Speedy Ortiz announces its long-awaited new album entitled Rabbit Rabbit, which drops on September 1st via Wax Nine.  The band’s first record in 5+ years, Rabbit Rabbit is also the first to feature longtime touring members Audrey Zee Whitesides (bass) and Joey Doubek (drums), who are now full time contributors alongside Sadie Dupuis (songwriter, vox, guitar) and Andy Molholt (guitar). To be fittingly released on September 1st via Dupuis’ own label, Wax Nine, Rabbit Rabbit is a nod to the superstitious incantation repeated on the first of each month to bring good fortune. Dupuis adopted this practice as a child coping with OCD and early trauma, so when she began to parse difficult memories for the first time in her songwriting, it felt like kismet to name her band’s fourth record after that expression of luck and repetition. But instead of re-treading old routines, the album finds Speedy Ortiz interrogating conventions, grappling with cycles of violence and destructive power dynamics with singular wit and riffs. The result is Speedy Ortiz at its most potent: melodically fierce, sonically mountainous, scorching the earth and beginning anew.

Rabbit Rabbit was co-produced by the band with Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin (who also mixed the record), mastered by Emily Lazar & Chris Allgood at The Lodge (New York, NY), and was recorded between Rancho de la Luna (Joshua Tree, CA) & Sonic Ranch (Tornillo, TX). Guitars remain the focus—the group played on about 50 of them, through over 100 effects pedals and 30 different amps—but the band incorporated a wide range of found sounds too, sampling everything from bedpans to debit cards to car washes to BB-guns. Dupuis added electronic tones as part of an ornate pre-production process, completed using a synesthetic constraint in which she immersed herself in a different color to arrange each song.

“You S02″ the Rabbit Rabbit lead single trains its gaze on apologists, union-busters, and other ex-punks who don’t live up to their public ethos. “Mostly when I’ve met my musical heroes, they’re kind and principled people. But occasionally someone whose work I love(d) reveals themselves to be anti-union, or anti-’woke,’ or some other gear-grinding ugliness. That’s who I wrote ‘You S02’ about, the song’s frenzied guitar and synth solos mirroring the crazymaking intensity wafting off people who act like that,” Dupuis explains. “In the TV show You’s second season, the main character moves from New York to LA in hopes of a fresh start, but (spoiler) remains a murdering psychopath. Changing cities won’t make you a hero if you still treat others badly.”

Speedy Ortiz
Rabbit Rabbit
Track List

Kim Cattrall
You S02
Scabs
Plus One
Cry Cry Cry
Ballad of Y&S
Kitty
Who’s Afraid of the Bath
Ranch vs. Ranch
Emergency & Me
The Sunday
Brace Thee
Ghostwriter

Speedy Ortiz 2023 Tour Dates

July 28 – Chicago, IL @ Wicker Park Fest
July 29 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen (w/ The Good Life)
Sep 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
Sep 6 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
Sep 7 – Hamden, CT @ The Space
Sep 8 – Somerville, MA @ ONCE at the Center For Arts at The Armory
Oct 18 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
Nov 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Nov 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
Nov 8 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
Nov 16 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall
Nov 17 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
Nov 18 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
Dec 16 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom

Pre-order Rabbit Rabbit by Speedy Ortiz HERE