Schnipper’s Slept On

story THE FADER

Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s U.S. Girls’ “Kankakee” 7-inch. Download a live version of “I Can Hear Music” from the record (along with a number of other live songs), buy the 7-inch from Cherry Burger Records and read Schnipper’s thoughts on the record after the jump.

Nina Simone died when I was in college. I gave a brief presentation about her life and music in an English class I was taking about music. I brought in some of her records and played “My Man’s Gone Now.” People either didn’t know who she was or thought she had been dead for years. My friend Daniel played that song for me initially in his absurdly hot makeshift attic bedroom. He played it from a greatest hits compilation and made sure I was quiet during the duration. It’s a hard song to take. Then, most of my difficult music was difficult because of keen abrasion; there is nothing mystifyingly brutal about Painkiller or Black Flag, they just sound harsh. But as I later struggled to explain to my class, Nina Simone’s music carried the same heavy weight in a much more gorgeous package. “Brutal” was always such a thick word and stuck with me when describing music, in the way it denoted such immense seriousness. There is the unfortunate negative inherence to brutality, but its stark effect connected across genres, and, however nimble a trait, has longtime been my musical common thread.

Last week I wrote about Little Claw, riot girl and my guts; the previous week about Man is the Bastard, the economy and a glum confusion about the American people. Though my life and subsequent musical tastes have taken a vacation from harshness, it seems to have returned. Maybe it’s just an extension of the nation’s mood, or maybe I am just not feeling well. Last night it was warm, so I opened my bedroom window to let some air in. I woke up over and over in the night. One nostril was brittle and open, the other stuffed and gooky. The one air flowed through was irritated from the extra work, the dry air chafing. I woke up at 7:30 this morning and though I tried to go back to sleep, I was awake and blowing my nose into oblivion and at that point, more rest was out of the question. I read Hedrik Hetzberg’s column on the New Yorker site, trying to stay politically informed, but instead he wrote about music. “I have found, over the years, that the only really foolproof way to refresh my patriotism is to listen to American music,” he says. “An hour with Thelonious Monk, Bruce Springsteen, Mose Allison, Dar Williams, the Cashes (Johnny and Rosanne), Emmylou Harris, John Coltrane [list continues till long past Election Day] provides nonpareil spiritual refreshment.” And while his list is not entirely divergent from mine, currently I don’t want such an infused line to revival. A desire for inexactitude is why I listen to U.S. Girls. Her cover of The Ronettes and The Beach Boys “I Can Hear Music” is refreshed patriotism if refreshed patriotism was buried in a box. From what I can decipher, Megan Remy’s (aka U.S. Girls) music is made from taking old tapes and playing them distortedly on old equipment and then singing heavy and lo-fi, like a prescient ancestor of Phil Spector. The drums sound like heavy jelly, her voice sounds like a colorless kaleidoscope. “I can hear music/ I can hear music/ The sound of the city, baby, seems to disappear/ I can hear music/ Sweet sweet music.” I wish I could say I am feeling better already, but I’m not yet. But it’s not her fault.