The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Meg Remy went country. Well, sort of.
Last year, Remy, the creative force behind the misleadingly named art-pop project U.S. Girls, was invited to play a show in Arkansas.1 Ahead of the show, Remy, who is from the States but a longtime permanent resident of Canada, tapped Nashville-based artist Dillon Watson to put together a backing band for the show.2 The end result was a crackerjack team of regional ringers who performed so well that Remy kept the band together for a 10-day recording session in Nashville.3 The resultant record, Scratch It, has a folksy expansive sound that matches its North America-spanning origins and proves it was a wise decision to strike while the creative iron was hot.
Scratch It is a considerable departure form the out-there pop of past U.S. Girls releases. Instead, the album sounds like a minor, slightly cloudy gem cut in a bygone era when complicated emotions and steel twang were a sign of serious songwriting chops and could even net a radio hit. It’s an earthy, organic and Americana-tinged album that feels lived in and fully fleshed out thanks to a cohesive soundscape seemingly on loan from Laurel Canyon and impressive songwriting.
“Bookends,” the album’s 12-minute centerpiece, shows off both strengths. For most of its considerable runtime, the song is nudged along by a simple, steady drumbeat, twinkling keys and plodding bass you can feel in your molars. Sharp guitar gives the tune a little more structure and organ sometimes swoops in to provide texture and scope. It’s a pretty and spacious arrangement that lets Remy deliver the abstract poetry of her lyrics with all the soul she can muster. As a proper epic, the song doesn’t stay simple forever. and its rich ingredients allow for some unexpected detours, including what’s probably the best organ solo of the year and a fiery near-disco finish. It’s a tour de force and the sort of thing you’ve got to be really good to pull off. The version of U.S. Girls that cut Scratch It are equal to the task.
The album offers pleasures beyond its most audacious song. “The Clearing,” begins with the deliciously dramatic pairing of a sustained organ note and Remy’s nearly Nicks-ian voice describing a truly horrific battlefield, “Braining their enemies/ On the trunks of fallen trees/ In a clearing freshly felled/ The pitch will sweetly smell.” The lyrics don’t really lighten up from there, but the song soon settles into to a countrified sway that perfectly sets up the emotive harmonica playing of living legend Carlie McCoy, who gets in two solos on the song.4 Its gorgeous, a little spooky and manages to be catchy without having a proper chorus. Watson’s guitar playing on “No Fruit” features just the right amount of fuzzy bite and brings things to a high-energy conclusion. “Firefly on the 4th of July” harnesses dizzy folk-rock energy to draw parallels between nuclear oblivion and a common summer sight. “Walking Song” is a bluesy throwback that features some of Remy’s best singing. There’s a lot to like.
There are also a few misfires and puzzling decisions. Scratch It‘s first two songs pay homage to music legends that pale in comparison to their subject matter despite being solid tracks in their own right. The James in the title of album-opener “Like James Said,” is James Brown, and the song quotes “Get Up Offa That Thing” repeatedly. While “Like James Said” has a fun groove of its own, it can’t begin to approach prime James Brown. On song No. 2, “Dear Patti,” Remy recounts both missing a Patti Smith performance to make sure her children didn’t fall in a lake, and her insecurity in potentially striking up a conversation with Smith. It’s an interesting anecdote, but not the album’s most interesting song. Similarly, “Emptying the Jimador” and “Pay Streak” aren’t particularly gripping, and they come back-to-back near the end of the album. The songcraft and musicianship on Scratch It prevent any song from being truly unpleasant, but stacking up relative clunkers in two spots really keeps the nine-song album from gathering momentum.
The other modest knock against the album is that it arrives at a time when a lot of bands are playing around with the sounds of Americana and country. It’s no longer a surprise when an artist decides to dabble in twangier genres. Pedal steel, Dobros and banjo have fully permeated indie music in 2025. However, that’s not really Scratch It‘s fault. The album came by its sound and roster of killer musicians honestly. By and large, it makes good use of both.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Violent Femmes is an album that unreservedly exorcises teenage demons while simultaneously recognizing their inherent darkness.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Live Music – Pulp! The biggest non-festival gig I’ve ever been to, if you can believe it. 450 times the capacity of the previous gig I went to, haha. They were absolutely amazing, no support, just two long sets with an intermission. All the hits, some fun deep cuts, plus a bunch of stuff from the new album that sounded just as good in context. Big screens, loads of visual stuff going on, confetti cannons, a string section… they’ve really put the effort in to make this special and while my heart will always belong to the weird little DIY music events, this was a perfect way to go big for once.
