“Raising the Skate,” the piercing single from Speedy Ortiz’s newest release, Foil Deer, kicks off its chorus with the line “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss.” It’s a fitting motto for the record, which from its first chords of careening guitars is a hissing, barreling manifesto of anger, nuance and self-confidence.
Sadie Dupuis, the band’s frontwoman and recent recipient of an MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, fittingly kills it throughout the record. Her choice verbage and sneering warble guides the record from beginning to end, from the coming-of-age track “The Graduates” to the sullen finale of “Dvrk Wvrld.”
That’s not to say that Dupuis is the only talent here. Her bandmates — lead guitarist Devin McKnight, drummer Mike Falcone and bassist Darl Ferm — keep pace with cacophonies and sharp turns that just as quickly fall into harmonies, making for an experience that is just as disarming and punishing as it is pleasing.
Fans of Speedy’s 2014 EP Real Hair or 2013 debut album Major Arcana will be pleased to know that Foil Deer doesn’t mark a divergence from the band’s past strengths. Instead, those strengths have been toned and released upon the world, spitting and snarling as an altogether promising record.