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Between 2007-13, New York singer-songwriter and guitarist Marnie Stern put out a quartet of high-octane, charmingly idiosyncratic rock albums that each had a knack for one-upping the work to come before it. Then, after the 2013 release of the cheekily titled The Chronicles of Marnia, Stern went dark on the album-recording front for a decade. She didn’t stop playing music; instead she got a cool, albeit time-consuming, 9-to-5 gig as a guitarist in the Fred Armisen-led house band of Late Night with Seth Meyers that she’d keep for a decade. She also had a couple kids with her husband.  

At the start of 2022, Stern bid farewell to the comfortable stasis of the Seth Meyers job and turned her attention to her first record in a decade: the excellent, self-awarely named The Comeback Kid. Released in November 2023 to rave reviews — the notoriously hard-to-please Pitchfork praised it for flaunting “a reinvigorated spirit in searing songs that live up to the playfully celebratory mood she establishes in the album’s title,” for example — the album is now on the cusp of being worked out in a live setting, with Stern’s first tour since 2013 kicking off on March 19 in Seattle at KEXP. (She’s also stopping by Tacoma’s Spanish Ballroom, a place where she says she’s always gotten good reception and is excited to play at, on the 21st.) South Sound gave Stern a call to talk about The Comeback Kid, the creative process, what she’s looking forward to about touring, and more. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Read the interview here.