Toronto-based artist Meg Remy records under the name U.S. Girls, and her records are usually conceptually heavy electronic pop. She released her album Bless This Mess in 2023. and then she played SXSW via hologram and teamed up with Bootsy Collins to cover Leon Russell. Now, Remy has made a new U.S. Girls that looks like a pretty stark departure from everything she’s done under that name up until now.
A while back, Meg Remy was invited to play a one-off gig at a festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and she got a friend to put together a band of Nashville musicians for her. That group included session legend Charlie McCoy on harmonica and the Dead Weather/Raconteurs member Jack Lawrence on guitar. The show went so well that Remy and that band went off and quickly recorded the forthcoming LP Scratch It in Nashville. The group recorded everything live, with minimal overdubs, and mixed it to tape. It looks like we’ll get to hear U.S. Girls explore some more traditionally American genres on this one.
The lead single from Scratch It is “Bookends,” a soulful 12-minute meditation on the loss of one of Meg Remy’s friends, the late Power Trip frontman Riley Gale. The resulting song couldn’t possibly sound less like Power Trip, but it salutes the group through lyrical reference. Meg Remy co-wrote “Bookends” with Edwin de Goeji, and it’s partly inspired by Remy looking at Gale’s loss through reference to Eyewitness To History, a book about people’s eyewitness accounts of historical events. Here’s what Caity Arthur, director of the “Bookends” video, says about it:
The video is ultimately about death and absolution — how death is one of the only certain things in life; the “great equalizer,” nolens volens. However, it also subverts the traditional narrative of death as a despairing void, rather, portraying it as a euphoric transitory experience or new beginning through a hallucinatory ensemble cast, a 1960s pop-star performance, and sleight of hand magic. As the video progresses, the TV channels alternate through these scenes as Meg’s lyrics evoke death in its various forms.
Below, check out the “Bookends” video, the Scratch It tracklist, and U.S. Girls’ upcoming tour dates.
TRACKLIST: 01 “Like James Said” 02 “Dear Patti” 03 “Firefly On The 4th Of July” 04 “The Clearing” 05 “Walking Song” 06 “Bookends” 07 “Emptying The Jimador” 08 “Pay Streak” 09 “No Fruit”
TOUR DATES: 5/14 – Nashville, TN @ Soft Junk 6/21 – Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle 6/22 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis 6/23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s 6/25 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom 6/26 – Somerville, MA @ The Rockwell 6/28 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop 6/29 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall 9/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room 9/11 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
