Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis: 'I use songs as a way to feel better'

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/17/speedy-ortiz-sadie-dupuis-i-use-songs-to-feel-better

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Speedy Ortiz think they might be cursed. Not a Lynyrd Skynyrd "doom will plague you at every turn" sort of curse, it must be said; more a sequence of mildly irritating events. "Bands who we were playing with would break up right after we played with them; venues would close down right after we were there," says lead singer Sadie Dupuis. It's a litany of minor miseries catalogued in full on the Northampton, Massachusetts band's LiveJournal, with entries such as "Spring 2013: Gay Gardens in Allston. We played there. It's now closed, WTF GUYS!?" or "the horrifying incident on the first night of last summer's tour when some dude ended up laying on the ground unconscious in a pool of his own blood. That was our mistake. We showed up. Bad things happened."

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For a band with a hex hanging over them, though, Speedy Ortiz have had a pretty great 12 months. Last summer they released debut full-length album Major Arcana. A tangle of cheerfully discordant riffs and dry, surreal humour, it became a word-of-mouth success. On tour, meanwhile, the band have supported some true indie gentry: Thurston Moore, the Breeders, Stephen Malkmus.

Not bad, considering that Speedy Ortiz began life as little more than a summer-camp project. After the break-up of her previous band Quilty, Dupuis was teaching songwriting at a Massachusetts arts camp when she decided to put some new material – "lo-fi blown-out stuff" – on to tape. She named the resulting self-released LP The Death Of Speedy Ortiz, after an issue of the cult comic Love And Rockets. "Speedy Ortiz is a gang member who winds up killing himself over a girl," she explains. "He's a minor character but becomes a large character because the main characters are all grieving him. And at the time I was first writing these songs, my childhood friend had just passed away, and my roommate had passed away a few months before of a heart attack. So that storyline of learning to get over someone's death appealed to me."

Around the same time, Dupuis's soon-to-be bandmates – drummer Mike Falcone, recently departed guitarist Matt Robidoux and bassist Darl Ferm – were all similarly "in between projects". Bonding over a shared love of what Falcone describes as "weird dissonant stuff", the four decided to start playing together, first fleshing out Dupuis's home recordings, then moving on to band-written stuff.

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As a band playing loud, angular guitar music in 2014, Speedy Ortiz have, inevitably, been pegged as 90s alt-rock revivalists. (The fact that Dupuis was once a member of a short-lived all-female Pavement tribute act called Babement – "We thought the name was too funny not to use" – probably doesn't help.) What's notable is that the 90s groups that Speedy Ortiz cite as influences – math-rock oddballs Polvo and US Maple, Mary Timony's sludgy outfit Helium – were all true originals. Like those bands, Speedy Ortiz are dripping with personality. Their live shows, often performed in basements or front rooms, are notoriously energetic. On record, there's a sense of playfulness and adventure to their sound. Guitar lines disappear off on weird atonal tangents. Songs frequently threaten to fall apart before they've even begun. In short: they're never dull.

Much of that is down to Dupuis who, in a genre where bland aphorisms are often the norm, actually has something to say. A masters student in poetry at University of Massachusetts Amherst, she displays a love of knotty language, twisting words into chewy phrases such as "criminally twisted, puny little villain" or mordantly pining for "somebody just like me/ Someone who laughs at a crashed car rental".

Constant throughout is Dupuis's willingness to tap into the heightened emotions of adolescence for lyrical inspiration. In the bruising album centrepiece No Below she depicts childhood alienation as like being frozen, "interred in the ice". Dupuis is open about the cathartic quality of her songs. "I use them as a way to feel better about whatever the story is that the song's about. I think that just comes from having written songs since I was a young kid and never expecting anyone to hear them."

Plenty of people will be hearing Speedy Ortiz's songs this summer though, with the band heading out on the European festival circuit. After that, the band will start work on Major Arcana's follow-up. It sounds as if the curse might have been lifted.

"Well, I did have a really horrible stomach pain about a week ago," says Falcone.

"This curse is never going to lift!" wails Dupuis.

Though you suspect that, really, she wouldn't have it any other way.

Speedy Ortiz play Shipping Forecast, Liverpool, 19 May; The Workman's Club, Dublin, 20 May; Exchange, Bristol, 21 May; Electrowerkz, EC1, 22 May