We are revisiting some of our favourite records of 2023

It’s an album that they have said deals with growing out of the more chaotic and trauma-informed 20s, into their 30s which have seen a good deal of activism, including Sadie’s work with United Musicians and Allied Workers, as well as a love for their new home city, like on the song “Kitty,” where she sings, “Kept me up for drag races at 3 o’clock / Over potholes and trolley tracks / Wouldn’t wanna sacrifice my hours like that / But wishing you a sweet dream makes me desperate.”

It is thirteen tracks and runs at about 45 minutes, and the music by Sadie and bandmates Audrey Zee Whitesides, Joey Doubek, and Moholt, is as puzzly as the ingenious lyrics. Like Liz Phair before her, she deals with her experience being a female with compelling guitar work, beautiful melodies, and a good smattering of the “f-bomb.” Where Phair seemed to go more mainstream pop, as time went on, Sadie and group are married to the DIY indie sound and community, and it’s a super rewarding album that is at once steeped in music history and sounds like something only Speedy Ortiz could create.

Sadie has always been outspoken inside and outside of her music, and the album deals with what it’s like to be a woman with standards in a back biting and often merciless world, including abuse that she went through as a child. But it is also a celebration of how art can give us tools to deal with life’s harder realities. “I am an artist, two times with feelings / Can you take them from me?” This plays out on one of Sadie’s favorite Speedy Ortiz songs to date, “Cry, Cry, Cry,” where she deals with her propensity to bottle up her feelings for fear of the fallout. But she has said in interviews, that where she doesn’t cry in real life, the way that she makes her guitars wail gives her the much needed release.

It’s a beautiful album from start to finish, referencing television shows (fun fact: she’s known to practice guitar while watching television in order to solidify her muscle memory), incorporating almost absurdist poetry, and on this album a good deal of shocking autobiography. Worth the five year wait, for sure, I think this album will be some people’s favorite album of the year.

order Rabbit Rabbit by Speedy Ortiz HERE