U.S. Girls is Meghan Remy, an American musician, and producer who lives in Toronto. She draws on the Toronto-based musical scene and musicians to create and collaborate on her albums. She is a permanent resident of Canada with Canadian citizenship.

Putting aside the questionable nationality (OK, who cares?), I’ll try to focus now on this fantastic 2023 release, “Bless This Mess,” which will be one of my Albums of the Year.  

To call it “Bless This Mess” is so, so appropriate. It’s got a lot of everything in here, and it’s one hell of a lot of fun. Funk, pop, disco, shades of rock, dreamy indie pop… I could go on.

It opens with what could be a 1980s roller skating anthem (I mean it), but one regarding Greek mythology, the fantastic “Only Daedalus,” and then shifts to the indie-synth of “Just Space For Light,” where she sings to her protagonist:

“Sing into an empty room, a tune about your life, Given that we each must leave, keep that door cast wide.”

“Screen Face” (with Canadian singer-songwriter Michael Rault playing along) shifts into an easy-listening pop song about digital, online dating. “Your phone is dying, And I’m dying too. I’m dying to touch you, and I’m dying to be in the same room.“

Her tracks are so slickly produced, it’s interesting that this album could be called a “…Mess”. The following catchy track, “Futures Bet,” starts with what could be Jimi Hendrix’s opening of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and after amalgamating into the actual song, we have a chorus that begins: “Goodbye, history. Why don’t we let it be a mystery? That we never sort out?” It’s a slightly rockier, sort of synth-pop track but, as Remy says: “there’s something very Pepsi commercial anthemic about it.”

As she repeats: “Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. This is just life.” (Click… glug, glug, glug.)

Following on, “So Typically Now” is an electropop number, the first single from the album, with rolling 1980s drums (think, oh, so, Miami Vice), but apparently all about a specific time during the pandemic when people fled New York and moved upstate. 

So “Brooklyn’s dead, and Kingston’s booming,” and we’ve got “Traitors with loans, they run this show. So you sold off your condo….” and “… I’m freaking out. Yeah, I’m changing my passwords. Gotta sell all my best to buy more, not less. See you someday in Heaven.” Remy does enjoy singing all of this, though. You can tell she is having so much fun doing it.

My favorite track on the album is the disco burner, “Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo),” which is a song written from the perspective of, yes, a tuxedo, a discarded tuxedo… “I was your passport to so many rooms. Your mask of pure exclusivity. Now you treat me like a long gone novelty.” 

“I was born to be worn. Custom-fit to make you feel legit. It was expensive, and excessive. Now you’re too embarrassed to wear me ’round the house…“

The tuxedo concludes, “I was never for you.” 

“I was always for someone else.”

Damn right, and Remy turns this into one fun, exciting dance song that will stick in your head for some time.

“Bless This Mess” was written and recorded while Meg was pregnant during the pandemic and tending to her newborn twins. Not easy. The song’s finale, “Pump,” samples loops of the drone of the breast pump and goes some way to her headspace. “For when I was cut open. And they were taken out. Then they turned to me. Said, “Mama, I’m hungry. I need something to eat. Give us something to eat right now.“

And her line: “What I do tonight, it makes our tomorrow.” That’s a great line, and it’s a great song.

It ends with and outro with her speaking, “So, what are we talking about? We’re talking about bodies, birth, death, machines….” 

“And you, you, and you right there.”

Yes, Meg. All of us. We’re all responsible for what comes next.

Bless this Mess

This album is Meg Remy’s finest, from the beautiful balladry of the title track to the disco rhythms, funkiness, infectious R&B hooks, and synth-pop of the remaining tracks.

It is her most accessible work to date.

“Bless This Mess” is a creative, complex, but wonderous journey and I would recommend it to anyone interested in alternative dance and indie pop. Whoever wants to have fun in 2023.

It can be a mess, perhaps. But yes, let’s bless it.

9.5/10

Chris Garrod, June 2nd, 2023