Heavy Light is the highly anticipated seventh album by U.S. Girls, the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist Meg Remy. While Remy has been widely acclaimed for a panoply of closely observed character studies, on Heavy Light she turns inward, recounting personal narratives to create a deeply introspective about-face. The songs are an inquest into the melancholy flavour of hindsight, both personal and cultural. Remy makes this notion formally explicit with the inclusion of three re-worked, previously released songs: ‘Statehouse (It’s A Man’s World)’, ‘Red Ford Radio’, and ‘Overtime’, the latter of which is released today as Heavy Light’s lead single. Its companion video, which stars Andrea Nann of the Dreamwalker Dance Company, was created by Remy.

Heavy Light follows 2018’s internationally critically-acclaimed breakout album In A Poem Unlimited. Recently named one of the best albums of the decade by Pitchfork, it was lauded across the pond by the likes of The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Crack and Q magazine for being Remy’s most accessible record in her then decade-long career. Heavy Light is produced by Remy and was recorded live with 20 session musicians - including E Street Band saxophonist Jake Clemons - in Montreal’s acclaimed Hotel 2 Tango studio. Remy worked with co-writers Basia Bulat and Rich Morel to develop the core of Heavy Light, a set of songs conceived as a balance between orchestral percussion (as richly arranged by percussionist Ed Squires) and the human voice (conducted by Kritty Uranowski). The resulting album finds Remy casting herself as lead voice among a harmonious multitude, the singers of which lend not only their voices, but also share reflections on childhood experiences that are collaged into moving spoken word interludes throughout the album. The album is mixed by long-time collaborators Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull, Steve Chahley and Tony Price.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Grooving, psychedelic riffs clash headfirst with Remy's singular vocal brilliance, soaring wonderfully atop thumping percussion and flickering synths. 'Heavy Light' tackles political matters and worldly experiences in a moving and enthralling way. Brilliant stuff.

TRACK LISTING

1. 4 American Dollars
2. Overtime
3. IOU
4. Advice To Teenage Self
5. State House (It’s A Man’s World)
6. Born To Lose
7. And Yet It Moves / Y Se Mueve
8. The Most Hurtful Thing
9. Denise, Don’t Wait
10. Woodstock ‘99
11. The Color Of Your Childhood Bedroom
12. The Quiver To The Bomb
13. Red Ford Radio

2017 marks a decade of U.S. Girls, the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist, Meg Remy. Today, Remy announces details of her sixth studio album In a Poem Unlimited, which will be released on 16th February 2018, plus the official video for a new U.S. Girls song, ‘Velvet 4 Sale’.

Remy’s second release for 4AD, which also includes her recently released single, ‘Mad As Hell’ – a clarion call for pacifism – was tracked in collaboration with Toronto-based instrumental collective the Cosmic Range, and features arrangements by long-time contributors Maxmilian Turnball and Louis Percival. The dizzying buffet of live grooves on In a Poem Unlimited represents an inversion of the dusty, sample-based minimal textures of Half Free, Remy’s euphoric 4AD debut. Steered into focus by Remy and mixer/co-producer Steve Chahley, Poem features disco employed as a protest vernacular (‘Mad As Hell’), as well as an unrelenting assault (‘Time’); moody, slow-burning funk (‘Velvet 4 Sale’ & ‘L-Over’) and earnest synth anthems ‘Rosebud’ and ‘Poem’, which form the album’s emotional core.

Poem features dark meditations reflecting charged atmospheres that directly precede and follow acts of violence. Many of the songs are character studies of women grappling with power; how to gain and exert it spiritually, as well as desperate strategies to mitigate its infliction. Remy also rallies against the public lies told by political and religious leaders, and more crucially, questions the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive. While U.S. Girls, denoting the plural, is no longer a misnomer, In A Poem Unlimited may be Remy’s most individually distilled protest to date.

Following ‘Mad As Hell’, Poem album opener ‘Velvet 4 Sale’ is released today. The song concerns a female narrator imploring another to buy a gun for protection, impressing that the only way to change men is for women to use violence. Remy says, “Men are lucky women (and children) have yet to take up arms. And although I hope this never happens and I completely disagree that violence is ever effective, this very idea was ripe for a song.”

The accompanying video explores the idea of acknowledgement as a form of retribution, a counterbalance more powerful than violence itself. Remy plays a police officer who discovers that a fellow cop who has beaten his wife will be left off the hook as a “professional courtesy”. By the power of her unrelenting gaze she banishes the abuser in the final images of this powerful and provocative video. This striking tableau representing the power of bearing witness ties back into the album’s underlying theme; that truth and acknowledgement are our most potent and corrosive weapons in the fight against repressive inequality. Remy’s work with this video (which she co-directed with Alex Kingsmill) and the album as a whole, illustrate and seek to inspire the taking up of these moral arms.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This superb new outing from Meg Remy in her U.S Girls moniker sees snappy guitar falling under a landslide of heavy-rock power chords and scattered electronic elements, whilst still retaining all of it's cohesion and grace. More percussive numbers sit happily alongside the more folky, quiet pieces without skipping a beat.

TRACK LISTING

1. Velvet 4 Sale
2. Rage Of Plastics
3. Mad As Hell
4. Why Do I Lose My Voice When I Have Something To Say
5. Rosebud
6. Incidental Boogie
7. L-Over
8. Pearly Gates
9. Poem
10. Traviata
11. Time

U.S. Girls is Illinois-born, Toronto-based artist Meghan Remy. A captivating musical force, Meg has evolved from the raw, corrosive 4-track fidelity found on her early records to the more unabashed art-pop of recent works ‘U.S. Girls’ on KRAAK (2011) and ‘Gem’ (2012); the latter managing to “widen and universalise her music without losing a drop of what previously made it so special and personal” - Pitchfork.

‘Half Free’ is the next step in this impressive transformation, an honest and lyrically jarring exploration of emotions, drenched in a bath of raw beats and loops that have become the hallmark of her work with producer and frequent collaborator Onakabazien.

Other album guests include Slim Twig (DFA), Ben Cook (Fucked Up, Young Guv), Amanda Crist (Ice Cream) and Tony Price.

Featuring recent singles ‘Damn That Valley’ and ‘Woman’s Work’, ‘Half Free’ is Meg’s first album for 4AD. Again emerging as a vital voice among the noise, ‘Half Free’ is an enchanting document of life at the point when it feels most on its knife-edge.

“She’s the fast-rising exponent of luscious lo-fi DIY pop.” - The Guardian

“With each successive release, you’re never quite sure which Girl you’re going to get: the avant-pop deconstructionist, the 1960s traditionalist, the basement R&B diva.” - Pitchfork

A hauntingly catchy release by American lone DIY artist Meghan Remy.

In June 2011 FatCat offshoot imprint Palmist Records released a split 12” by U.S. Girls and her production partner Slim Twig, which followed a great split 7” with the much celebrated Dirty Beaches.

U.S. Girls’ last album, ‘U.S. Girls On Kraak’, was critically acclaimed and supported by great blog coverage and a series of promo videos.

U.S. Girls pursue a minimalist aesthetic with a militant by-any-means-necessary attitude, merging experimental compositions with distinctive photocopy-art visuals to deliver a starkly defined statement.

“Don't let the scuzzy surface fool you: At the heart of Megan Remy's one-woman lo-fi project U.S. Girls beats a pop sensibility” - Pitchfork

“Remy’s aesthetics and emotional cues are pulled from the ephemera of decades past” - Refinery29