It is Amnesty Week, but there is no reprieve from 2018…

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Katherine St Asaph: How is it possible that “Pearly Gates” gets bleaker every month? The single was released in January, well before Kavanaugh and his neverending news siege would make a casual knife-cut of the line “they’d seen the judge, he’d heard them out.” (It just struck me that Meg Remy might also be singing “herd.”) It’d already developed a bleak crust when review after review marveled at the supposed seduction and “sauciness” of a recounting of rape (“I asked for nothing but to stop it short / I guess he didn’t hear a word I said.”) It’s not like “Pearly Gates” is a subtle song — a heatsick G-funk arrangement that perseverates on its minor-key melody, a tortured chorus singing “never be safe” — but rather, that women can be this unsubtle and still be overlooked. As the saying goes, by age 30 you should have at least three names of harassers or worse, at least six reasons not to say anything about that, and at least [unknowable static] lost opportunities. How should anyone expect anything else from the afterlife? It’s right there in the Bible: thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Remy boils the scenario down to one cruel act; she doesn’t tell us whether the singer was “supposed” to go to heaven, nor whether St. Peter let her in, though the odds seem grim. But just as The Handmaid’s Tale allows some hope via the existence of an epilogue, “Pearly Gates” allows one tiny crumb of cold spite: After the first verse “St. Peter” loses his sainthood, so the lyrics become the likes of “Peter bragged he was good at pulling out,” the sort of banal evil of mortal men, then a ridiculous image of him “practicing,” like sociopath Kegels. You judge whether there’s comfort there.
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Iain Mew: “Pearly Gates” has a wonderfully dark lyrical concept and Meghan Remy gives a fantastic performance (which makes me think Indie Kylie in the best way), and it’s only once the choral vocals come in that it doesn’t quite click. I think I can see the punctured grandiosity they’re musically going for, but I might have found carrying through further on that grandiosity more enjoyable and more satisfyingly satirical.
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Alfred Soto: In a Poem Unlimited is a showcase for one of the most protean of contemporary artists. On “Pearly Gates” she flaunts her Olivia Newton-John sex kitten voice for the sake of a scenario in which even St. Peter demands sexual favors. The keyboard and rhythm track burrow into place, as if the character has made up her mind.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Like every other song on A Poem Unlimited, “Pearly Gates” offers songwriting, production, and vocalizing that’s near unassailable; it’s easy to hear this and seek no more but a simple surface-level enjoyment of its aesthetics. And that’s what makes it so biting: Meghan Remy uses heaven and its gatekeeper to depict the disenchanting reality and prevalence of idiocy, abuse, and manipulation that women face from men (in power), yet the song itself sounds utterly delightful in its theatrics. The high likelihood of lax engagement with this track models the warning that the lyrics relay, indicating how even the most well-seeming institutions can be dark. “You’ll never be safe.”
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Vikram Joseph: A nightmarish parable which serves as an effective allegory for power, the patriarchy and general appalling male behaviour, made darkly appetising by a relentless, taunting, intoxicating hook that feels like it’s enfolding you in its tendrils. Meghan Remy unleashes a wonderful, ominous tremolo in the background around the three-minute mark, but the moment of catharsis that feels inevitable never actually arrives. It feels unexpectedly indebted to late ’90s hip-hop and R&B, and “Pearly Gates” is probably just an explosive rap cameo away from true greatness.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A haunted groove, equal parts nostalgic (hints of No Doubt, the Pharcyde, and also, possibly, the melody from “Regulate” waft in) and bitter in its outlook. The lyrics, in their marshaling of heaven and earth to tell the story of male abuse of power, could’ve turned out overwrought in the hands of a less adept songwriter. But every flourish of Meg Remy’s lyrics, and the absolute, grim humor with which she delivers them, serve to heighten every blow until they hit like knifes in the back.
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Ryo Miyauchi: While record scratches and boom-bap drums tip a hat to hip hop, U.S. Girls’ storytelling format is the component in “Pearly Gates” that feels the most indebted to the genre. The three-verse story captivates from the creativity, not to mention the prescience, of its main sacrilegious allegory. Though Meghan Remy’s witty wordplay and her employed tone, self-aware yet still delicate upon its subject matter, are what ultimately keeps “Pearly Gates” engaging well after the initial novelty wears off.
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Micha Cavaseno: I’m not quite sure why the music industry is so eager to return to the days of chillout-electronica and eagerly fight it out for placement in the playlists of coffee shops across the country, yet here we stand! “Pearly Gates” feels like one of those mid-to-late-’00s Mike Patton trip-hop projects with a clearly washed and redundant Dan The Automator propping up misguided notions of pop, but just tag in Meghan Remy instead pulling both men’s lackluster performances. The attempts at dark, moody groove more or less feel like mock-noir for a puppet show, a contrived attempt at conveying something that just ends up resembling desperate grabs to score for mid-tier cable shows.
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Ian Mathers: Meghan Remy has always been an interesting songwriter, but the move to something a little more raucous and communal feeling on the stellar In a Poem Unlimited has been good for her songs, and rarely as much so as on “Pearly Gates” and its rueful, ramshackle afterlife tale. It’s relatively rare that an artist hits a peak in art and popularity at the same time, but this one feels richly deserved.
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Hannah Jocelyn: For some reason, this album didn’t click with me whatsoever on first listen, but after coming back to “Pearly Gates” and engaging with the lyrics, I understand a lot more. Meg Remy’s lyrics are sharp and funny, and the titular punchline (the patriarchy is not only unstoppable, it exists ad perpetuam) is brutal. It’s like Camp Cope’s “The Face of God,” as written by John Grant. Grant’s humor comes from his frankness, but Meg Remy’s humor comes from her wordplay… and frankness (“After he acted as if I hadn’t been in his bed/I was definitely in his bed”). What draws me to this more than even Camp Cope’s music is that humor, as well as the production. It’s not overly showy in its genre-bending, but the ’90s hip-hop reference points are palpable in the clipped drums and gospel-influenced backing vocals, and there’s the same mix of analog warmth and digital precision that I loved in Tracey Thorn’s Record. The issue is that Remy’s vocals are buried just enough in the sonic homage that her lyrics don’t come through as much as they need to. With a song like “Ernest Borgnine,” John Grant is mixed loud and clear, but in “Pearly Gates” the vocals are merely part of the overall vibe and don’t stand out on their own. That’s not a bad thing, but that aesthetic choice explains why I overlooked this as lightly psychedelic pastiche instead of recognizing how great the narrative is.
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