28 Years Later – wasn’t that into the first act but then it starts throwing in increasingly weird plot points that I mostly found very enjoyable, and it keeps on surprising right up to the truly baffling ending. I’m sure it’ll be divisive but I’m glad they revived this franchise with an excess of ideas rather than playing it safe. Grungy cinematography is a nice throwback to the first film too.
Memento – rewatch because my collaborative music project thing decided to write a song inspired by the plot. Which was probably a bad decision, because this is a hard one to sum up in a 3.5 minute pop song, haha. Good film though, always fun to revisit.
Death Valley – couple more episodes of the Timothy Spall cosy crime miniseries thing. I’m definitely not going to recommend this as high art, it’s very silly but good comfort food viewing. I was curious when I looked it up online before and saw headlines about the third episode being controversial but it turned out those were idiot headlines from the worst newspapers just quoting people on Twitter who thought it was shit, there wasn’t actually any real controversy. Anyway, I’m tired a lot these days so I’m sure another three episodes of this will go down smooth.
Woo, live music and a band I’m seeing in September(?) I think.
Sweet! What kinda size venues are they playing over there?
The Met which is a great mid-size venue here.
Nice, hopefully still a good size to have a similar stage show! It was so good. My venue was a 22,500 capacity arena, but I was in the standing section and managed to get a good spot so it wasn’t a completely alien experience compared to the smaller shows I’m used to.
Wooooo live Pulp!!
Bad Shabbos (2024)
I went to the theater hoping for a solid comedy I could relate to in order to escape the world for an hour and a half. Turns out that this was the absolute wrong movie. This is a film aimed almost exclusively at upper middle class New York-based Jews who want some amount of catharsis from watching a family just like them. I check a lot of those boxes, and honestly I wish it was less aimed at me. By which I mean I wish it had more New York spirit and inside baseball. The film was well-observed in looking at the character dynamics between the members of the Jewish New York family, but it feels empty outside of that. It has some good laughs, but not enough. The mother didn’t care nearly enough about the brisket to make the gag of her having to dump it on the floor land. The IDF-obsessed brother being a spiteful little shit who accidentally kills someone was a little too on the nose in a way that I don’t think the writers intended. Very little of it worked, which is too bad. I could have used a good comedy right now.
The Kids In The Hall, Season Three, Episode Ten
– “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met.”
– “You know what he did today? He stole my bag of vegetables.”
– “Oh, what a genius.”
– “Europe was exhausting. Everything’s the top of a hill.”
– “He even came onto… Kevin.” / “Oh my god!” / “It’s okay. I was flattered, but stern.”
– “I programmed in my own libido, but I forgot to factor in societal restriction!”
– “Listen, Gerald, I’m gonna put you on hold for a minute to gain power.”
– “Minimum wage? Hmm. Maybe I missed something, but I thought Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.”
– “Let’s get back to our unscripted lives.”
– “Why an iceberg in the South Pacific?”
– “This is where we should be, in Tasmania…”
– “It’s a fact: the fact girl wants mroe money.”
The X-Files, “Ice”
This famously great episode is, unsurprisingly, great. It’s obviously a riff on The Thing–which I’m more than okay with, since that gives it a terrific recipe for atmosphere, paranoia, and suspense–but it also comes up with some memorably nightmarish moves on its own. Mulder being pinned to the ground and almost having a wriggling alien parasite forced into his ear is horrifying, especially since he’s only saved by an observation made at literally the last possible second.
The relationship between Mulder and Scully continues to be fascinating, of course: their trust, connection, and slightly split priorities are all on display here. Their quiet mutual inspection of each other for alien worm possession is exactly the kind of intimate scene the show is so good at, but I also love Scully having to draw on a manic Mulder to stop him from potentially shooting someone else. (I get the situation has everyone jumpy, but I do think the episode has Mulder losing it a little too much a little too quickly. I’ll allow it for the sake of the other excellent story beats, though.)
It’s also a nice touch to have an episode where other characters so explicitly perceive Mulder and Scully as The Man, not investigators into conspiracy but the faces of it: “You oughta know. They’re your people.”
Replying to you also.
