After two albums across which the more conventional listener might search vainly for something resembling a tune, Meg Remy made a turn into pop on a split album with Slim Twig in 2011. Suddenly, she’d transformed into some kind of experimental girl-group revivalist. Two more albums in the same vein later and she’s signed to 4AD for a fifth album that offers, well, more of the same.
It opens brilliantly with Sororal Feelings, in which a cavernous drum loop and a simple, almost deep-soul two-chord pattern backs Remy singing about marrying a man who had previously slept with her three sisters: “And now I’m going to hang myself / Hang myself from the family tree.” But it’s such a bold and confrontational statement that Remy can’t match it. There are high points – the twisted 80s pop of Navy & Cream, the spooked electronica of New Age Thriller – but you’re left wishing for something as startling as the opener. Recommended, but with caveats.
