Speedy Ortiz announce new record Twerp Verse and reveal lead track "Lucky 88"
Speedy Ortiz are back with ramshackle anthem "Lucky 88", the first single from excellently titled third record Twerp Verse.
"For the video, we wanted something evil, glossy, cynical, and camp," vocalist/guitarist Sadie Dupuis explains. "Our director Emily Yoshida came up with a concept that addresses our reliance on technology and apps that’s so absorbing, it’s hard to engage with the outside world, even when it is literally being consumed by slime (and, hello, global warming, melting ice, coral bleaching, impending heat death, make no mistake, it is being consumed by slime)."
The new collection follows 2015's Foil Deer and Slugger, Dupuis' solo debut as Sad13. It's mixed by Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley) and mastered by Grammy-nominated engineer Emily Lazar (Sia, Haim).
Twerp Verse is actually the second record Speedy Ortiz put together in the time since their last LP - they had planned to record another album at Brooklyn's Silent Barn in autumn 2016, but following the election of Donald Trump they returned to the drawing board.
"The songs on the album that were strictly personal or lovey dovey just didn’t mean anything to me anymore," explains Dupuis. "That’s not the kind of music I’ve found healing or motivating in the past few years, and I was surprised I’d written so much of it. Social politics and protest have been a part of our music from day one, and I didn’t want to stop doing that on this album."
"You need to employ a self-preservational sense of humor to speak truth in an increasingly baffling world," adds Dupuis of the album's title. "I call it a ‘twerp verse' when a musician guests on a track and says something totally outlandish - like a Lil Wayne verse - but it becomes the most crucial part. I like ‘twerp’ as a diss, but in this meaning, the twerp is doing a service - shaking things up by being bold, not complacent, never silent."
Tracklist:
- Buck Me Off
- Lean In When I Suffer
- Lucky 88
- Can I Kiss You?
- Backslidin'
- Villain
- I'm Blessed
- Sport Death
- Alone With Girls
- Moving In
- You Hate The Title
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