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Live Reviews

Out: Speedy Ortiz come together

WORD Sadie Dupuis's lyrics are worth digging out from beneath Speedy Ortiz's catchy, noisy rock.

Singer Sadie Dupuis's voice snarled perfectly while she delivered lines like, "If all my friends wanna cut me into bits/They should throw me on the skillet/Make a dinner out of what they get," from the song "Cutco" — a standout track from her November EP, The Death of Speedy Ortiz. Guitarist Matt Robidoux managed to rip apart the first few songs of the set even with a broken amp, then switched out quickly with the help of the other bands on the bill: the Craters, Slothbear, and King Cop.

"We're working on putting out a longer release with the full band, hopefully by the summer," Sadie told me after the show,shivering outside the venue in just a T-shirt. "The first releases were just home demos with me playing all the instruments." Her lyrics — often creepy, sometimes grotesque, but always poignant — are worth digging out from beneath Speedy Ortiz's catchy, noisy rock. It makes sense that she moved up from New York to the band's current base in Northampton this September to earn her MFA in poetry at UMass.

Speedy Ortiz's formidable live setup came together from the remains of three stellar bands that all recently met their untimely demise: drummer Mike Falcone played in Connecticut's Ovlov, Robidoux was part of Northampton's Graph, and Dupuis headed up Brooklyn's Quilty. "Quilty had played shows with both those bands and I stayed pals with those dudes afterwards," Sadie explained. "All our bands were breaking up around the same time, so it seemed fortuitousto play together." ^