Bleep

Toronto-based artist Meghan Remy makes her 4AD debut with this striking full-length of DIY pop. Multi-layered and grand gestured, it bears little resemblance to her noisy, comparatively stripped-down earlier works such as 2008’s Introducing or 2010’s Go Grey for Siltbreeze. Instead, Half Free is Remy’s declaration of love to spirited pop melodies, while traces of the raw aesthetic remain in the form of sample overloaded arrangements. In part those are owed to producer Onakabazien whom she had worked with on numerous occasions before. A glamorous example is the arpeggio-laced title track, Remy exhausting her wilful voice over adventurous harmonic progressions, driven by its contrasting, almost static drum machine.