Speedy Ortiz on a roll

A few months ago, Otis asked me to think about reviewing some self-release-ish/EP-ish type recordings from Speedy Ortiz, a semi-local (guitarist Matt Robidoux is from Keene, the rest from Northampton and thereabouts) punk-pop-noise-math foursome already making some waves. (You get the irony that Otis, who lives in Brooklyn, had to tell me about a local band, right?) Anyway, I reviewed the first three recordings when hardly anyone was interested, but since then, they have started to gain some traction. For instance, they got an 8.4 and Best New Music from Pitchfork about a month ago. So now, with the Dusted hiatus and all, I am actually a little late to proclaim my admiration for Major Arcana. It came out last month. It's a monster.

My Dusted review runs today. Among other things, it says:

Speedy Ortiz, the Western Massachusetts foursome fronted by Sadie Depuis, power blasts through its debut full-length with an unsettling combination of force and vulnerability. Major Arcana is simultaneously cleaner and denser than earlier EPs, its parts blistered with distortion yet easily audible as separate elements. An early 1990s fascination with wandering hooks, loud-soft shifts, disconsolate lyrics and dissonance swathed melodic hooks continues to make comparisons to Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr. apt, yet the fizzy exuberance of the choruses (though buried in fuzz) is more like The Breeders. Depuis, in particular, is a volatile and fascinating performer, singing softly, sardonically, knowingly in the spaces between firewall blasts of volume, or picking her way carefully among sharp-edged, off-kilter constructions of post-rock guitar.

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Check this out

Speedy Ortiz back for more

Speedy Ortiz is centered down in Northampton and I think one her guitar players lives even closer, around Keene, but I had never heard of her (them) until Otis Hart asked me to review her first three recordings. They were pretty great, spiky and lo-fi but super intelligent behind the dissonance. My Dusted piece on Speedy Ortiz ran earlier this year. I think I even mentioned that she had a new album in the can, though I had no idea it was coming so soon. The new one is called Major Arcana, it's out on Carpark and, if the world were in any way fair, it would be a monster.

Check this out, it's like the Breeders in front of Polvo or something...

Speedy Ortiz

In another of those Dusted reviews of artists who live within 50 miles of me that I've never met (see Sam Moss), here's Speedy Ortiz, the 1990s guitar-rock-influenced, rock-'n-roll-camp-for-girls informed project of one Sadie Dupuis. I reviewed all three of her recordings so far, but there's another one coming pretty soon, so back to work everyone. No one said you could go home yet.

Speedy Ortiz
The Death of Speedy Ortiz / Taylor Swift b/w Swim Fan / Sports EP
Exploding in Sound

Speedy Ortiz is the Western Mass-based alter-ego of Sadie Dupuis, a sometime rock-in-roll-camp-counselor, poetry student and songwriter who harks back to the ragged, heavily distorted, pre-grunge guitar pop of the 1990s, not just female-centric bands like Belly, Throwing Muses and the Breeders, but also mixed and decidedly male ones — Pixies, Chavez and Polvo.


Dupuis, who used to be in a band called KC Quilty, has gradually built Speedy Ortiz from a one-woman bedroom (or camp cabin, in this case) home recording project into a full-blooded band. The Death of Speedy Ortiz, recorded in 2011, had just Dupuis playing guitar, drums, bass, piano, banjo and cello. The Taylor Swift single and the Sports EP bring together Northampton-area musicians Mike Falcone (ex-Ovlov) on drums, Darl Ferm on bass (ex-Day Sleeper), Matt Robidoux on guitar (he was in the excellent, though mathy Graph), as well as Dupuis herself.


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You can listen to all of it at the Speedy Ortiz Bandcamp page.