Meghan Remy has been going through an “Irish” phase. Remy, who records avant-garde pop as U.S. Girls, reports that she is enjoying Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary – an exploration of the maternal instinct from the perspective of the mother of Jesus. She adds that her Celtic deep dive recently extended to watching Nothing Compares, Kathryn Ferguson’s raw profile of Sinéad O’Connor.
“She [O’Connor] is definitely someone I was aware of and who seemed like a marked woman,” says Remy, speaking as U.S. Girls prepare to release a fantastically visceral eighth album, Bless This Mess. “I felt from an early age with her, it wasn’t going to end well. There’s nothing that people want to take down more [than] someone, especially a woman, who is telling you all the s*** you’re doing wrong. I watched that doc about her. And was so moved by it.”
Remy is empathetic towards O’Connor and her life experiences. Though now based in Toronto, she was raised Catholic, in a small town in Illinois, and had a difficult relationship with adults in her life. More than difficult: in her 2021 memoir, Begin by Telling, she unpacked the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. It was difficult to write – even harder to read. And yet she feels that setting her experiences down marked a point of change. That has carried through to Bless This Mess, notably unburdened by the anger that rippled through her earlier catalogue.
“The book, I started before this record. We’re talking about my previous records being angry. The book is this transition. Okay, why was I angry? And how is that not serving me? How do I operate differently? I’d been doing lots of finger pointing. The most effective way to understand other people is to try to understand yourself. Hold yourself accountable and have empathy for yourself. The book is the bridge.”
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Bless This Mess is heavily diaristic. She made the new LP over the course of her pregnancy with twin boys. The earliest tracks were written before she was pregnant; the final one, Pump, was assembled in the dazed glow of new parenthood and features a rhythm sampled from a breast pump.
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Remy’s music – the project is called “U.S.” Girls rather than “us” Girls – is often described as cutting-edge or unorthodox. On Bless This Mess however the vibe is glossy and approachable. You could put it on in the background at a dinner party and not terrify anyone. Opener Only Daedalus pairs lyrics about flying too high (Daedalus being the father of notorious amateur aviator Icarus) to a groove of which Pharrell Williams would be proud. Later, on the single Futures Bet, she pairs hair-metal riffs with luxuriant drum patterns. Writing accessible songs, continues Remy, is a mark of confidence.
“It comes with ageing. Early on, I liked making difficult music because it made me feel above people. It was a protection,” she says. “If someone had a critique I would say, ‘well you don’t get it, this is my art’, instead of being open to other people’s ears. It was a security blanket thing’.”
I tell her the album sounds optimistic. She demurs. “I don’t know about ‘optimism’. I don’t relate to that word. Maybe ‘acceptance’. It seem to be the only way to get through life is accepting whatever comes and figuring out how to work with it. Sometimes, blind optimism can be as bad as being painfully cynical. It sounds optimistic compared to previous records, where I was angry and working through things in a way that wasn’t working.”
She moved to Toronto in 2010 and lives there with her husband Max Turnbull, with whom she runs the label Calico Corp. Speaking over Zoom at 6am (she is an early riser) she is laid-back and chatty. But that isn’t to say she has made peace with her traumatic past. She is still stung by the hypocrisies of her Catholic upbringing: of being forced to attend church while also suffering horribly at home.
“I was raised Catholic. I never felt it. I never had the guilt because of those beliefs. I couldn’t understand the hypocrisy. It drove me mad. It was so frustrating to be in a setting in terms of my family life where there was intense trauma going on. And then I was the one that had to go confess to the priests. It seemed so wrong. It sent me on this path of questioning things. Never taking things at face value. ‘Oh you’re authority – f*** you’. I don’t trust anybody who wants to be in a position of authority.”
The more she read about the church, the less she liked it.
“It grew into finding out about the Catholic Church in terms of women, colonialism and private property. Oh my gosh. It shaped me massively. I went to Catholic school and Catholic high school. I had one friend in high school. Literally one friend. He was the only other punk in school. Everything we did: from how we dressed to the music we made to the books we brought to school to be seen with. Everything was a reaction to that – and pushing against that. So it majorly shaped me. And I’m finding it comes out in how I’m raising my kids even. I have real scepticism around Christmas. Not having the desire to inculcate them with that. It [Catholicism] was huge.”
She feels more comfortable raising her kids in Canada than she would have in the United States. She is of the opinion that the US is fundamentally broken and too beholden to vested interests – which is why she has never voted in a presidential election. All options are bad – why favour one over the other?
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“There’s no way we were going to move to the States,” she says. “I’m grateful to be here. My children didn’t cost a dime to have. It would have been a totally different situation having kids in the States. That said, it’s not perfect here. There are major issues.”
Still, with Bless This Mess, she feels she has reached a point where she is no longer defined by her past. Or by her anger. It’s been a journey. At times a difficult one. However, as a musician, a mother, a human being, she is now in a better headspace. This is why she can watch a movie about Sinéad O’Connor or read about the Virgin Mary and not feel triggered. She is past that now – and her new album, if not “optimistic”, is nonetheless a celebration of living the best version of your life. As the title says, it’s messy. And yet you’ll feel blessed for having sat with it and basked in its hard-won wisdom.
“I found punk as a teenager. It was this way for me to separate myself from my family, separate myself from my Catholic school. To push back against things and feel fortified and have a place to dig in that was safe. I had lots of other ways of doing that: drinking and being promiscuous. I don’t regret those ways of coping and processing because they were necessary and I’m alive still. But definitely music is the healthiest.”
Bless This Mess was released Friday, February 24th
