Speedy Ortiz share new single ‘Ghostwriter’
SPEEDY ORTIZ
SHARE NEW SINGLE “GHOSTWRITER”
& ALEX ROSS PERRY-DIRECTED VIDEO
FT. JOSH GONDELMAN, TED LEO & MORE
North American Tour Support from Washer, Poolblood, Foyer Red, Baths & Spacemoth Just Announced – Tix On-Sale Now
Rabbit Rabbit out September 1 via Wax Nine
(Photo Credit: Chris Carreonl
Early praise for Speedy Ortiz & Rabbit Rabbit:
“the song is a tangle of meter-shifting guitar riffs and polysyllabic verses, punctuated by a perfectly exasperated refrain” – The New York Times
“I wish I had an airhorn–that’s how excited I am…I love the weird, crazy, wiry guitar parts that are so central to this band…there’s a little bit of playfulness in this song.” – NPR Music
“It’s vintage Speedy Ortiz – caustic, intelligent, and packed with heart.” – Clash
“On ‘Scabs’, their triumphant comeback song, the group weave satisfyingly wiry riffs while lyrically they force us to reckon with our treatment of essential workers, providing an important reminder about morals and ethics in the process.” – The Forty Five
Philadelphia rock quartet Speedy Ortiz will release its long-awaited new album entitled Rabbit Rabbit one month from today via Wax Nine. The band previewed its first record in 5+ years by sharing “Scabs,” “You S02” and “Plus One” to praise from the likes of NPR Music, The New York Times, Pitchfork and more, and today Speedy Ortiz shares its next single. “Ghostwriter,” already a staple of the band’s live set, is a call to dismiss unproductive rage, delivered with the shimmering bash of the Y2K alt renaissance. The track receives an amazing Alex Ross Perry-directed video, featuring a slew of cameos, from the likes of comedians Josh Gondelman and Emily Panic; to musicians Ted Leo, Spencer Peppet (the Ophelias), Nicola Leel (Doe/Customer), Kate Meizner (Jobber), Zoë Brecher (Sad13/Bruce Springsteen); authors Rax King, Amy Rose Spiegel and merritt k; New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein; fellow United Musicians and Allied Workers organizers Spencer Compton, Marshall Moran and more. Listen/watch HERE.
Dupuis on “Ghostwriter”:
While “Ghostwriter” ruminates on the horrible realities that stoke my anger—in this song’s case, the death of our climate and the criminalization of environmental protesters—it’s also about trying to live with less rage in the day-to-day. And not always succeeding, but not getting mad about that, either. And sometimes directing that angry adrenaline toward positive actions.
My bandmates picked “Ghostwriter” as a single, perhaps because it subtly nods to our unabashed love of nu metal. It was really fun to reunite with Alex Ross Perry after shooting together for his Pavement movie last fall, especially the part where we subjected him to so very many Deftones and Limp Bizkit videos for inspiration. The great Josh Gondelman improvised at least a dozen good “nu metal cover band” pun names for the intro, which made it hard to keep a straight face as our nu metal performance ‘Pleasantville’-ifies our crowd of friends into the most immaculate Hot Topic c. 2003 getups.
EMBED GHOSTWRITER
Speedy Ortiz will be back on the road with Rabbit Rabbit this Fall for a massive North American tour, spanning four months and more than 50 shows, which will include just-announced support from Washer, Poolblood, Foyer Red and Spacemoth. See below to find a show near you, and get your tickets with the newly-announced dates going on sale Friday at 10 am locally HERE.
