U.S. Girls aka the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist Meg Remy releases an original holiday song Santa Stay Home, co-written by Remy and Rich Morel. A holly jolly Christmas song this is not. Instead, the song is a plea for Santa to stay home and slow down our rampant consumerism. It begins, “While landfills overflow around the globe, you sit up there in your red judge robe // This charade has got to end // Mr. White Christmas, this is what I recommend”. But in true U.S. Girls fashion, environmental anxieties have never been so danceable.
Remy says of Santa Stay Home, “When one stops to really think about it, Santa is creepy and Christmas makes no damn sense.” Watch the video clip via YouTube below.
Santa Stay Home is preceded by U.S. Girls’ Polaris Prize shortlisted 2020 full-length album Heavy Light (Royal Mountain Records) praised by both The Globe + Mail and Exclaim as one of the best albums of the year. The album was produced by Remy, who also co-wrote the album with Basia Bulat and Morel to develop the set of songs conceived as a balance between orchestral percussion (as richly arranged by percussionist Ed Squires) and the human voice (conducted by Kritty Uranowski). The resulting album finds Remy casting herself as lead voice among a harmonious multitude, the singers of which lend not only their voices, but also share reflections on childhood experiences that are collaged into moving spoken word interludes throughout the album. The album was mixed by long-time collaborators Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull, Steve Chahley and Tony Price.
‘Heavy Light’ track listing
1. 4 American Dollars
2. Overtime
3. IOU
4. Advice To Teenage Self
5. State House (It’s A Man’s World)
6. Born To Lose
7. And Yet It Moves / Y Se Mueve
8. The Most Hurtful Thing
9. Denise, Don’t Wait
10. Woodstock ‘99
11. The Color Of Your Childhood Bedroom
12. The Quiver To The Bomb
13. Red Ford Radio
