U.S. Girls

Toronto's Meghan Remy, aka U.S. Girls, makes bedroom glam-rock that seems to exude a feeling of creative isolation. Perhaps understandably, Remy doesn't appear quite as comfortable on stage as she seems to sound from within the secluded confines of her personal space. Throughout her loud and often shrill set, Remy did not once speak to the audience, not even to introduce herself. When not toying with her laptop setup, Remy chose to stand in the back corner of the stage, from where she delivered her heavily echoed vocals. To compliment Remy's haunting musical aesthetic, a strangely hypnotic video of a woman apparently running away from something played in the background throughout the performance. Remy's particular brand of lo-fi glam-pop is difficult to pin down, having been labeled variously as "no-wave" and even simply "Remyesque." This ambiguity probably makes it difficult for sound engineers to figure out just how Remy should sound in a live performance. Indeed, this seemed to be the case at Garrison — at one point my friend turned to me and said "this is totally on the verge of being really good, but not quite there yet."