Half Free by U.S. Girls [4AD]
Written for WSOE 89.3's "4 Albums That Feel Like a Movie."
A lot of albums are cinematic because they tell a cohesive narrative throughout the runtime. Some create a sort of a fake-out within your brain, incorporating sonic cues listeners have a nostalgic connection to. is a unique album in that it does neither of those things. It’s more like a series of short films, relying on a diverse sonic landscape and brilliant lyrics to make you hear the story. Each song on is a different story about a different woman. Or maybe they’re all ostensibly about Meg Remy. But even if the songs don’t follow a chronological story, the thematic and emotional arc is as cohesive as any album or movie could be.
Beginning on “Sororal Feelings,” Remy sings from the perspective of a woman who found out her husband has slept with all of her sisters. The song includes one of the most visceral and brilliant lines I’ve ever heard: “Now I’m gonna hang myself/Hang myself from the family tree.” Like all the songs on Half Free, it’s moody and dark, but it’s such a bold opener because it sounds so defeated. Typically, albums save some of their most fun songs for the opener, easing their listeners into darker songs in the middle. Remy plunges us right into the action, preferring to lead us out of it on her terms. She’s the director, we’re the audience.
The stories on Half Free don’t get any less dark, from a widow whose husband died presumably in Afghanistan (“Damn That Valley”) to confronting a cheating partner (“Window Shades) to a haunting mini-play that examines being “just another woman with no self- esteem.” (“Telephone Play No. 1”) In some albums, the music is simply a vessel for the lyrics or vice versa. What makes Half Free so cinematic to me is how inseparable each part of each song is. They are truly vignettes of angry, cheated, vengeful, and even gleeful women. The overarching theme we see is that these women have been wronged, but the further along we get into the album, the more the intention becomes clear.
Half Free is highly noir in its influence, both sonically and in storytelling. Even the black and white album cover says so. The trip-hop influences on her 2018 album haven’t come into play yet, but she’s also polished up her glam rock sound from 2012’s, even adding back in some of her early, eerie sound. The album employs sonic influence from disco, psych-rock, vintage female vocalists, and even a dash of house, though it never loses its hold on the listener. Through all of this gathering of influence, Half Free achieves a sonic balance that not many can, keeping her playfulness while singing lines like “And I won’t provide it for you/Even though you’ll/Even though you’ll force me to.”
The album follows a classic film storytelling arc in triplets. The despairing first three songs, set the storytelling themes and the darkly clever tone. Inciting incidents if you will. Then we see the rising action, the three most upbeat songs on the album, “Window Shades,” “New Age Thriller,” and “Sed Knife.” These songs burn bright, with enough brass instruments, disco-tinged darkness, and electric guitar to rocket your mood up to the climax. In the final triplet, the album starts by crashing you right back down with “Red Comes In Many Shades,” the sonically darkest track on the album about an affair with an older man. The next track, “Navy & Cream,” is slow and sad, but also sweet-sounding. It’s part ballad of a woman whose hung on to the end, part breakup song, part love song, part longing. It feels like an old western movie and an 80’s rock ballad got mashed together. It’s the perfect come-down from the emotional vitriol of the album so far and leads us perfectly into perhaps the best album closer of all time.
Half Free ends on what my friend Tom referred to as Remy’s “magnum opus.” The song is “Woman’s Work,” a seven-minute song that, in a movie, could easily play in a club or a dark alleyway. The song sees Remy rage at death, patriarchy, and womanhood to the tune of dark, glitzy synths. There wasn’t a better way she could’ve ended this story. In the background you can vaguely hear things like honking, driving home the catharsis of the song, and the feeling that this song is meant to exist alongside somebody walking on the street, into the future. When the violins kick in on that final outro, you can almost see Meg Remy finally looking into the camera, finally cracking a real smile.