Live at House of Vans at the SXSW festival in Austin Texas.
Members of Speedy Ortiz are beginning to hit their stride. This band of Western Massachusetts guitar music heroes The band — singer/guitarist Sadie Dupuis, new guitarist Devin McKnight , and drummer Mike Falcone It’s a rare moment in the life of Speedy Ortiz — a day off. Over the last year, and 2014, in particular, they’ve been Road Dogs of the Highest Order, schlepping out on tours that have taken them all over the United States, Canada, Europe, and back. They’ve been on some impressive bills along the way: Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, the Breeders, Los Campesinos, Joanna Gruesome, and Bonnaroo. shared a stage with Dinosaur Jr., Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, and many more) on Saturday, July 12th, it’s out on the road again. One of the gigs on their upcoming tour will be at Chicago’s Pitchfork Festival, the eponymous live-music extravaganza of the site that, it can’t be argued, kicked the band into high demand in the first place when it rightly named their album Major Arcana Best New Music a year ago.
Major Arcana takes the guitar acrobatics and straightforward swing of many a ’90s band — Pavement, Helium, Polvo, Dinosaur Jr. — and wraps them all in Dupuis’s powerful, quivering voice and wry lyrics. Sadie Dupuis’s crunchy guitar histrionics are joined by the beefy chords of former guitarist Matt Robidoux (who took an indefinite hiatus from the band in May, replaced now by McKnight), and songs like “No Below” and “Tiger Tank” get their hooks in you on first listen. Falcone’s thundering drums and Ferm’s steady back end tie the whole thing up. Major Arcana is a major success, and it’s only now, with this bit of time off, that Dupuis and company have had time enough to work on any new material.
The Fat Angel Sings 