Speedy Ortiz – Major Arcana (Carpark)
I think I might have finally figured out what’s missing from too many modern hit indie records that makes them seem, in some ways, transient. Ease and beauty and self-confidence abound, and we’ve got plenty of well-tempered soundscapes and reverby one-note guitars. No, it’s none of these. In fact, it’s hardly even aesthetic. It’s personality.
Speedy Ortiz – Major Arcana (Carpark)
I think I might have finally figured out what’s missing from too many modern hit indie records that makes them seem, in some ways, transient. Ease and beauty and self-confidence abound, and we’ve got plenty of well-tempered soundscapes and reverby one-note guitars. No, it’s none of these. In fact, it’s hardly even aesthetic. It’s personality. Beach House can put you in a mellow coma, but every time I put on Teen Dream I feel like I know less about Victoria Legrand than I did before. She could just be this shimmering ethereal spirit-girl the band captured to do vocals. Not unlikely. Kevin Parker plays a killer guitar, but I’m under the impression he just smiles all the time, shoeless and talking about the sky as he reclines on the most comfortable furnishings in the room. The fact is, a lot of indie music in the past few years has been peddling this kind of one-size-fits-all psyche through their music. Simplicity–it gets old.
The lyric sheet for Northampton, MA group Speedy Ortiz’s debut album, Major Arcana, reads thick like a page of a David Foster Wallace book, leaving the eye spinning between scribbled lines of bitterness and boiling fury. “I have seen the art / of my stupid counterpart / the proportion’s wrong,” vocalist Sadie Dupuis sings in her acid deadpan on “Gary,” one of the record’s most biting songs. And trust me, that’s saying something. What’s immediately striking about Arcana is that, despite debts to the past (sinewy indie guitar rock heroes Polvo certainly come to mind), no other band could have made it. That’s a dishearteningly rare thing to be able to say these days, at least with confidence. It has something to do with personality.
The music on the record can almost be seen as an accompanying vessel for Dupuis’ caustic brand of poetry, a phenomenon I thought died out in the ‘90s. That’s not to downplay the importance of the instrumentals. Lead guitarist Matt Robidoux plays uncannily in tune with Dupuis’ shifting moods and feelings, so that fuzzy guitar lines read like a seismogram of her mental activity–pacing, churning mathematically, building, and occasionally bursting explosively, melody drowned out by beautiful, vague noise. Dupuis restrains herself vocally, for the most part, to a wry talk-sing. When she opens up, though, it’s as pretty as it is powerful. While she shares vocal tics with a few likeminded girl-punk icons, sometimes spitting the last of her words out in a parodic valleygirl drawl a la Liz Phair, she’s a rock-solid front-person in her own right, with room to grow as the records churn out.
Photo by Noe Richard
For a first full-length, Arcana is truly impressive. The album even implies a sense of structure that more mature bands have yet to master. The heart-clenching centerpiece is, without a doubt, “No Below”, one of the slowest tracks but easily the most emotionally riveting. At once somber and full of hope, it’s a gorgeous love song treated like real life, with anxiety and pain, but always that wide-eyed wonderment that comes with new romance. “I didn’t know you / when I was a kid,” Dupuis murmurs in closing, “but swimming with you / it sure feels like I did.” If you weren’t sold on the strength of her words before, the montage of imagery here will leave you wide-eyed as the guitars play an inverted nursery rhyme tune, which soothes, but won’t quite let you slip off to sleep.
Speedy Ortiz have been making good, notable music from the get-go, but what Arcana has on past releases (including the great “Ka-Prow!” single from earlier this year) runs the gamut, from sound quality to vision to sleekness. There’s nothing like a fantastic debut to keep downtrodden rock fans tuned in for another year of infinite promise from freshmen like this band. Don’t break up, please!
Speedy Ortiz are hitting Richmond on the tail end of their national tour. I know I’ll be there. They’ll be at Strange Matter on August 10th, playing with local bands Sundials, Little Master, and Springtime. Doors open at 9 PM. Admission is $8, and advance tickets are available HERE. For more info, click here.