Materialists – Complicated feelings about this! Complicated! Has a lot on the brain about transactional thinking, wealth, and the irrationality of love (the bit where the bride admits she really is marrying her husband because he makes her sister jealous is great), but truly hampered by overly blunt dialogue, the use of SA as a plot device to move things forward, and it’s at least twenty minutes too long. It didn’t help that the A/C in our theater was broken during a heat wave. Really well made though, especially the use of sound and edits, so I’m going to watch Past Lives asap (a big compliment to the movie and Song in that respect). Also: Dakota Johnson would have been a very good silent movie actress with her huge eyes and wordless expressions, especially the longing look she flashes someone near the end. Her cold readings work for the character but she cannot authentically speak and cry at the same time, which fascinates me.
I watched this last week and will have to properly write it up finally tomorrow, but I think you’ll be much more enamored with Past Lives.
That’s basically what my friend told me. We also chalked up the lesser quality of Materialists to a debut movie having everything you’d want to say from your whole life where a second movie you don’t have as much time to prep the script, ideas, etc. (also second album syndrome with certain bands). It’s still really well-made, it was a pleasure simply to look at it.
Kojak, “May the Horse Be with You” – The title is a clue to how much this one wants to be funny, as a group of losers who invested in a bad race house discover she’s somehow pregnant with the last foal of a late stakes champ. For Reasons, Kojak is not only involved but knows everyone here. The humor is not funny, the western-style music is clumsy, and the end result is the first and hopefully last terrible episode of the show as it nears its end. Familar faces include Jeff Conaway just before Grease and Taxi. Oh, and there is a scene set at the Flushing Meadows rail yard, a subway yard that is inaccessible to the public, but filmed in a freight train yard. As if no one involved knew the difference, or cared.
Frasier, “My Fair Frasier” – Frasier dates a high powered lawyer and feels like he is “woman” in the relationship because of how she treats him. Some interesting moments, but this one has aged poorly even if Frasier does protest that he doesn’t really care about gender roles. About the best thing I can say is that we should note this is the second time this season Frasier has a sexual relationship, and the first time in the series that he manages to end an episode still dating someone. (I have to figure out if I want to watch the next one, where she breaks up with him and he drives her crazy trying to find out why. I remember that one as being cringey so I will likely jump over it.)
Andor “One Way Out”
Holy shit. That’s some good tv right there.
convinced he is named after Kino Lorber. I expect Andor to next meet Kino’s brothers, Janus and Franz Murnau Foundation) can’t swim! I’m going to cry. I hope he made it somehow. I need to believe he made it.
I’ve been thinking about getting a nerdy tattoo and “one way out” in star wars letters is currently tied with gandalf in spanish revolutionary colors shouting “no pasaran.”
On a cinematic and plot level, the jail break is right up there with the heist as something that is so fundamental to cinema that it’s hard to do poorly, and gilroy does it very well. Watching the pieces of the plan come together is pure visual storytelling magic. And knowing how it fits in Andor’s development as a character only adds to it—this is a guy who lives as if he’s already dead. It’s a compelling mix of pessimism and optimism. It’s the theological virtue of hope in a better world and a practical pessimism in the belief that you will fail, but you must fight for it anyway. (Coincidentally, this is the read Kate Wagner has of the Ring cycle, which I agree with. https://van-magazine.com/mag/wagner-ring-cycle-kate-wagner-der-ring-des-nibelungen/)
“One Way Out” is so badass. I love the plotting in it, too, especially the combination of the parts of the plan we see in advance and understand–like how they intend to stop the elevator platform–and the parts that didn’t (at least for me) click until I saw them in motion, like using the water to short-circuit the floor.
Also 1000% agreed on your spoiler. And on Kino Loy being named after Kino Lorber. I Want to Believe.
Haha, I had to look up Kino Lorber, and given some of the clear name associations in the show*, I think that would’ve been a pretty funny one if they did it intentionally.
(* – It didn’t originate with Andor, but the most obvious has gotta be “Saw Gerrera” = Che Guevara.)
I feel like this is spiritually a connection to Orr in catch-22, finally getting away on a raft. I need someone to photoshop andy serkis on Orr’s raft.
Caught up on all the new TV we missed while we were on vacation, which you’ll read about Sunday.
Also watched Mr. Show‘s “Operation Hell on Earth,” because my wife didn’t remember the “Fartin’ Gary” / “Fartin’ Rudy” sketches.
Aside, as of yesterday I’ve got a long Bluesky thread going of Andor characters as Mr. Show lines:
https://bsky.app/profile/captainruck.bsky.social/post/3lscug4sfak2q
What Did We Listen To?
