PARTING SHOT
Illustration byBRITT SPENCER
SPEEDY ORTIZ, ARGUABLY THE BEST AND MOST CHARISMATIC YOUNG BAND to emerge from Boston’s new indie scene, broke out with its 2013 debut, Major Arcana. Sadie Dupuis, the band’s 30-year-old singer and guitarist, has a master of fine arts in poetry and a fervent activist streak (in high school, she got in trouble for trying to start a gay-straight alliance). After a brief stint in an all-female Pavement cover band, she formed Speedy, and the group’s third album, Twerp Verse, showcases their deceptively catchy pop and her thought-provoking, dry-witted lyrics. Recording of the album had begun in the fall of 2016, but after the election Dupuis scrapped it all. “I felt like someone else had written the songs,” says the singer, who, at the time, was touring for her solo album, Slugger. “I was in a van with six women—all identify as queer; four were women of color. We were driving through rural Pennsylvania and Ohio, knowing we were the people that [Republican voters] either don’t care about or actively hate. We all had pepper spray for the first time.”