It's been a decade since we last heard from Marnie Stern, but when
her guitar bursts in like a shower of stardust on The Comeback Kid,
the follow-up to 2013's The Chronicles of Marnia, it's like no time has
passed. "It was so great to be able to start being myself again and when I
would think, 'Oh, is that too, too weird?' I'd remember I'm allowed to
do whatever I want! This is mine. It's me," says Stern of writing songs
for The Comeback Kid. "I'm trying to go against the grain of this
bullshit that when you get older, you lose your sense of taste. I want to
empower people to not be so homogenous and go against the grain a
little bit." Taking joy in your individuality is the message of The Comeback Kid, as
is the realization that making music which truly reflects who you are in
all your brightness and your weirdness is quite possibly the key to
happiness. "This record is about reassuring yourself that happiness is
not about what kind of things you have or how many things you have
or what you don't have-it's about all the good things you do," says
Stern.