Speedy Ortiz – “You S02”

Philadelphia rock quartet Speedy Ortiz announces its long-awaited new album entitled Rabbit Rabbit. The band’s first record in 5+ years, 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.

Speedy Ortiz shares “You S02.” With a Touch and Go-indebted maelstrom of distorted solos, the Rabbit Rabbit lead single trains its gaze on apologists, union-busters, and other ex-punks who don’t live up to their public ethos. “Mostly when I’ve met my musical heroes, they’re kind and principled people. But occasionally someone whose work I love(d) reveals themselves to be anti-union, or anti-’woke,’ or some other gear-grinding ugliness. That’s who I wrote ‘You S02’ about, the song’s frenzied guitar and synth solos mirroring the crazymaking intensity wafting off people who act like that,” Dupuis explains. “In the TV show You’s second season, the main character moves from New York to LA in hopes of a fresh start, but (spoiler) remains a murdering psychopath. Changing cities won’t make you a hero if you still treat others badly.”

You can order the album HERE.