The upshot of living through this chaotic digital age is that if nothing else, we have a whole civilisation’s worth of music to delve through before the planet dies. You can hear this as a silver lining around Meg Remy’s long-running recording project U.S. Girls; though a sense of impending doom haunts her work, she’s in the habit of turning all the world’s ills into lovingly-crafted slices of leftfield disco, drawing from the annals of music history to create a strain of pop that is anything but disposable.  

Originally from Chicago, Remy lives in Toronto these days, where she operates as a multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer. She’s a chameleonic presence, whose voice can encompass a range of textures, from sepulchral groan to spangled Ronette glamour. In portraits, she stares at you fixedly with a blue-eyed, steely gaze, as if challenging you to cross her. The music can feel like that too. This is pop created to rail at injustice, to confront trauma and resist the sensation of being at the mercy of oppressive, failing infrastructure. It can also summon demigods like Prince, Blondie and Springsteen in the same breath as Greek mythology and Samuel Beckett. 

For all its scope, though, Bless This Mess ended up being very much a housebound record, created under a strict set of parameters – lockdown, and giving birth to twins. And as Remy’s body adapted to pregnancy, so did her habits as a musician. She found she couldn’t breathe as deeply, so she changed the way she sang. Her body became yet another instrument; the props and paraphernalia of parenthood a new set of tools to experiment with. She samples a breast pump in ‘Pump’, which recreates a frazzled exchange with a nurse about how to get milk into a child’s tiny mouth. Accompanied by a hefty bassline, Remy captures the absurdity of bringing more human beings into the world and having to coax them through basic functions. The whole thing almost tips into parody, at least up until a gently-intoned outro about the mysterious connection between parent and child. Finally, she finds herself repeating the word “you” until it starts to lose all meaning. 

This blurring of identities between parent and child might also be what inspired her to return to her own youth in the album’s title track, which dishes up the kind of Odeon blockbuster piano chords seldom heard this side of 1998. The overdose of kitsch starts to make sense once you watch the music video, which stars an earnest teen Remy serenading the camcorder, old footage manipulated to neatly sync up with the new lyrics. It’s a moment in which she can feel whole, recognising herself in her analogue reflection, still staring dead into the camera, still putting her vulnerabilities on show. Similar themes are taken on in ‘Futures Bet’: a reminder to be empathetic towards yourself, and to stop obsessing over whatever happened before: “Goodbye history! Why don’t we let it all be a mystery / That we never sort out?”

In Remy’s case, there’s plenty of history. Newcomers to U.S. Girls may be shocked when they first browse through their vast back catalogue, both at the scale of Remy’s ambition and, at times, the texture of the music itself. Debut release Introducing (2008) is made up of the kind of industrial noise and warped pedal loops that might sit naturally in the cold light of a gallery, but are slightly daunting for someone who has parachuted in expecting disco anthems. With each album, however, Remy’s musicianship and lyrics have become less opaque, and more about putting a fresh spin on her own kaleidoscope of influences. With the kind of messages U.S. Girls want to put out, stealth has also been key: by embellishing her music with elements of funk, hip-hop, glam-rock, and deceptively glittery production, she can repackage fiery critiques of modern America under the guise of irresistible earworms. Or maybe it’s a way of peeling back the avant-garde, cerebral layer of earlier releases, and inviting listeners to experience the music with their whole being. To dance, rather than just chin-stroking over what it all means.