Rabbit Rabbit is the first Speedy Ortiz album in five years, and first made with the touring lineup of guitarist Andy Molholt (Laser Background, Eric Slick), bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides (Mal Blum, Little Waist), and drummer Joey Doubek (Pinkwash, Downtown Boys), which was cemented during the tours for 2018’s Twerp Verse. It finds bandleader Sadie Dupuis tapping back into some of her most formative influences, like Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones, Sleater-Kinney, Trail of Dead, the Breeders, Blonde Redhead, Incubus, Radiohead, Metric, Enon, Rilo Kiley, Deerhoof, and Cake, and they made it in two scenic, desert recording studios–Rancho de la Luna in Joshua Tree, California and Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas–the former of which is where the aforementioned Queens of the Stone Age’s debut album and other desert rock classics were made. (Rancho de la Luna co-owner David Catching, who’s also played with QOTSA, played lap steel on this album.) Speedy made the LP with engineer and co-producer Sarah Tudzin (aka illuminati hotties), and former members Darl Ferm and Devin McKnight provided overdubs.
You can definitely hear some of that aughts-era rock coming through in the big, loud, distorted guitars of Rabbit Rabbit, and the more off-kilter stuff like Deerhoof and Enon comes through too. As is almost always the case with Speedy Ortiz, everything Sadie does is just a little bit off center, from her guitar parts to her vocal melodies to the winding roads of her lyricism. Her songwriting is eclectic and distinct and unpredictable, but it’s still pop music in its own unique way. There’s always something there to latch onto.
For a deeper dive into the inspirations behind this album, all four members made us a list of things that influenced it, from those aforementioned bands that Sadie grew up on to Audrey’s love of hyperpop and J-pop to one of Joey’s favorite drummers to Andy’s love of video game music. Sadie talks about taking lyrical inspiration from fiction and How To with John Wilson, and other members discuss influences that range from the Normal Gossip podcast to the very desert that Speedy recorded in (that Sadie depicts with the drawing on the album artwork). They’ve all got really interesting things to say about each item on the list, and you can read the whole thing below.
Along with the album, they’ve also got a new Tiny Desk Concert and you can watch that too:
Hyperpop & J-pop (Audrey)
I was getting pretty stir crazy by the time we flew out to California in March 2022, having spent the vast majority of the past two years in my house. As much as I love my home, I really love travel and new experiences. So it makes a lot of sense to me that most of what I wanted to listen to was very overstimulating and overstuffed, the type of music that is designed to get in your ears and fill up any unused parts of your brain with maximal sensation. It made me feel normal! I had a playlist called “brain melting from ears” that was eight hours of stuff like that, and I think it certainly contributed to how busy some of the basslines are on the record. Some things I remember getting an especially large amount of play are “Car Song” by Danny L Harle, “When I Rule the World” by LIZ, “Ikenai Borderline” by Walkure, “Unison” by Houshou Marine, “Paradise” by Charli XCX and Hannah Diamond, and everything by CY8ER and 100 gecs.
My CD collection c. 2002-2003 (Sadie)
I started playing in bands as a freshman in high school, and since some of the lyrics on Rabbit Rabbit relayed my early connections with music, it felt appropriate to dive into the 20-year nostalgia cycle and channel my heroes from that time. Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones, Sleater-Kinney, Trail of Dead, the Breeders, Blonde Redhead, Incubus, Radiohead, Metric, Enon, Rilo Kiley and Deerhoof all served as reference points early in the writing and pre-production process, helping me build a template of guitar and electronics, and we referred to a lot of these again as we were tracking and mixing. Oh, and of course, Cake! Yah!
Justin Gallego (Joey)
The drummer and vocalist of Seattle-based groups Dreamdecay and J.R.C.G. crafts drum parts that are melodic, bombastic, clever, and hypnotic. Gallego’s work was pretty influential to me as I approached certain sections on Rabbit Rabbit that called for my drum lines to really “sing.”
