The Chronicles of Marnia

Marnie Stern - The Chronicles of Marnia
Critic Score
Based on 26 reviews
2013 Ratings: #358 / 1115
User Score
Based on 42 ratings
Liked by 1 person
March 19, 2013 / Release Date
LP / Format
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CRITIC REVIEWS

90
AllMusic

The Chronicles of Marnia is an album that demands multiple journeys through the wardrobe, only this time it's to fully take in the album's melodic depths rather than to make sense of its technical achievements.

80
Pitchfork

Marnia still sounds like Marnie Stern: aggressive, busy, bright, with death-defying highs and perilous lows.

80
DIY

'The Chronicles Of Marnia' is the sort of album you want to place in a velvet lined box and present to everyone who visits. It's loveable, thrilling and properly innovative. Plus, she can totally shred.

80
The Fly

As ever, the New Yorker’s guitar skills are incredible: she gives great riff, and her widdly-widdly stuff will make your own fingers ache as you listen.

80
The 405

Things are snappier, more infectious, arguably simpler, but ultimately just as rewarding.

80
Beats Per Minute

Despite omnipresent everyday obstacles, Stern, 37, is still fine-tuning her sound, still working hard on her craft, still carving out acclaim in a male-dominated field, and ultimately still standing, still shredding.

80
Consequence of Sound

Chronicles, her follow-up, develops the contrast of musical highs and lyrical lows, but this time, her tragedy is her own creativity.

80
No Ripcord

Every weird twist and turn on The Chronicles of Marnia sounds like the work of a musician so effortlessly absorbed in her craft, so attuned to the expressive qualities of her music, that the internal logic of her songs is completely cohesive and idiosyncratic – and more importantly, really damn fun.

80
SPIN

Tere's something exhilarating in listening to her think out loud — the sureness of her songwriting battling the part of her brain that knows the song will never be enough.

80
NME

The music on this American singer-songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire’s fourth album is also excellent, and finds the nimble-fingered New Yorker flitting between manic, cheerleaderish pep and losing-team-crying-in-the-locker-room pessimism.

80
musicOMH

These 10 songs have a lightness of touch about them that make this Stern’s most accessible, and most enjoyable, album to date.

76
Paste

More than its predecessors, Marnia exists as a kind of safe place, a forum where Stern can confront her deepest anxieties and most crippling self-doubts and always come out on top.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

Fans of Marnie’s music are fully aware of what an album of hers going to bring, and on The Chronicles of Marnia, she brings it.

70
PopMatters

The songcraft is so much more accomplished here, in fact, and supports the progression in maturity the lyrics hint at, that the constant return to that finger-tapping technique is both comforting and exhausting.

70
Drowned in Sound

An album as loopily titled as The Chronicles of Marnia should be some kind of palliative for the possibly terminal condition of the music industry; a sign that someone is still trying to uphold the ideal that rock can be progressive without fear of mockery, let alone fear of low sales.

58
A.V. Club

The album feels like a forced housecleaning: It’s tidier, simpler, and more spacious, but a lot of personality has been thrown out in the process.

hellodecatur
82

UPDATE: Time to wipe the mascara off and write about this thing for real.

There's this Chinese game show where two people look at an extremely pixelated digital image that is gradually getting better and better resolution, and the first person to guess what it's a picture of wins. Tracking Marnie Stern's output chronologically is kind of like playing that game, and Chronicles of Marnia is where the photo finally comes into view.

I guess it might be easy to write this off as Stern's 'normie' ... read more

evelezt
67

I personally think this could be stronger than it is.

bbylikesit
86

complex / restrained / explosive / marnie rocks

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Added on: December 11, 2012