imitation, and the focus ended up on Stern where it belonged. These songs sound paradoxically looser and more precise at the same time when played live. Stern’s guitar was rawer and more distorted than on her albums, but the interaction of the band onstage led to a tighter overall sound. That makes sense, given that her albums are a collaboration with the U.S. Postal Service. Stern records guitar tracks, then mails them to Hill, who overdubs drum tracks and sends them back for Stern’s perusal.

A rousing version of “For Ash” was the show’s early highlight, a song that was a buzzy internet sensation when it was released ahead of her album last year. It’s an ode to an ex-boyfriend who committed suicide, and it was received by the critics as a statement of an exciting new direction, with more attention paid to song structure and lyrics than show-off technique. The vocal melody is gorgeous, and the lyrics are alarmingly direct: “I cannot bear/No one compares/I miss your smile/Sadness all the while.” Each chorus was followed by a long, wordless wail that seemed to channel a sense of loss that lyrics can only hint at.

“Vibrational Match,” from her debut album In Advance of The Broken Arm, was an example of Stern’s earlier style, with a busy arpeggio that never let up. The song seemed to have benefited from a few years in Stern’s hands, and the vaguely new age-y lyrics Stern has often taken flak for (“Trust your perceptions. Matter, light and energy, speed, gold and spirit, I’m near it”) somehow sounded fierce onstage. “Cinco De Mayo” and the archly titled “Female Guitar Players Are The New Black” were also a hit, as the crowd shook their heads along to odd-time rhythms as if they’d been practicing for this night in their bedrooms for weeks. Overall, it was an amazing performance from a musician who can seemingly do anything she wants to.

Promising local band Follows opened with a set of sludgy rock made more interesting with moments of noisy improvisation. Montreal’s No Joy were also impressive, calling to mind '90s alt rockers Veruca Salt, but with a dirtier sound. Their lyrics were rendered indecipherable by the army of guitar pedals they sang through, but their ample attitude and head-banging energy was definitely not lost in translation.