1001 Albums, etc. – got through quite a lot this week!
Aerosmith – Rocks: I had a good time with parts of Toys in the Attic and I have a little nostalgic guilty fondness for some of the later stadium-rock stuff but this one kind of fell in a limbo between the two and I didn’t get much out of it.
Parliament – Mothership Connection: top-tier funk, I was only really familiar with “Give up the Funk” but this is all packed with grooves and squelchy synth bass, good times.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Music From The Penguin Cafe: thought I knew this one but maybe I’ve only heard their second album before. Enjoyably eccentric chamber-pop / folk-prog kinda stuff.
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene: love a bit of JMJ, and it’s great fun how THE Oxygene riff doesn’t come in until part 4, it’s a really enjoyable build up and then the crowd go wild!
Ramones – Ramones: pretty much perfect right out of the gate, I guess this is a little front-loaded but that’s the only complaint I can level at it, wonderful stuff.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Afrika 70 – Zombie: think I enjoyed the previous Fela Kuti album on the list a little more but an enjoyable listen for sure.
Peter Tosh – Legalize It: Reggae nearly always falls into a sort of “pleasant but nothing more” black hole for me, but it’s been really hot this week and that definitely suits the genre.
Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life: Assumed I’d heard this before but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t, at least not in full. An artist on top of his game, thrilling stuff with some outstanding tunes and an impressive hit rate for a very long album.
Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive!: ugh, a real slog. I was familiar with the hits and had nothing really against them but everything else just wore me down, such mediocre songwriting and the talkbox gimmick wears thin.
Brian Eno – Before and After Science: another one I thought I’d heard before but think I was mistaken. Really fantastic, you can hear the genesis of his ambient stuff in the later tracks but there’s plenty of room for excellently odd pop music too.
Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express: never my favourite Kraftwerk album, I find a couple of the songs drag a bit (Hall of Mirrors in particular) but it’s still Kraftwerk so obviously it’s fantastic.
Billy Joel – The Stranger: kinda assumed I’d be powerless to resist a bit of Billy Joel but that did not prove to be the case, his vocal is so kinda smug and affected and while some of the songs are catchy, I can’t get over my reservations.
Blank Check, Loser – saw this film on VHS (probably) not long after it came out, absolutely no interest in revisiting it but the discussion was fun, I only really remember it as a sub-American Pie throwaway so the darker / stranger elements are interesting. Such a shame that it torpedoed Heckerling’s career though after the sparkling highs of Clueless.
Screen Drafts:
Time Loops – a favourite subgenre of mine so this was a fun listen. They opted to leave off a very high-profile entry that I love but I’m okay with it, it’s fun to get some lesser-known films on a list like this (although I had seen them all). Glad to see River from a couple of years ago rank highly, that’s a really fun one.
Legacy Sequels – kinda fun, not a subgenre I have as much fondness for but the way they defined it (any sequel released more than 10 years after a previous instalment) opened it up for some interesting picks. Ashamed to say I did not guess the EXTREMELY obvious #1 pick at all.
Songs in the Key of Life is staggeringly good. It comes off as both personal and universal. It has some of Stevie’s biggest hits, and some weirder stuff like, “All Day Sucker.” The whole thing just drips cool, too.
The craziest part is that he put out three other albums in the same half-decade that are nearly its equal with Talking Book, Innervisions and Music of My Mind.
There’s a really solid podcast series, The Wonder of Stevie, that focuses entirely on his 1972-1976 run. Probably the most absurdly great string of releases in 20th century pop music.
This podcast sounds like my jam.
Billy Joel, smug and affected?? Now I’ve heard everything!
My favorite Billy Joel song is “Uptown Girl,” and it makes it almost more annoying that he’s capable of writing such great throwback pop yet so much of his recorded output is that smug bullshit.
Chaos And Creation In The Backyard, Paul McCartney
This continues both my enjoyment of 00’s era McCartney and completely solo McCartney – this is another of the few where it’s him playing almost every instrument, and I feel like you can feel that in his precise, specific playing. He’s also effortlessly sincere here again, incredibly emotionally nuanced but always focused on entertaining the listener.
Hell or Highwater David Duchovny
Yeah, turns out he’s a musician. This would have been a pretty great rock album in 1995 and is otherwise mediocre-to-fine now, with the title song and “Positively Madison Avenue” being the high water marks – this is an album mostly supported by Duchovny’s cool voice, with the latter song in particular working because he’s wry and expressive on it.
