Wild Mercury Sound  Marnie Stern  John Mulvey  I've been meaning
to write about the wonderful Marnie Stern album on Kill Rock
Stars for a couple of weeks now. I was tipped off about it by
one of Uncut's writers, Louis Pattison, who raved to me about
it. She's "an extremely proficient one-woman axe hero," he wrote
in an email, "a bit like Deerhoof but with better songs and
added lead guitar power." Chuck in the battling influences of
Sleater-Kinney and Lightning Bolt and damn, he was right.  "In
Advance Of The Broken Arm" is a frantic, exuberant rush of a
record. Basically, Stern takes as her base the high-end twiddle
and stupid velocity of Lightning Bolt (a sort of deranged,
minimalist hardcore prog duo, if you've never come across them.
They only play gigs on floors rather than stages, and I once saw
them instigate a sit-down moshpit. It was amazing). The drummer
is a guy called Zach Hill from Hella, who I've always considered
something of a math-rock version of Lightning Bolt, but he has
great octopoid skil