Has your jaw ever dropped, and you just can’t get it off the floor for a full 13 tracks? No? Just wait until you hear Marnie Stern’s In Advance of the Broken Arm (Kill Rock Stars).
I very nearly crashed my car listening to this album, which would have fit in perfectly with all the chaos and utter mayhem that spews forth from the album. The most remarkable thing about In Advance of the Broken Arm is that amidst the noise and nonsense and the distortion and the destruction, there are faint traces of sensible pop songs.
The most pleasing chord progressions are beset by violently dissonant harmonies that, at first, seem like massive strings of wrong notes. In jazz, they say that if you hit a wrong note, hit it again and again a few times until people think you meant to do it. Marnie Stern has turned that concept into one of the best albums I’ve heard in a great many years.
A Raincoats for a new generation, Stern’s debut is well deserving of any and all accolades that will undoubtedly be heaped upon her. Just wait until the rest of the world hears about her.
– Bret Bakshis
Marnie Stern (Kill Rock Stars)