Meg Remy is a mercurial kind of artist. I’ve never seen her perform the same set as U.S. Girls twice, so it was a thrill more than it was a surprise when she took the stage at 2016’s Polaris Prize Gala with a 7-piece band in tow to play an acapella version of “Sororal Feelings,” from her 2015 album Half Free, and to cover Yoko Ono’s “Born In A Prison.” Though her backing band would change, the idea of Remy being supported by a full, flexible set of accomplished players was being introduced right then and there. Only 10 artists are shortlisted for the Polaris Prize and get to perform at the awards’ gala, so the televised broadcast of the ceremony is a huge opportunity for an artist to get their work out to a larger audience. She knew it and took that chance. Though she was there in support of her nominated record Half Free, her mind and band had already moved on and she was letting us in on where she was headed, rather than focus on where she’d already been.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE9tb27JIEY
In an interview she filmed earlier the same day as that performance in 2016, Remy revealed that much of her follow up to Half Free, what would become In A Poem Unlimited, was already in the bag. She’d provided The Cosmic Range, a Toronto-based 10-piece jazz rock outfit made up of some of the scene’s most seasoned players, with her sample-based song demos and had them reinterpret them as a full band for recording.
In the past, Remy has usually been a bit more overt and transparent in her sampling and use of external source material, which has also informed her minimal live setup, but now it’s clear she wants to create a much more seamless slippage between what’s “original” and her own inspired interpolations. In A Poem Unlimited might be drawn from sampled material but it also pulls from cover songs (“Rage Of Plastics”) and reinterpretations (“Incidental Boogie”). Often taking from soul and R&B sources, played by a live band, the sound these interpretations of her material has taken on a rich, soulful, disco-inspired direction. It’s a big enough palette to encompass Remy’s sound past and present, while also ultimately contributing to the record’s cohesion.
Anyone who’s followed Remy’s career knows she directs and edits a great deal of her own music videos. It seems natural that someone whose musical practice is very much about cutting up and splicing ideas together to also be a filmmaker. Thinking about the two in tandem helps understand Remy’s perspective as an artist. Expressed in filmmaking terms, Half Free was all about juxtaposition, the art of montage, by placing two not necessarily harmonious ideas or sounds alongside one another. Whereas In A Poem Unlimited opts to not make jump cuts between distinct individual vignettes but aims to be understood as a whole. The seamless way with which the band treats the material therefore informs the way we understand the thematic direction Remy has gone with her lyrics and the way the songs connect on the final product.
As it turns out, Remy’s choice in performing “Born In A Prison” was more prescient than we could have known at the time, as it not only hinted at her next sonic direction, but the record’s themes too.
Ono’s “Born In A Prison,” from her 1972 album with John Lennon, Some Time In New York City, does not mince words. As the title suggests, the song draws a parallel between structural constraints in society and the prison system. It’s a riff on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, where he argues that the modern prison system is the model for just about every other institution in Western society: Hospitals, schools, etc. Its sweetly sung verses and choruses and ripping sax riff do little to lessen the blow of Ono’s words and ideas.
So In A Poem Unlimited is Remy’s incisive cultural criticism framed by the boogie. What’s more emblematic of the complex ways that totalities like capitalism, misogyny, inform our lives than a sweeping 37 minutes of disco, with all its peaks, valleys, repetitions and nuances?
Lead single “Mad As Hell,” or “M.A.H.” as it’s written on the record, is a searing example of this direction. If you’re familiar with Remy’s life (originally from Illinois, she now calls Toronto home), this song seems to target one recent American president in particular, but read outside biography it’s an indictment of just about every man who has promised the world only to dash those hopes once he’s taken office. What’s more is that its disappointment is not only rooted in personal failure but systemic issues, as she alludes to collusion between the office of the president and toxic industry and the military. Remy weaves a complex web of corruption while also pointing to its cyclical nature, which is reinforced by the song’s gorgeous hook. She makes sure that the song’s saccharine melodies don’t detract from her message, singing “Well if you couldn’t tell, I’m mad as hell” during the chorus.
Elsewhere, “Rage Of Plastics,” a song originally written by Toronto-based folk artist Fiver, puts the industry clean in its sights, telling the story of a female oil refinery worker who’s asked to “run for cancer” during her lunch break and refuses, as the work has made her husband sick with cancer and herself infertile. She refuses to participate in her workplace’s hypocrisy, but still, she needs her job and depends on that income.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PDORlPQ4cE
Whether it’s “Rage Of Plastics”’ approach to the entanglement of working to live, only to be killed by that work, “Velvet 4 Sale”’s revenge fantasy, or the way “Pearly Gates” takes aim at how society sees a woman’s worth only within her relationship to a man, In A Poem Unlimited centers the experiences of women first and foremost. Though it’s markedly different from Remy’s previous outings as a songwriter in both sound and approach, thematically it’s in line with what she’s been working at her entire career, and increasing proof that Remy is one of the most creative and thoughtful songwriters we have at the moment.
With In A Poem Unlimited, Remy’s appealing to a kind of consistency in her work that we’ve never heard from her before. She’s reached that consistency with a band of flexible players with incredible chops, who are supportive of her expressive voice yet still capable of following it wherever she leads. On this record she uses the band’s “cosmic range” as a cover, as if she were drawing a velvet curtain to obscure her writing process, accentuating the connections and common themes in her work over the cut-up technique that brings her to the end result. In doing so, she’s written an album that beautifully marries form and content, creating a meaningful way to understand the subtle nuance of the all-encompassing structures that weave together and influence our own lives. She mines disco and R&B not for the purposes of nostalgia, but to harness those genre’s live, urgent to focus on the now, the future, where her attention is — and where we need to catch up.
In A Poem Unlimited is out now via 4AD. Get it here.
