Scratch it

When Meg Remy, the visionary behind U.S. Girls, got an offer to play at a festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas in early 2024 — over one thousand miles away from her home in Toronto — she enlisted Nashville-based friend Dillon Watson (D. Watusi, Savoy Motel, Jack Name) to assemble a one-time band for the occasion. The show went so well that she decided to ride thatenergy 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 her 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.Album opener “Like James Said” is an ELO-styled nugget of AM gold; a nod to the power of dancing alone and a lyrical response to James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing”. Lead single “Bookends” — a sprawling, twelve-minute ballad co-written with Edwin de Goeij — makes up the heart of the album, paying tribute to the late Power Trip frontman Riley Gale through the lens of John Carey’s Eyewitness to History. Later, slinky diss track “No Fruit” finds Watson’s wah-wah punctuating Remy’s biting and poetic prophecy, aimed either at a lover or the greatermodern world.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 favor 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.