Purveyors of: DIY one-woman girl-group pop bliss
File next to: The Supremes, Slim Twig, Cindy Sherman
Playing: Night three of Wavelength Music Festival FOURTEEN, Saturday February 15 @ Polish Combatants Hall (206 Beverley St.)

U.S. Girls is one of Meg Remy's many DIY art projects. Fusing abstract lo-fi sounds with the gorgeousness of sunny AM classicism, her songs encompass a refracted pop glory that hits the spot musically while hinting at a larger critique. Joe Strutt chatted with Meg online about art, feminism, and the pop process. 

Wavelength: I've heard that you're now officially a Canadian citizen. As someone who chose to cast their lot in amongst us, you're now allowed to dish: what do Canadians do well at? And what needs improvement?

Meg Remy: Canadians do socialized healthcare, hockey and libraries real well. What needs improvement? Canadians are too polite. They need a hefty dose of good ol’ American sass!

WL: Spoken like someone who brings some sass to the stage! But beyond the shiny spectacle of U.S. Girls’ music, there’s a lot going on. One of the strongest connective threads through all of your work is the underlying feminist sensibility. Can you talk about that a little, both in terms of the musical content and how you've chosen to present it?

MR: I used to be a girl and I grew into a woman. This is what I know and this is what I find I want to talk about and what I feel is important to talk about. It sounds cliché, but the media is constantly telling us women what our lives are like or what they should be like. How we should look, how we should feel, what we should want. They just want to keep our mouths shut and keep us buying shit. They want us to be enemies, to compete with each other. This competition keeps us preoccupied so that we don’t see the real state of our living conditions. I think women need to talk to each other more, share their experiences both good and bad. Prepare the young girls for what lies ahead and pass down some coping tools. This is what I modestly attempt to do with my songs, just open up an honest dialogue of what life has been like for me and the women I know. Real talk!

WL: Another constant thread has been the presence of cover songs in your repertoire. Do the songs you're drawn to fit in alongside your own compositions thematically? Do you worry over whether they might give people a too-easy “retro” pigeonhole that they can file you into?

MR: I cover songs that I admire. These are either songs I have been singing since I was a kid, songs that have some content I feel needs to be retold, or songs that just make me feel good. I have learned the hard way that just because I love a song doesn’t necessarily mean I should cover it, but that hasn’t stopped me and covering songs is a tradition I am happy to be a part of.

WL: Besides musical work, you've also been branching out as a film-maker. How did "Inside the Village by the Grange" come about?

MR: I was asked by Xpace to do a video piece for their External Space inside the OCAD Library. I decided to make it a site-specific film piece and shot in the food court outside the library. It was my first time working with real film and it was exhilarating! And the camera made sounds just like my tape machine does. It all felt very familiar and right. I made the piece like I would make a song or a collage which basically just consists of experimenting, asking for help and throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

WL: Who are some of your cinematic inspirations? A recent blog post has some clips from Chantal Akerman, but I imagine you're also getting some inspiration closer to home.

MR: Yes, I love Chantal Akerman, but she is new to me so not yet a full-blown inspiration. My true cinematic inspirations are Jennifer Hazel and Cindy Sherman. Cindy Sherman does not make moving work, but for me looking at her photos has always been like watching a full film. You get to view a character and place on them your idea of their background, where they are now and what they were thinking as they were captured. A whole story unfolds. She uses clothes and make-up in such an effective and inspiring way. Her style is simple yet really poetic and is often very telling of the collective female experience (at least in the Western world). Cindy Sherman is honest, full of contradictions but strong as an ox.

Jennifer Hazel is another of these “strong like bull” women. Her art career has been long and diverse and inspiringly DIY. She is the reason I am messing around with video and film now. One day I expressed an interest in wanting to make a video and she immediately told me I was capable. She believes in making things even if you have no money, no “professional” skills in the medium and the finished product just sits in a drawer for the rest of eternity. The important thing is that you made something, you said what you wanted to say. In this day that is rare. I am damn lucky to say I am related to this woman (she is my mother-in-law), who in my mind is the definition of the word artist.

WL: The (very tasty) music in Village by the Grange brought to mind the sounds you're producing in Coca Cola more than anything from your main project. How do you feel about making what we might broadly call "non-song" music? Does it come from the same place as "tunes"?

MR: Non-song music is the core of my being. I spent years making non-song music in an attempt to gain the courage to make tunes. Non-song music is as important as tunes and can be equally as moving. Words, no words, structure or no structure... it’s all still sound and with sound comes a decoding and a digestion and you get to take what you want from it.

WL: Sliding back from film to songs, do you think pop music needs the equivalent of a Bechdel Test? Are we heading to a place where songs that are by, for, and about women (and concern themselves about something other than relationships with men) are common enough that the whole matter doesn't need to be commented on?

MR: I think what really needs to be commented on is not the content of the songs but the songs’ role in mass marketing, consumption. and body image. I am not so sure how relevant words are these days to the average pop music listener. I think what has more power over them is the image of the pop star and the video that comes along with the song. So maybe a more pressing matter is the fact that all these pop stars are airbrushed and underfed, which then leads to a whole lot of underfed girls staring into the mirror wondering why they can see the pores in their skin when the new Beyoncé video clearly shows she has no pores. Not to mention that Beyoncé is now working with H&M so all her fans are just gonna HAVE TO go there and spend some money. It’s a gross cycle.

WL: I think Beyoncé is also very much a model of female empowerment — and maybe the biggest one a lot of people are tuned into, even if her work is caught up in all those hierarchical standards and layers of consumerism. And that’s the world that a lot of people live in. So the question then is: what breaks that cycle and gets people thinking/acting for themselves? (I guess that’s a pretty big question.)

MR: What makes Beyoncé a model of female empowerment? What has she really had to say or do that has empowered the female race? She refers to herself in terms previously reserved for royalty (being a Queen does not make you empowered, it makes you an elitist) and she has a song directed towards women where she is demanding respect and telling them to “Bow down, bitches.” And I don’t think that having a body that’s more “normally” proportioned is enough to make you a model of female empowerment. This is just how I feel. I am sure many women have felt empowered by Beyoncé’s strength, sass and perseverance, and I am not trying to devalue that. I am just not a part of that “world that a lot of people live in”... so I want more from my models of female empowerment. More than just watching them play a man’s game well. I want them to smash the game!

I don’t know what will break this cycle. But I do believe that things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better. I have hope that the younger generation is going to grow disillusioned with the internet and being sedated and lied to. I think they will be the ones to start whatever breaks this cycle.

WL: Amazing! I think everything you’re doing shows that people can chip away at the big questions even if there's no immediate answer and have fun with it and be fabulous doing it. Thanks for your time! I’m looking forward to having a Żubr and seeing you play at the Polish Combatants’ Hall.

U.S. Girls plays night three of Wavelength FOURTEEN, Saturday February 15 @ Polish Combatants Hall (206 Beverley St.)

 

Photo credit: George Fok