Marnie Stern / No Joy split on Associated Electronic Recordings

Never expected to find a seven inch at Marnie Sterns show last night at The Music Hall of Williamsburg, which was criminally underattended, come on people! Oh well.. all the better to meet her at the merch table and say Hi. So on top of being completely amazing, she's super nice..there had to be 25 people ahead of me and they talked to everyone, and signed everything. I can't remember the last time standing at a show and being so completely into it...by my freaking self! Somehow making the whole thing feel like a tiny house party, but then rocking out way past 11. Her tour drummer/member Vince is incredible, matching the feel of Zack's out of control drumming...all around fun and you have to see this stuff in person, unbelievable.

So there's this tour only single from Marnie and her opener No Joy, Marnie's side, "Your kids are going to love this", sounds like her cassette demo stuff from Dog Daze, it's just her on guitar and vocals...a lot of layers, but otherwise sounding pretty stripped down, the vocals sounding tiny room mic'd up close, livingroom style...the guitar work is of course, amazing. Could belong easily on her latest self titled..the changes come fast and hard. A really cool section of super effects...almost getting into The Fucking Champs with that layered sine waves lining up ultra effect guitar sound. It's perfect just the way it is, that balance of creating something so out of control epic with the modest of equipment. That's how it all started anyway, and I'm glad to hear some of the solo creation side of her work. It's dense enough, and utterly baffling as it is, so in this one you get a chance to focus on how those layers get built up, the punching in of tapping...inspirational.

No Joy's side is actually a Shangri-La's cover...I wonder if they have any idea how deep some of their work has run into bands like this...recently I actually had to get Leader of the Pack and it is pretty amazing when thinking about it in the context of the early '60s, the way it's produced, the huge sound let alone the weird storytelling style of some of the tracks, the content...and they had great vocals. It makes perfect sense to acknowledge this, I just wonder if we'll ever see Mary Weiss jump onstage with the Dum Dum Girls at Bonnaroo. No Joy takes that sound and psyches it out with big swirling trippy warble, the vocals almost fading off layered into the background. The drum track is slightly distorted and the metronome is a super solid foundation for this track to take serious time, the guitars get hazier, more distorted, turning into a JAMC style fuzzfest. It sounds like there's even a huge crash or gong sound...if only Velvet Underground had looked a few years before at these guys...that's what No Joy is for...it's my first track from these guys and that's what the best split can do, expose you to something new. No Joy's track is over here on their bandcamp site.

This one is from Associated Electronic Recordings, who appear to be a management company who now press singles! Nice. Probably only available on tour, but you never know.

Ryan, take a look at that single buddy... you're never going to hear it!

Ok, you can borrow it....supervised.