U.S. Girls - Introducing LP

If the alluring moniker used by Megan Uremovich conjures images of volleyball teams or cheerleading squads, forget it. Not that there's any doubt that Uremovich--sorry, U.S. Girls--couldn't rise and conquer either challenge.

Like fellow DIY ingenues Sally Strobelight and Inca Ore, U.S. Girls' approach is deceptively ethereal and delightfully haunting; lithe, lysergic gamma rays of keyboard murk beamed over percussive bonk sort of resemble Diamanda Galas reinterpreting Suicide's Red Star. And dig that cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Prove It All Night," done in such an effortless, barbital lush you'd swear the air was filled with mescaline. Guess what? It's not.

"In her cover version of The Kinks melancholy anthem 'Days,' U.S. Girls sticks to Albert Einstein's wise maxim 'Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler.' The dirgey clatter of the drums brings to mind images of old steam machines advancing through vast fields where things grow slow and women sing folk songs which are eternal because they are sung from the heart and nothing else. U.S. Girls' voice does this, free from decoration, frills or pretense, mapping the country of the soul with a burning honesty strange in this reality, something we also find in the ballads of Acid Mothers Temple sorceress Cotton Casino."

--20jazzfunkgreats.co.uk