Meg Remy’s experimental indie pop outfit delivers enchanting set in NYC
I thought about so much during U.S. Girls’ show at Bowery Ballroom—mostly how good they sounded. I thought about how real the lyrics from Scratch It presented, live in its rawest, most vulnerable state. Which led me to reflect on when I was 19 and my friends and I used to go in groups of 15 or 20 people to indie concerts, and we would all scream along to shows in rooms of 100 people like our lives depended on it. Shows with artists with grit like this. And how we used to listen to their 2019 album In A Poem Unlimited on repeat on the way to the beach. I thought of my twin sister, whom I was lucky enough to have standing right next to me. How much she would love this show, and she did. We had such a good time, we rode Citi bikes home over the bridge in 90-degree summer weather listening to the album from our iPhone speakers. When I was in the bathroom downstairs during the show, I thought about how the music upstairs sounded like it was coming through the stereo; that’s how clear Meg’s vocals are live. I thought about the crowd and the fact that I couldn’t pinpoint them to anything, not age, not stereotypes. It was just a big room full of people who had nothing in common on the surface, but so much under the surface.
When I interviewed Meg about the album, she told me her band on this record played, “like they’re from Tennessee,” to put it simply. It is that simple, but they really do. There’s a specific way that people from Tennessee play an instrument and you know from the second you hear it, they play like the instrument is an extension of their thoughts. As for Meg, all I could think about was how fierce she was. In her white dress without shoes, the way she fearlessly trust-fell into the arms of a man in the crowd during the electric live version of “Bookends.” The man very much could’ve dropped her, but she did it anyway. And there’s this blank stare she does out into the crowd, except a blank stare would require no emotion, but this stare could demand silence, make everyone wonder if she’s being serious or telling a joke; nonetheless everyone’s paying attention to that stare. She commands a space. The show featured mostly songs off the new record Scratch It, which sounded even more thoughtful live, along with U.S. Girls classics “L-Over” and “Island Song.”
On 100-degree days like these, the weight of the world can feel very heavy. But as Remy sings in “Like James Said, Sometimes,” you gotta dance until you feel better…
All photos by Rachel Kerrigan
