“A Poem Unlimited,” the new album from the band U.S. Girls, discusses the trials of women’s lives in a contemporary sexist society in a way that is accessible to larger population through both sound and lyric. The album is a collaboration between 20 different musicians, many of whom are members of the Toronto funk and jazz collective the Cosmic Range, including Luis Percival, Macmilin Turnbull, and James Baley. The album has received major acclaim from prominent publications such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Tiny Mix Tapes. Meghan Remy, the face of U.S. Girls, is known for her unique ability to transform pop into an art form that is at one moment intoxicating and in another moment twisted. After releasing “Half Free” (her most recent album before “A Poem Unlimited”), Remy claimed that her next album would be less polite than her last. “The lyrics are getting, I think, way more violent,” she told ChartAttack in 2016. “I’m dissecting violence a lot more because it’s something I don’t relate with, and yet it’s everywhere.”
Although the album was collaboratively driven, the record speaks to a unified vision, one of remorse and fury, joy and hope. Remy created an album inspired by the fringes of the music world. Until now she has remained under the radar, refining the perfect palette to make an album which speaks of women’s oppression while being sonicly and lyricly accessible. Remy has created a dreamy and hypnotic album that is filled with varying sounds, invoking David Byrne, Donna Summers, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and David Bowie. The band and album are, admittedly, surprising. For a band so under the radar, it has managed to make pop (a genre often disdained by U.S. Girls’ target audience, hipsters) into something dynamic and interesting, something that keeps a listener on their toes.
The first song on the album, “Velvet 4 Sale,” was released late last year. From the beginning, we see that the record will be exploring sentiments likely to ring true with more women that it should in 2018: “You’ve been sleeping with one eye open because he always could come back, you know / And you’ve been walking these streets unguarded waiting for any man to explode.” The song is a breathy and percussion propelled funk, which describes a woman imploring a friend to buy a gun and confront the man who has abused her. The end of the first stanza clarifies the moral attitude behind the nature of revenge Remy is proposing: “But you can get that power, too / It’s not you, it’s them / You should get it too / ‘Cause they always could come back, ya know?”
“M.A.H.”, or Mad As Hell, is even more blatantly political than “Velvet 4 Sale.” The track attempts to reconcile Barack Obama’s charismatic public image with the knowledge that he continued to wage war both domestically and internationally while in office. Contrasting this theme is the ABBA-esque infectious glee heard on the track. The anti-war anthem moves between a 70’s and 80’s infused bop, masking the politics of the song with the entrancing dancefloor vibes of Studio 54. As Remy uses Obama as a way to express her more general skepticism of political power, the dance-ready tune enables listeners to criticize the unlikely antagonist. Obama represents one version of a general male antagonist foregrounded in the album, as Remy underscores the ways in which the casual forms of male misbehavior are political by framing her relationship with the antagonist as a bad romance. Interestingly, a large portion of “Half Free,” another track on the album, deals with the psychological and physical impacts of emotional abuse.
“Time,” the last track on “A Poem Unlimited,” clocks in just short of eight minutes, yet the piece feels like one of the albums shorter cuts. The song is infectious in its experimental and fast paced beat. The second half of the song is instrumental and brings listeners on an exciting roller coaster ride, mimicking the feeling of contemporary politics. With the overlapping and at times contrasting sounds of the beat, melody, and pace, the song falls into an overwhelming pit of possible endings. This combination contrasts the lyrics of the song, which claim, “When there is nothing there is still time… When there is nowhere there is still time… When there is something there is no time… When there is somewhere there is no time.” The urgency of the song, paired with the convoluted nature of time and space, shows Remy as lost in the confusion that the rest of the world also manages to dwell in. With the use of passionate guitar solos, funk infused bass, and a hi-hat heavy beat, the vibration of the song is palpable both sonically and metaphorically.
“A Poem Unlimited” is a modern protest album which manages to distill the female rage we see in both our interpersonal relationships and in the social sphere. A dynamic contrast of ultra-femininity along with talks of violence, power, and wrath, Remy is mercurial as ever, shapeshifting her voice and music as easily as she switches narrative and character. This album, although generally cynical in lyric, leaves me feeling ready to take action, a feeling which largely is due to the uplifting sound of the work. “A Poem Unlimited” contains an ember of catharsis throughout the work, a sentiment that is often neglected in narratives about the current state of politics and the social position of women. Remy has used pop as a form of bait, using the accessible medium as a way to make listeners consider the complex ideas of women’s oppression and political hysteria in an increasingly socially-anxious world. With the onslaught of women sharing their experiences surrounding structural oppression, American ears are becoming more used to the sounds of female anger, a change which Remy is taking advantage of in her new album.
