Toronto-based producer, film composer, and author Meg Remy’s intuitive and adventurous U.S. Girls album Scratch It is out now. It arrives with the focus track ‘No Fruit’ — a slinky funk diss track, with co-writer/guitarist Dillon Watson’s wah-wah punctuating Remy’s biting and poetic prophecy, which could be aimed at a lover or the greater modern world: “If you don’t plant with the moon in mind / You will surely suffer shallow roots / When harvest time comes the picker will find / You got no fruit.”
Remy previously introduced Scratch It with the release of an epic 12-minute lead single, ‘Bookends’ — a sprawling ballad that pays tribute to Remy’s late friend and former Power Trip frontman Riley Gale, alongside a cinematic short directed by Caity Arthur. A second single, ‘Like James Said’, followed — an ELO-styled nugget of AM gold and lyrical response to James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing” about the healing power of dancing alone, presented with a single-shot dance video starring comedian Tom Henry.
When an artist follows her instinct, rather than money or trends, she can find inspiration anywhere. When Remy was asked to play a festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas — over one thousand miles away from her Toronto home — it was instinct that led her to enlist guitarist friend Dillon Watson (D. Watusi, Savoy Motel, Jack Name) to assemble a one-time Nashville-based band for the occasion. The performance went so well that she decided to ride that energy right back to where the impromptu band had initially rehearsed, in Music City itself, kickstarting the journey toward Scratch It.
In just ten days, Remy and the band — Watson on guitar, Jack Lawrence on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, and both Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys, as well as harmonica legend Charlie McCoy — recorded Scratch It live off the floor with minimal overdubs, mixed to tape. Closeness and ease emanate from this core band with Remy’s singular voice sparkling on top of every tune, the most relaxed it has ever been.
Scratch It weaves together country, gospel, garage rock, soul, disco, folk balladry, and more, with Remy’s masterful songwriting threaded throughout. Her choice to discard the computer-based production of previous albums in favour of two-inch tape serves the songs well, introducing an element of sonic shapeshifting expected from an artist nearly twenty years into making records. If instinct was an instrument, Remy would be a virtuoso. Scratch It and see.
Stream / download Scratch It here.
