U.S. Girls

"U.S. Girls mastermind Meghan Remy isn't going to let you experience a piece of her art without kicking in a little brainpower" -- SPIN

"The result of all this reinvention is a brief but unhurried, moody album that brings the hedonistic tendencies of glam and the obsessive undercurrent of Spector’s girl group anthems to light." -- Consequence of Sound

"... danceable rhythm with sharp melody, creating a hot mess of modern pop without any genre touchstone to hold it back." -- Tiny Mix Tapes

♥♥♥ U.S. Girls ♥♥♥
http://yousgirls.blogspot.ca/
http://usgirls.bandcamp.com/
http://www.fat-cat.co.uk/site/artists/u.s.-girls
https://www.facebook.com/yousgirls

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♥♥♥ Ether Island ♥♥♥
http://etherisland.tumblr.com/
http://etherisland.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/ether-island
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ether-Island/110279052382437

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♥♥♥ Cock & Swan ♥♥♥
http://www.cockandswan.com/
http://cockandswan.tumblr.com/
https://soundcloud.com/cockandswan
https://www.facebook.com/cockandswan

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TICKETS:
https://usgirlscobalt.eventbrite.ca/

DOORS: 8PM
COVER: $8 (adv) / $10 (door)

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U.S. GIRLS bio:
Whilst at first glance the name may conjure ‘Volleyball teams and cheerleading squads’ as suggested by 20jazzfunkgreats, others read a military connotation – some kind of legendary all female American crack squad. Whatever the imagery, the first listen suggests a divergent story. In truth, U.S. Girls is the creative force of a lone American woman, Meghan Remy. For the past four years she has pursued her minimalist aesthetic with a militant by-any-means-necessary attitude, merging experimental compositions tracked on borrowed four track recorders with her distinctive photocopy-art visual aesthetic to deliver starkly defined statement LP’s like ‘Introducing…’ & ‘Go Grey’ on Siltbreeze Records.

While Lo-Fi recording techniques have seen something of a renaissance in recent years, Remy’s favouring of this approach was born less of aesthetic choice and more of necessity. Even as she’s inevitably been lumped in with other DIY solo artists such as Inca Ore and Sally Strobelight, her influence has unwaveringly been declared to lie with oldies radio and the distinctly American songcraft of writers like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen (whom she covered to startling effect on Introducing…). It’s in this light that her true vision is revealed. While her music has been said to evoke “particularly blunted Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry remixes of Cambodian Rocks covers of western pop tunes,” – (Artforum), more accurately she can be thought of as an unapologetically modern pop revisionist merging the audible artistic honesty of her beloved soul music with lyrical strains of static and tape hiss. Songs like ‘Bits & Pieces’ and ‘Red Ford Radio’ reimagine Billboard hit singles of the 60′s as bleakly rendered expressions of a primal American femininity.

With the arrival of a new decade the entity of U.S. Girls takes an unexpected turn. Contradicting her patriotic moniker Remy has spent the last 6 months in collaboration with Canadian artist Slim Twig whose combination of reverence for and divergence from classic pop tropes matches her own. With the same determination she once used to tour America solo via Greyhound, Remy relocated her recording to Toronto where the shroud of abstraction surrounding her songcraft has been somewhat lifted to reveal a consciously produced sound with her strikingly original voice now at the centre. Co-produced by Remy & Slim Twig, the new direction sees U.S. Girls take American pop head-on with a cover of Joe South’s ‘Untie Me’ while pursuing innovative future-music with the psychedelic ‘Pamela + GG.’

Fresh from playing a series of dates in the U.S. and back to recording for a full-length, the release of 12PALM01 marks the start of an exciting new future for U.S. Girls.
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ETHER ISLAND bio:
Among the legions of bands that have died natural (or unnatural) deaths, MYTHICAL BEAST was a particularly lament-worthy casualty. Fortunately phoenixes rise, creative energies get repurposed and reharnessed, and what’s gone is not always lost. So it is that singer/kettle drummer CORINNE SWEENEY and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist JEREMIAH COWLIN abandoned Philly for the Nowheresville of Coyote, New Mexico to live off the grid with other address-less culture renegades and be reborn as post-apocalyptic grunge-drone doom-soul duo ETHER ISLAND.
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COCK & SWAN bio:
Now a decade into their partnership, Johnny and Ola started making music together in 2003 on a Tascam 4-track in Bothell, Washington. Reconfiguring their white brick bunker by the Slough (aka the Sammamish River) into a makeshift studio, they wrote and recorded all of Cock & Swan’s material within these close confines. Johnny also began lending his recording and engineering skills to numerous local musicians, notably to Shana Cleveland and her 60s-steeped surf/pop group La Luz. A recent move to West Seattle promises grander musical endeavors for the duo, yet the Cock & Swan sound remains firmly rooted in a hazy, enveloping aesthetic propelled by analog synthesizers, unplanned samples, muted drums, and faded colors.