Speedy Ortiz have announced their first release in over two years, and their first proper full-length since 2015’s Foil Deer. “Twerp Verse” is out on April 27th via Carpark Records, and in tandem with their new album’s announcement, Sadie Dupuis and company have also shared the video for synths and sardonic lead single “Lucky 88,” in which Dupuis declares, “I don’t care anymore.”
Dupuis explained the clever, colorful and ultimately optimistic video’s conception in a statement:
For the video, we wanted something evil, glossy, cynical, and camp. director Emily Yoshida came up with a concept that addresses our reliance on technology and apps that’s so absorbing, it’s hard to engage with the outside world, even when it is literally being consumed by slime (and, hello, global warming, melting ice, coral bleaching, impending heat death, make no mistake, it is being consumed by slime).
Soon after Speedy Ortiz assembled in Brooklyn in the fall of 2016 and recorded what they thought was their third album, Election Day happened, and the band knew they had to scrap what they had done, shifting their focus from the personal to the political. “The songs on the album that were strictly personal or lovey dovey just didn’t mean anything to me anymore that’s not the kind of music I’ve found healing or motivating in the past few years, and I was surprised I’d written so much of it,” Dupuis recalls. “Social politics and protest have been a part of our music from day one, and I didn’t want to stop doing that on this album.” Four months and many new songs later, the result was Twerp Verse, which a press release describes as a “urgent, taught and pointedly witty” album that’s “tuned smartly to the political opacity of the present.” The album’s consonant title, too, is a nod to the importance of speaking out: “I call it a ‘twerp verse’ when a musician guests on a track and says something totally outlandish—like a Lil Wayne verse—but it becomes the most crucial part,” Dupuis explains. “I like ‘twerp’ as a diss, but in this meaning, the twerp is doing a service—shaking things up by being bold, not complacent, never silent.”
Speedy Ortiz The band, made up of Dupuis on guitars, vocals and synths, Darl Ferm on bass and Mike Falcone on drums, is now joined by supporting guitarist Andy Molholt (of psych-pop act Laser Background).
“Lucky 88” is the first single from Speedy Ortiz’s forthcoming album, “Twerp Verse,” out April 27th on Carpark Records.,
The Fat Angel Sings 