I don’t know about you all, but back in high school, I always kinda resisted that part of English class where we’d sit around dissecting and discussing “Great Poetry” line-by-line, as if there was some great and mysterious power wrapped up in there beneath the boring-ass words themselves waiting to be teased out. I mean, come ON:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Umm…how about NO.
“do I dare to eat a peach?”
Sure, dude; go the fuck AHEAD with that.
But now, fifteen years later, along comes U.S. Girls’ funky and evocative art pop to change my mind. Following her pretty decently well-received 2015 4AD debut Half Free, the Toronto-based, one-woman song exploder Meg Remy’s newest album is entitled In A Poem Unlimited, and it’s coming February 16, 2018 via 4AD.
Recorded in collaboration with Toronto-based instrumental collective the Cosmic Range and featuring arrangements by long-time contributors Maxmilian Turnball and Louis Percival, the sumptuous smorgasbord of funk, new wave, and disco-based live instrumentation on In a Poem serves as the perfect conduit for Remy’s soothing-yet-searing vocal prowess and dizzying wordsmithery regarding such charged-AF topics as violence, rape, religious and political persecution, and the feminine struggle for social and spiritual power.
Following the release of first single “Mad As Hell,” Remy just shared new video for album opener “Velvet 4 Sale,” which 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.”
Like a great poem, however, the message goes quite a bit DEEPER: “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” says Remy, reflecting on the song and video’s conceit that sheer, unrelenting acknowledgement of such crimes is a form of retribution more powerful than violence itself ever could be. The inspiring clip was co-directed by Remy and Alex Kingsmill and is watchable down below.
If you’re as inspired as I am, TAKE UP MORAL ARMS by buying both singles here and here — and pre-ordering the vinyl and CD from 4AD here. (I know the title says that the poem is “unlimited,” but trust me: supplies are limited.)
In A Poem Unlimited tracklisting:
01. Velvet 4 Sale
02. Rage Of Plastics
03. Mad As Hell
04. Why Do I Lose My Voice When I Have Something To Say
05. Rosebud
06. Incidental Boogie
07. L-Over
08. Pearly Gates
09. Poem
10. Traviata
11. Time
More about: U.S. Girls
