Description

2017 marks a decade of U.S. Girls, the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist, Meg Remy. Today, Remy presents her sixth studio album In A Poem Unlimited.

Remys second release for 4AD, which also includes 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, Remys euphoric 4AD debut. Steered into focus by Remy and mixer / co-producer Steve Chahley, In A Poem Unlimited features disco employed as a protest vernacular (Mad As Hell), as well as an unrelenting assault (Time); moody, slow-burning funk (Velvet 4 Sale and L-Over) and earnest synth anthems Rosebud and Poem, which form the albums emotional core.

In A Poem Unlimited 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 Remys most individually distilled protest to date.

In A Poem Unlimited album opener Velvet 4 Sale 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.