4AD Scratch It [VINYL]

Toronto-based producer, film composer, and author Meg Remy announces a new U.S. Girls album, Scratch It. Co-written with Edwin de Goeji, ‘Bookends’ is the heart of Scratch It. The sprawling ballad pays tribute to Remy’s late friend and former Power Trip frontman Riley Gale, through the lens of Remy’s own reading of John Carey’s Eyewitness To History, a historical collection of 300+ eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four centuries. In consuming these first-hand accounts of human history, she began to ponder the thought, “there is not a hierarchy to suffering, and death is the great equaliser.” 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 (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, Loretta Lynn) on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, and both Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys, as well as harmonica legend Charlie McCoy (Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison) — 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.