U.S. Girls: Scratch It

The Meghan Remy-led U.S. Girls has always been an intriguing pursuit.

Orchestrated by the American-born, Toronto-based artist now in its third decade, Remy is of a pervasive mind. But not from an open, high-minded intelligence. Her songs are more bookish, laced with an aloof, whip-smart acumen. You can never quite reach the core of her songs, which is the reason to keep going back for more back.

The earlier works of U.S. Girls were dominated by tape loops, giving the project’s art-pop aesthetic a grainier, homespun warmth. On the back of the project’s 4AD debut Half Free 10 years ago (which feels like yesterday), Remy unlocked the gates that led to wider places. 2018’s In A Poem Unlimited saw the artist intersect pop and free-rock, while 2020’s Heavy Light and 2023’s Bless This Mess saw Remy infusing ’80s synth-pop with rock and disco – a glittery time warp straddling the history of rock music that, at times, felt the euphoria rush of late ’70s-era Springsteen.

On Scratch It, Remy is at it again with her most spontaneous record yet. Something you wouldn’t normally associate with the conservatism that Nashville often brings, but like all U.S. Girls releases, there’s pockets of space that Remy creates for the music to breathe and here, it’s as vast as ever.

Activity: A Thousand Years In Another Way

Following a festival appearance in Hot Springs, Arkansas last year, Remy enlisted Nashville-based Dillon Watson (D. Watusi, Savoy Motel, Jack Name) to scour the city and cobble together a one-time band for the performance. The show saw Remy catch lightening in a bottle, to the point where the band – consisting of Watson (guitar), The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence (bass), Domo Donoho (drums), Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood (both on keys) and harmonica legend, Charlie McCoy – spent the ensuing 10 days recording what would become Scratch It.

With few overdubs and nothing but raw energy captured in a room, the results are there for all to hear. Remy, continuing to garner the most from the richest corners of musical history, and throughout Scratch It, she finds herself immersed in the orbit of A.M. radio. Opening cut, Like James Said, elastic rock-inspired by the ’70s. So too Dear Patti, which feels like an open love letter to Patti Smith, and with an A.M. sunroof sway, the song brims with the empowerment that has always been at the forefront of the U.S. Girls remit. Again, Remy’s play on words, sharp as a kitchen knife (“You know your rank / And you got your file.”)

On Firefly on the 4th of July, you can almost hear the hiss of the stylus as it sinks in the groove. Like Walking Song, the sun floods through the window as an old world backdrop of swoon and sepia-tone imagery emerges. Those times where music had a chance to change the world in more uncomplicated times, and it’s this nostalgia that we all yearn for from time to time.

Meanwhile, The Clearing sees the Nashville influence peak through the cracks. Watson’s Crosby, Stills and Nash-inspired groove forming the backdrop for Remy to drop line after line in what is a beautiful abstract yarn that enriches her works both past and present (“Tales of man… who break what they cannot bend”).

More Eaze & Claire Rousay: No Floor

It continues on Bookends – a song that is anything but its title suggest, and the most epic that Remy has written since Time. With the force of a Willy Vlautin narrative, Remy has the ball on a string, both thematically (“You think I’m gonna throw my soul away / When I’ve seen women buried in three different ways”) and sonically, with something that smashes together soul and psychedelia. Norwood’s spacious keys and McCoy’s harmonica, leading into Watson’s guitar line that is something David Gilmour would happily certify.

Emptying the Jimador is the comedown – the keys and synths, feeling like a mind massage, while the acoustic-led Pay Streak is inflected by McCoy’s searching harmonica lines that give the song a rich arc to a story of forgotten America and the house of cards nature of boom bust towns.

Closing with No Fruit, it underlines Scratch It at large. U.S. Girls has always had its own free-wheeling aesthetic, obliterating the nuances within the pop stratum. But unlike anything in Remy’s canon, Scratch It actually swings. Watson’s search for its secret weapons in the backing band, perhaps this release’s greatest boon, and as Remy’s stories fizz and pop with new flavour and verve like never before, Scratch It is another feather in her cap.

Scratch It is out now via 4AD. Purchase from Bandcamp.