eMusic Review 0
On their full-length debut, Speedy Ortiz — a Massachusetts four-piece that counts both the indie-friendly Northampton music community and Allston’s fertile basement scene as home — nod toward plenty of beloved ’90s acts: Pavement, Helium, Polvo and Archers Of Loaf, to name a few. But dismissing the band as merely nostalgia-obsessed is an insult to Major Arcana‘s fresh take on noisy, off-balance guitar rock. The band has an ear for texture: Plumes of distortion shroud the grungy “Tiger Tank”; unsettled strums shimmer and murmur beneath the surface of “Pioneer Spine” and “Casper (1995)”; needling melodies slice through “Plough”; and the taut “Fun” has sinewy post-punk velocity. On the raucous, Liz Phair-reminiscent “Cash Cab,” Sadie Dupuis’s vocals are cracked and disfigured, drowned out by slow-churning riffs, while Darl Ferm’s hulking bass emerges occasionally to add heft.
As Speedy Ortiz’s lyricist, Dupuis doesn’t sugarcoat her words; like White Lung’s Mish Way, she employs vivid, macabre imagery (“My mouth is a factory for every toxic part of speech I spew,” “Windows sweating blood, choking in on cue”) and elegant, dense wordplay to great effect. In these tiny bursts of fury, Dupuis addresses the failures and shortcomings of past relationships; then, just as forcefully, she… read more »
