Over the summer, U.S. Girls followed their 2020 album Heavy Light with “So Typically Now,” a synth-speckled banger skewering people who decamped upstate to their Hudson hidey-holes during the pandemic. Today, Meg Remy is back with another new single, the ballideering “Bless This Mess.” It also has “realfake” music video created by Remy and Evan Gordon.
“Before camera phones, the family camcorder was often the mirror tool used to capture selfie-like performances of teenage daydreams and insecurities,” Remy says of “Bless This Mess.” She adds:
Recently I unearthed a VHS tape housing footage of my 1998 self singing on top of my favorite songs of the day, along with my 2000 self publicly performing music for the first time, plus various other blush-worthy self-portraits. I decided to air out this acutely personal footage. My meta music video vision: 1998 self singing a song that 2020 self wrote.
Evan Gordon adds: “I buckled down and painstakingly dragged the eight-minute clip over each word of the song, forwards and then backwards, splitting off any partial or direct match. Beyond my expectations, I was able to find multiple matches for each phrase. From here, I worked on stitching the clips together to make complete phrases, selecting from my list of matches much like making a comp of vocal takes.
This video is a realfake. It’s naturally authentic while being transparently fake. Its intent is not to deceive or convince, but rather to induce reflection and remembrance.”
Listen and watch below.
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