Rabbit Rabbit was co-produced by the band with Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin (who also mixed the record), mastered by Emily Lazar & Chris Allgood at The Lodge (New York, NY), and was recorded between Rancho de la Luna (Joshua Tree, CA) & Sonic Ranch (Tornillo, TX). Rabbit Rabbit is also the first to feature longtime touring members Audrey Zee Whitesides (bass) and Joey Doubek (drums), who are now full time contributors alongside Sadie Dupuis (songwriter, vox, guitar) and Andy Molholt (guitar). To be fittingly released on September 1st via Dupuis’ own label, Wax Nine, Rabbit Rabbit is a nod to the superstitious incantation repeated on the first of each month to bring good fortune. Dupuis adopted this practice as a child coping with OCD and early trauma, so when she began to parse difficult memories for the first time in her songwriting, it felt like kismet to name her band’s fourth record after that expression of luck and repetition. But instead of re-treading old routines, the album finds Speedy Ortiz interrogating conventions, grappling with cycles of violence and destructive power dynamics with singular wit and riffs. The result is Speedy Ortiz at its most potent: melodically fierce, sonically mountainous, scorching the earth and beginning anew.
LISTEN/WATCH:
“Scabs” | “You S02” | “Plus One”
TOUR
Aug 4 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live (WXPN Free At Noon) RSVP is required for entry
Sep 1 – New York, NY @ Rough Trade (in-store)
Sep 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^
Sep 6 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s ^
Sep 7 – Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom (co-headline with Pile) ^
Sep 8 – Somerville, MA @ ONCE at the Center For Arts at The Armory ^
Sep 10 – Troy, NY @ No Fun ^
Sep 11 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House ^
Sep 13 – Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo *
Sep 14 – Toronto, ON @ Rivoli *
Sep 15 – Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s *
Sep 16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Roboto Project *
Sep 18 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups *
Sep 19 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Pyramid Scheme *
Sep 21 – Cudahy, WI @ X-Ray Arcade *
Sep 22 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
Sep 23 – Louisville, KY @ The Whirling Tiger *
Sep 25 – Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR #
Sep 26 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor #
Sep 27 – Columbia, SC @ New Brookland Tavern #
Sep 29 – Savannah, GA @ Lodge of Sorrows #
Sep 30 – Birmingham, AL @ TrimTab Brewing Company #
Oct 1 – Memphis, TN @ Growlers #
Oct 3 – St. Louis, MO @ The Sinkhole #
Oct 4 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub #
Oct 6 – Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant Street #
Oct 18 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat ~
Oct 19 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel ~
Oct 20 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook ~
Oct 21 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Purgatory ~
Oct 23 – Miami, FL @ Gramps ~
Oct 24 – Winter Park, FL @ Conduit ~
Oct 25 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa ~
Oct 27 – Houston, TX @ Black Magic Social Club ~
Oct 28 – Austin, TX @ The Parish – Levitation Festival
Oct 29 – Denton, TX @ Andy’s Bar ~
Oct 30 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger ~
Nov 1 – Phoenix, AZ @ Last Exit ~
Nov 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo ~
Nov 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop &
Nov 8 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall &
Nov 9 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza &
Nov 10 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown &
Nov 11 – Vancouver, BC @ The Cobalt &
Nov 13 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux &
Nov 14 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge &
Nov 16 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall &
Nov 17 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown &
Nov 18 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck &
Nov 19 – Des Moines, IA @ xBk &
Nov 21 – Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle &
Nov 22 – Detroit, MI @ Lager House &
Dec 16 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
^ = w/ Washer
* = w/ Poolblood
# = w/ Foyer Red
~ = The Baths
& = w/ Spacemoth
Album Artwork | Download Hi-Res Here
Track list
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Kim Cattrall
-
You S02
-
Scabs
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Plus One
-
Cry Cry Cry
-
Ballad of Y&S
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Kitty
-
Who’s Afraid of the Bath
-
Ranch vs. Ranch
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Emergency & Me
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The Sunday
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Brace Thee
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Ghostwriter
More on Speedy Ortiz & Rabbit Rabbit:
Speedy Ortiz debuted as Dupuis’ home-recording outlet in 2011, but the solo project quickly blew up into a full-fledged band beloved around the world for its pointed lyrics, disarmingly hooky choruses, and musical ingenuity—as well as its activism. The band has since released an expansive and critically beloved discography, toured worldwide, and inspired next generations of bands with inventive songwriting and advocacy to better the music industry. The group graced festival stages from Bonnaroo to Primavera, supported heroic artists from Foo Fighters to Liz Phair, and brought acts including Mitski and Soccer Mommy on some of their earliest tours. In 2016, the band relocated from Massachusetts to Philadelphia, with the lineup changing shortly thereafter to include sonically inventive guitarist Andy Molholt (Laser Background, Eric Slick), drivingly melodic bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides (Mal Blum, Little Waist), and heavy-hitting drummer Joey Doubek (Pinkwash, Downtown Boys). Rabbit Rabbit is the first Speedy album to feature the longtime touring members as full contributors, and Dupuis and her bandmates blaze with unpredictability, their intrepid playing thrusting songs in exhilarating new directions.
