U.S. Girls w/Fielded & Slim Twig: at The Stone Fox (Nashville, TN) Tue. February 5, 2013

U.S. Girls w/Fielded & Slim Twig

Pop/Rock

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick …

If Bethany Cosentino traded her guitar and weed habit for some junky samplers and a B.A. in conceptual art, she might end up writhing in glitter the way Meghan Remy does in the video for U.S. Girls’ cover of “Jack,” a song written from the perspective of England’s infamous slut-shaming serial killer. (“You’re a sinner and you’ll pay / Oh, it’s a shame / You dress the way you do.”) That is one of two songs Remy sings from a male perspective, the other being a version of Billy Joe Royal’s “Down in the Boondocks” — perhaps a subtle way of flipping the script on all-dude bands assuming feminine monikers, e.g. Girls and Women. Or not. There’s a kind of arch playfulness here; for instance, it’s hard to know how “serious” Remy’s being when she sings, “If times get tight, loosen up your thighs” on the trebly organ-grinding number “Work From Home.” And for all the glammy trappings and reverb-soaked Ronettes-aping, she never really plays the nostalgia-for-’80s-nostalgia-for-the-’60s angle straight.

—STEVE HARUCH