I’ve Got Me: Joanna Sternberg’s First Concert and Second Album, Live at Genghis Cohen
Words: Georgia Turman
December 8, 2023
This summer I found myself at probably the most unusual concert of my life - in the back room of a Chinese restaurant on a Wednesday night, sitting on the floor with only about 20 other people, waiting patiently.
The venue, called Genghis Cohen, is somewhat of a Los Angeles hidden gem. The admittedly strange name is, I believe, partially a reference to the long-standing American Jewish tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve. It’s an “American-style” Chinese restaurant with a bar and a concert venue attached. The place has been around since the early 80s.
I was at Genghis Cohen that night to see Joanna Sternberg - a curious, mysterious musician whose music had been vaguely on my radar since I first heard their song “For You.” From their first album, Then I Try Some More (2019), “For You” is a cutting little tune about someone who is so charming that you hate them; it starts: “With a smile like yours, you could get away with murder / so I will not trust you, not I will not trust you.” It’s shrewd and harsh in its content, but set to a jaunty rhythm and cut up with light interludes of Joanna’s humming. Upon listening to the album in its entirety in preparation for the concert, I found that this juxtaposition, combined with the warbling, nasal quality of Sternberg’s voice, constitutes the distinctive wavelength on which their music exists — austere, sincere, certainly strange.
The stage at Genghis Cohen was barely raised above the big brown tile floor. That and the crushed velvet curtain made it feel more like a 70s living room than anything else. It was a gentle crowd, people with mullets and tote bags and water bottles. A window in the back of the room looked out onto the restaurant’s dining room, the ceiling full of paper lanterns.
When Joanna Sternberg came out onstage, they asked if they could sit on the floor while they played. They sat down, and so did the audience. They revealed that it was their first time ever in Los Angeles and, to my shock, their first ever concert on their first ever tour.
They played songs from their latest release, I’ve Got Me, which was being released the following week. The delivery of every line was so precisely inflected that the audience was laughing aloud at the lyrics to “For You,” and “Stockholm Syndrome,” and “People Are Toys to You,” too.
The songs have the quality of an old, talking childhood toy. Sweet but warped with the knowledge of being.
Sternberg is a funny, self-conscious person. Unkempt - short lopsided bangs and a damp brow and a slouch. They were apologetic and seemingly a little uncomfortable performing; rightfully so - their songs come from a deep place, dark like a wound, full of a quiet, true ugliness. The plain speak of the lyrics reminded me a bit of Frankie Cosmos, and the performance style of similarly-named Joanna Newsom.
At the end of the show, I felt as though I had seen a beautiful, fleeting thing, which, like a rare bird, no one might ever see again.
I’ve Got Me, Sternberg’s second studio album and first touring album released by Fat Possum Records, retains the character of Then I Try Some More and then goes a little further. It came out in the summer of 2023 and perked the ears of Pitchfork, Stereogum, and good old human listeners, too.
Where Then I Try Some More wavered, though beautifully, in its sureness, I’ve Got Me comes back – slightly but surely – stronger. The quick, clever guitar lines have electrified and thickened. The simple piano lines have turned more theatrical, almost ragtime. New instruments make their debut appearance on Joanna Sternberg’s discography on this record – on “I’ll Make You Mine,” the drums appear, and on the final track, “The Song,” an organ!
Where earlier songs turned painfully inward in search of the source of Sternberg’s suffering, these new songs take some distance and, instead, look out. “People Are Toys to You” sees the first appearance of electric guitar on the album and, even with its innocuous vocals, picks dutifully at the carcass of a relationship with the determination of a dog. Sternberg now seems to know they are not simply hurting; they have been hurt.
But they are lighthearted about it. The songs are peppered with cutting remarks, sweetened into humor by the quality of Sternberg’s voice. On “Stockholm Syndrome” they dig, “Did you keep your room dirty so I’d feel like I had the flu? / Did you expect me to clean it like your mom must’ve done for you?”
While at times I might prefer the fragile quality of the first album, I am glad to see Sternberg coming more confidently into their own as a songwriter with I’ve Got Me. I hope their singular voice can poke through all the harsh noise of this world and soften the ears of some good people. Sternberg sings: “I’ve got me” — and we’ve got Joanna Sternberg.