Today, Toronto-based producer, film composer and author Meg Remy has announced her intuitive and adventurous U.S. Girls album Scratch It, will be out on June 20. Following the album announcement is the release of an epic and sprawling 12-minute lead single, “Bookends.”
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.
Co-written with Edwin de Goeji, “Bookends” is the heart of Scratch It. The sprawling ballad pays tribute to Remy’s late friend and former Power Trip frontman Riley Gale, through the lens of Remy’s reading of John Carey’s Eyewitness To History, which is a historical collection of 300+ eyewitness accounts of great world events spanning twenty-four centuries.
“Bookends” is also accompanied by a cinematic short directed by Caity Arthur. They explain: “The video is ultimately about death, absolution and how death is one of the only certain things in life; the ‘great equalizer,’ nolens volens. However, it also subverts the traditional narrative of death as a despairing void, rather, portraying it as a euphoric transitory experience or new beginning through a hallucinatory ensemble cast, a 1960s pop-star performance, and sleight of hand magic. As the video progresses, the TV channels alternate through these scenes as Meg’s lyrics evoke death in its various forms.”
Scratch It Tracklist
1. Like James Said
2. Dear Patti
3. Firefly on the 4th of July
4. The Clearing
5. Walking Song
6. Bookends
7. Emptying the Jimador
8. Pay Streak
9. No Fruit
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