Trying to get your head around Marnie Stern is a venture almost as hectic as her songs. This record is more than epic rock, peeling back layers of riffs and crashing sounds to hone in on a dark melodic core and schizo-yet-incredibly intelligent lyrical themes. Once again joined by Hella's Zach Hill, who provides the bonkers drumming, the end result, though potentially still head-spinning, is well worth the strange trip.

Trying to get your head around Marnie Stern is a venture almost as hectic as her songs. Her debut, last year's In Advance of the Broken Arm, was a crystallized behemoth that ran together in a blur of pseduo-metal finger-tapping guitar and obscured earthy/mystical lyrical themes almost anyone would miss under the mountains of noise. We're not talking about a little bit of ironic guitar-hero jamming, either. Every song was a ridiculously technical composition based on Stern's virtuosic playing and complemented by equally bonkers drumming from Hella's Zach Hill. Listening to her latest record, I'm struck with the idea that she's actually attempting to throw us off the track to understanding her music with her music... That might seem a little meta, but hear me out. The songs are incredibly obtuse and go by so fast that there's almost no way to take it all in on one listen. "Ruler" sees Marnie employing a manual delay by multi-tracking her vocals and syncopating the phrasing in a way that's unexpectedly smart. So smart it's almost impossible not to miss because it seems way too smart to not be the focal point of the song. Then it dawns on you that every part is that impressive, enigmatic and multi-faceted and there are a thousand parts to every song. Hill's backing Stern again, and his drum tracks alone could be their own solo percussion record. The guitar and vocals alone would be a really captivating listen. Like a house with many rooms, we wander through This Is It... picking things up and putting them down before we get a sense of them. There might be too many things to pick up at first, or some might get put off or overwhelmed. However, closer inspection reveals the record as more than epic rock, peeling back layers of riffs and crashing sounds to hone in on a dark melodic core and schizo-yet-incredibly intelligent lyrical themes. The journey is hectic, but the end result, though potentially still head-spinning is worth the strange trip.

- Fred Thomas (October 9, 2008)