Quit your job, end a bad relationship — these are among the things fans have done after listening to ‘s “Raising the Skate.”
The inspiration comes from a declaration of bossdom on the first single off the Massachusetts band’s second album, “.”
It borrows the slogan from Sheryl Sandberg’s Ban Bossy campaign — “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss” — and riffs on it over the band’s signature knotty, snarling guitars. “Shooter, not the shot / On the tip and fit to execute / I’m chief, not the overthrown / Captain, not a crony / So if you wanna row, you better have an awfully big boat.”
Itap an anthem for anyone who’s ever felt underestimated, and itap no surprise fans have approached Speedy Ortiz frontwoman and songwriter Sadie Dupuis to tell their triumphant job-quitting, relationship-demolishing tales.
“I’ve been hearing amazing stories,” said Dupuis, who plays at the Larimer Lounge on May 30 with Speedy Ortiz. “Obviously, someone telling you this, that they made an effort to improve their lives based on your song, thatap the most gratifying thing you can hear … I think the time leading up to writing that record was very much a time of trying to make myself better.”
Because the song borrowed from a feminist campaign and because Dupuis is an outspoken feminist known to take digs at music industry sexism, most reviews of “Foil Deer” characterized the song as another shot at the patriarchy. But Dupuis says it paints broader strokes than that, although “the greater issues that the song is about are embodied in the way that music industry professionals treat women.” And according to bassist Darl Ferm, who joked that he got a job because of “Raising the Skate,” the song was also the product of the band’s shifting environment.
“I think that song kind of came from an interesting place because we were touring so relentlessly — touring so much and having ,” he said. “Having down time really made a difference.”
Speedy Ortiz did have much more time to make this record. When the band made its first LP, 2013’s much-loved “Major Arcana,” it was a quick in-and-out studio experience that didn’t leave much time for anything other than just getting songs down. For “Foil Deer,” Dupuis, Ferm, McKnight and drummer Mike Falcone quit their day jobs and spent three weeks with the songs in the studio.
“Even things like mixing we could spend more time on,” Ferm said. “It was nice to be able to be like, ‘Letap raise the volume on this or bring it down on this.’”
It might not sound like much, but it made all the difference. “Foil Deer” is more sonically varied and textured than anything Speedy Ortiz released before, and that can be largely attributed to all the little tweaks that help Dupuis record songs that sound just as they do in her head.
“I think a lot of the way that I do songwriting stuff is not coming from a background where I have a ton of experience in production. I’ve done a lot of recording, but I’m basically just trying out random shit and seeing what works. We work on songs together and most of the ideas I have for things, the melodic ideas, I know what I’m gonna play and sing. In the studio, I think, we’re much more collaborative in terms of getting tones and suggesting things for each other to play,” she said. “Both Nico (Vernhes) and Gabe (Wax), who were the engineers, had really amazing ideas about what gear we needed to get the tones we were describing. That was kind of a fun, problem solving, collaborative thing.”
“Foil Deer” is less melancholy than past Speedy Ortiz records, and itap not hard to understand why. Things are going well for the band. Dupuis said itap the most optimist place she’s been in in a while and that the band was just talking about how happy they are.
On the road now, they’re trying to keep things the same in the face of success. That means trying to keep ticket prices down and playing all-ages shows as much as they can. Making their music as accessible as possible for everyone, especially younger people, has always been important.
After a recent show, Dupuis got a note for an editor of a music magazine in Illinois whose 18-year-old girlfriend couldn’t get into the 19+ show.
“It was the nicest thing I’d ever read about how itap so exciting to see women on stage and it inspired her to learn drums and she’s starting her own band,” Dupuis said. “I actually teared up a little bit reading it. If somebody is inspired to do something they didn’t think they could do from a show we play, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
