#joannasternberg

[narkolatorre]

#JoannaSternberg! Always delights the pants off her audience. ❤👖‼️#rootsnruckus #Sketch #livesketch #lifedrawing #art #ink #illustration #music #folk #blues #livemusic #musician #guitar

[rad-review-of-gigs]

Joanna Sternberg

St. Matthias Church, Stoke Newington Pitchfork Music Festival, 10/11/2023

Joanna Sternberg prefers to make music alone, tour alone and gets through a performance by not  looking at the audience. One of their songs charts the perils of lugging all their instruments around the New York subway. Yet they connect deeply with their audience through a lack of pretension, striking, often hymnal melodies and spades of charm. Songs are frequently paused for amusing asides and sometimes re-started. 

Sternberg belongs to a genre, sometimes unhelpfully coined as outsider music. They are very much in the tradition of Daniel Johnston, another whose music brims with complete authenticity. Like him Sternberg takes us to some dark places in their life, but does it with wit and uplifting, deeply humane tunes.  As the cliche goes, seamlessly touching a chord within all of us. In truth, they are really an insider. Sternberg lives in Manhattan Plaza, an inter-generational  residence and hangout for artists going back to Tennessee Williams and Richard Burton. Their grandmother was a famous cantor and actor in Yiddish theatre. Sternberg learned classical piano as a child, went to jazz school and can also turn their hand to double bass, gutiar, violin, drums, banjo and mandolin. 

This is their first time in London, at an intimate and near full St. Matthias’ Church. The set opens on acoustic guitar with the punchy riffs of the acerbic ‘People are Toys To You’ from this year’s Fat Possums release I’ve Got Me. Sternberg quips about their “moody, depressing little songs” as they segue to the album’s title track, then on to perhaps their most perfectly realised composition, ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. Sternberg switches to piano for a sequence of songs with a gospel feel,  beginning with ‘Mountains High’ and including ‘Neighbours’, about living in a high rise building and not knowing whether to say hello to people. There is the Regina Spectoresque ‘Drifting In a Cloud,’ documenting the initial elation and subsequent nightmare of being prescribed Zoloft. 

The night ends with the poignant ‘Don’t You Ever’, from 2019’s first album Then I Try Some More, influenced by ragtime. This is about the fraught process of becoming comfortable in the body, not to mention addiction. Then on to a brand new song, ‘The Love I Give’, which Sternberg descibes as a “little passive,aggressive song”, that still feels imbued with a warm, generosity of spirit.

Musically, Joanna is their harshest critic. If not, that would mean “they really hate me!” she cries. As Matt Sweeney, producer on I’ve Got Me, said in Rolling Stone, though they depict intense struggles Sternberg’s songs ultimately feel like victories, fitting in this sense for a church, and delighting an audience whose whoops may echo in the cloisters for some time.  

Words: Adrian Cross; Pictures: Richard Gray

See the full photo gallery here.

[violetandclairesumiretaya]

本国ではあのTeam Loveからのリリースとのことで、日本盤の発売を待ちわびていた Joanna Sternbergの"Then I Try Some More"が遂に発売。 岡村詩野さんの素晴らしいライナーやTURN掲載の記事と共に彼女の魅力が日本にも伝わるといいなあ。 私は歌詞の対訳をさせていただきました。ジャケット、イラストレーションの散らかり具合を見て、 「ああ、子供が出したオモチャに似てるな」なんて考える日が来るなんて…。 #joannasternberg https://www.instagram.com/p/B5_vk_0hHf4/?igshid=1hnxf3sm69sjs

[takearide]

#joannasternberg (at Sunny's Bar) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1-icQJlqAZy3kVc4DGPil6gJmKHogGt44phdc0/?igshid=jxjrxh6xwi2j

[teamloverecords]

Joanna Sternberg - "This Is Not Who I Want To Be"

Joanna Sternberg has been making music in New York City basically since they were born. Later this year, Sternberg is releasing a new full-l

[warrenbritt]

"I'll try to love me to show that I love you" - @joannasternberg Live @ @theglovebk in #Brooklyn #NewYork #indiemusic #newyorkmusicscene #joannasternberg #lovemusic (at The Glove) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo-jSEnlmc6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1jj4ivaec7ayt