The gnarled guitars and imagistic lyrics that defined 2013’s Major Arcana, 2015’s Foil Deer and 2018’s Twerp Verse are still present, but Rabbit Rabbit’s recordings feel as vast as a desert landscape. “As I was channeling scenes and sentiments from decades past, I wanted to honor the bands I loved when I first learned guitar, ones that taught me to get lost in the possibilities of this instrument,” Dupuis recalls. Speedy Ortiz delved into its members’ most formative musical favorites—post-hardcore, the Palm Desert scene, alternative metal—pushing the agile complexity of the guitars and forceful rhythmic interplay between the drums and bass to unprecedentedly tricky extremes. “Every voice has a narrative,” offers Doubek of the arrangement process. “There is so much feeling and melody to interpret, and so much room to express it.”
Sadie Dupuis has remained busy outside of Speedy Ortiz as well, releasing solo music (and collaborating with the likes of Lizzo, The New Pornographers, Ben Lee and Backxwash) under the moniker Sad13, publishing and touring for two acclaimed poetry books, and running the Carpark Records imprint and literary journal, Wax Nine (Spacemoth, Johanna Warren, Melkbelly). In her past few years of work as a writer and interviewer, Dupuis recognized a recurring thread among artists with parallel backstories to her own: music had provided escapism from childhood abuse, but those same turbulent circumstances had normalized the grimmest aspects of the music industry. These were flashbacks she’d shied from, and constant touring enabled that avoidance. But while Rabbit Rabbit pulls no punches, either in its self-reflections or its call outs, there is still a sense of fight at the forefront of the record. That energy is fueled by the band’s activist efforts; Molholt and Dupuis are community organizers with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers and its Philly local, which has worked to place instruments in state prisons. The band has also collaborated with harm reduction organizations, Girls Rock Camps, and other grassroots groups while on tour.
Drawing from literary influences that include workplace apocalypses, magical realist family dramas, and artists’ biographies, Rabbit Rabbit is Speedy Ortiz’s most ambitious and expansive record to date. Guitars remain the focus—the group played on about 50 of them, through over 100 effects pedals and 30 different amps—but the band incorporated a wide range of found sounds too, sampling everything from bedpans to debit cards to car washes to BB-guns. Dupuis added electronic tones as part of an ornate pre-production process, completed using a synesthetic constraint in which she immersed herself in a different color to arrange each song. As always, she designed the album artwork, which is a mixed-media painting of a fire-engulfed pickup truck, an image inspired by the trucks on fire she drew compulsively as a kid in therapy.
“I turned 33 while writing this album, a palindrome birthday and a lucky number associated with knowledge,” explains Dupuis. “I wanted to mark how I was making better choices as I got older, letting go of heedless anger even when it’s warranted.” The album’s stirring immediacy owes much to the band’s strength as a collective, working together toward a better future—or, as Molholt puts it, “constantly surfing the highs and lows in search of a stable place to land.” With considered muscularity, captivating earworms, and genuine solidarity, Speedy Ortiz is equipped to confront the world’s indignities—with or without a good luck charm.
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