Tap into America: Marnie Stern lets fly with a few hot licks at South By Southwest earlier this year
I have a new favourite guitar player. Now, this might sound like the kind of boring statement that's bandied around liberally at an average Q magazine editorial meeting, but for me, this is a big deal - for two reasons. The first because I believe innovation is everything, and I can count on one hand the number of contemporary guitarists that genuinely fall into that category - Ian Williams from Battles, and Josh Diamond from Gang Gang Dance to name two. Second - and this is where it gets interesting - my new favourite guitar player is Marnie Stern: a woman.
Where women and guitars are concerned, it is fair to say that, while in the realm of folk there are many names that easily engender the same reverence that is ascribed to the men (Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez et al), in terms of the electric guitar there really is no-one of note. Perhaps it's the testosterone-filled and often intimidating atmosphere that most guitar shops project that puts girls off picking up an electric guitar at an early age, or perhaps it's the knock-on effect of simply having no female rock guitarists to aspire to. Whatever it is, it makes Marnie Stern even more remarkable, because more than just being a great electric guitar player, she's an innovator.
A labelmate of the Gossip on the überhip Kill Rock Stars imprint, I was first alerted to her by a friend who told me: "Dude, there's this incredible girl from New York who plays guitar - but doesn't just play it, she shreds and taps (and here he whispered conspiratorially) like a dude." But my (Canadian - and yes, he really does speak like that) friend only told half the story. Yes she uses the overtly metal (and unfashionable) playing-styles of shredding and tapping (both incredibly technical, making it possible to play extremely fast, à la Eddie Van Halen), but turns it on its head to create something truly arresting, original and which completely transcends its problematic stylistic roots. Math-pop or avant-rock are terms that have been deployed liberally by journalists so far when trying to describe Marnie Stern's sound, but even these broad terms prove to be problematic after the first listen.
With a tour that comes to the UK this week (she's playing tonight), I predict she'll be huge - the next poster girl for an audience already in love with Chan Marshall and Joanna Newsom (and it certainly doesn't hurt that she's 25 and looks not unlike Sienna Miller). More importantly, though, I think Marnie Stern could be about to become the Emmeline Pankhurst of rock.