“Fine Line” gets stuck in my head quite a bit, truly joyous and I love “There is a fine line/between chaos and creation.”
Well, you gotta follow Hell or Highwater with “David Duchovny, Why Won’t You Love Me?”, right?
In tribute to Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, selections from There’s A Riot Going On and The Smile Sessions. Both of these feel, respectively, like Black street culture and white Americana processed through acid and schizophrenia, creating these mind-bending, still unique harmonies and sounds.
Other selections: subscribed to the Hermetics podcast which has a good interview with a Marquis de Sade translator giving context to the writer, still unread by me. This SF Ultra podcast rules, hours long discussions of Lanark and Crash are my fucking shit. I also made a playlist of Irish folk and punk that I will link at some point, with the Elizabeth Cronin pieces recorded by Alan Lomax truly feeling supernatural and beautiful. Oh, and this “John Fetterman” diss from RxkNephew is Not Optional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVdfAcRcz2c
Silent Alarm, Bloc Party
I started writing down favorite songs for this, and I put down almost everything: “Eating Glass,” “Positive Tension,” “Banquet,” “Blue Light,” “This Modern Love,” “Plans” …. This was definitely an album that benefited from active concentration, because the sound is big enough and complex enough that the music can overpower the lyrics if I’m not paying attention, and the lyrics are well-worth listening to and a big part of how I connect to the songs. Strong candidate for my favorite of Nath’s top albums of the ’00s so far. Will definitely have to listen to more Bloc Party. (The song of theirs I know best is 2007’s “Sunday,” which is lovely.)
Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, The Unicorns
Particular force and energy to “I Was Born (a Unicorn),” which is a good anthem for anyone who’s ever felt strange and under siege but beautiful and defiant about it. But there are some other standouts here, including “Jellybones,” “Tuff Luff,” “Les Os,” and “Ready to Die” (great way to end the album, and I love how it answers the opening song). When I first started listening to this, I was worried that I was in too bleak a mood to appreciate what it was doing–I think I’d just checked the news, so–but it got me onboard.
SOUR, Olivia Rodrigo
This album was heavier on the ballads, which wasn’t a side of Rodrigo I’d seen as much of–except for “favorite crime,” which I was already familiar with and liked–and they’re good ballads, if not as instantly grabby and lovable as some of her later work. Some of this is too specifically pegged to high school in an immediate, non-nostalgic way for my tastes, but that’s not actually a problem: Rodrigo’s willingness to get specific in the details is good, and I appreciate it even when it means it doesn’t hit me as hard. But I do think that, aside from “favorite crime,” my favorites were the punchier “brutal” and “good 4 u.”
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, David Byrne and Brian Eno
Smooth and beautiful and dreamy and a little uncanny. Listened to this one twice just to soak in it some more. Highlights include: “Home,” “Everything That Happens,” “Life Is Long,” and “One Fine Day.”
I love the Unicorns! I was lucky enough to see them live once during their brief run.
Oh, that must’ve been great!
I think I may have seen the Unicorns, although now I can’t remember if I actually did, or if I just am mushing a memory of a story a friend told me about seeing them into my own.
My lower Bloc Party rating isn’t even because I don’t regard it well; it’s just that 2005 came at the tail end of a ton of similar music like that, and it didn’t have the same impact on me as some of the other choices. (That said, if you liked it, I think you’ll find a lot to like on the rest of the list.)
And your thoughts on SOUR are similar to mine, particularly re: “brutal” (one of my favorite songs of the decade so far) and “good4u.”
I realized after I wrote that Bloc Party bit that the whole point of going in this order is that–accounting for variation in taste, naturally–everything is structured to get better and better, so saying, “I liked this even more than I liked the 110-99-ranked albums!” is kind of funny because yeah, self, that’s how countdown lists work.
Hahaha, I’m waiting for some random album later on to just get a “this was dogshit, what the hell were you thinking?” writeup.
Saturday night on vacation we went to Brooklyn for karaoke, and the most disturbing part of it was that the crowd got more hyped than any other song for “How to Save a Life.” The kids may not be all right.
In new music: bar italia – “Cowbella” and Nation of Language – “Inept Apollo” seem like they will almost immediately go on my “verified good” list somewhere. I also heard “Everybody Laughs” by David Byrne and Ghost Train Orchestra, but I wasn’t listening that closely because I didn’t realize it was new. So I’ll have to give it more attention soon.