The Mojave Desert (Andy)
The “destination record” is a mode of album-making that I’ve always found quite appealing. This is a huge draw of studios like Rancho De La Luna and Sonic Ranch––places to hermetically cocoon the recording process in a setting where the work can truly thrive, unencumbered by “regular” life. The Mojave Desert is not to be underestimated, and while its depiction by Sadie in the album artwork and recorded appearances capture a slice of the desert’s essence, actually walking through it every night on our way “home” was a true daily adventure. I found myself entranced by the Mojave’s deep beauty, and after learning of the now-extinct Shasta Ground Sloth, I became obsessed. These hulking cuties pollinated the Joshua Trees by licking them with their giant tongues, and I couldn’t stop imagining them everywhere—lanky cow-sized hairballs licking the landscape. It made me feel sad for the sloths, and sad for the trees who are now missing their big buddies, but the desert today is thankfully still teeming with miraculous wildlife and beauty!
David Catching’s cooking (Audrey)
Rancho de la Luna was a pretty magic place to record for a lot of reasons, but one of them was how much of a comfortable, homey vibe studio owner and legend David Catching created for us. I’ve never been in a recording place before where we were getting delicious home-cooked meals every day, and feeling taken care of as a musician and a human being really helped me go in feeling good and ready to track parts with the best energy possible. The kitchen was right in the middle of the recording house, in between the control room and drum room, and smelling whatever he was whipping up that evening was such a wonderful incentive to get stuff done to be able to enjoy it as soon as it was ready. The in-house Rancho de la Luna mezcal helped too, of course, but having a super sweet and encouraging guy around like David putting in that extra love 100% translated to a better record.
Family-driven fiction (Sadie)
I read a little incessantly so there are other books that shaped my mindset around this record, but a trio of novels from the years leading up to Rabbit Rabbit offered extra lyrical guidance—particularly when I felt I was leaning too hard into memoir. Sarah Rose Etter’s The Book of X is about generational trauma, represented by stomachs tied into knots and meat quarries and other body horrors. Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport, a thousand page stream-of-conscious sentence, reflects on its protagonists’ intersecting lives as a daughter, a mother, and as an individual—intercut with a parallel narrative about a mountain lioness. And Ling Ma’s Severance, for its simultaneous use of nostalgia as emotional instigator and as catalyst for apocalypse, is a favorite.
Also, the giant sloth thing Andy mentioned is something I learned from I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, also set in the Mojave Desert, which I read on the flight from Philly to Palm Springs. So we can throw “desert lit” on this list too.
The desert breeze (Joey)
The desert breeze that filled the live room at Rancho De La Luna could have been another sound source if I played quietly enough. It seemed unorthodox to have the windows wide open while I tracked drums, but seeing the Christmas lights sway in the wind was a good reminder to relax and stay loose. Fan on my back wasn’t bad either.
Normal Gossip Podcast (Andy)
When the Rancho De La Luna portion of our recording session ended, Joey flew out to play some shows with Oceanator, and Sadie, Audrey, and I embarked on a journey from Joshua Tree to Tornillo, TX in Sarah Tudzin’s four-door sedan. Before departure, Joey shared with us a true gem: a (new-to-us in 2022) podcast about anonymized experiences of gossip called Normal Gossip, which has since deservedly exploded in popularity. We grew to love dissecting, discussing, and marinating in the problems of strangers on that drive, an odd but real catharsis in escaping our own feelings of uncertainty surrounding making art together in the time of COVID. It’s just a great deal of fun to listen to, and the podcast became a real presence during the Sonic Ranch era of the record. In a full circle moment, host Kelsey McKinney will be DJing at our Philadelphia listening party the day before Rabbit Rabbit comes out.
How To with John Wilson (Sadie)
As this show starts its third season, I’m reminded what a big impact the first two had on me—and that the second season almost completely overlapped with my lyrics-writing process on this record. I love the way Wilson carefully assembles visual allegories into a mosaic connecting back to the episode’s broad themes. I don’t tend to write in a straight line, and I like exploring the intersections of several concepts, so his filmmaking style really appeals to me. On Rabbit Rabbit I tried to zoom in on scenes and sounds of Philadelphia—trash, traffic, dive bars, neighbors—and I’m sure that documentarian eye was influenced by John Wilson’s show. He’s also very good at quickly pivoting from very funny to very somber, something I always admire in other people’s work and try to incorporate into my own.
Final Fantasy XIV (Audrey)
At the time we were writing and recording the album, Speedy Ortiz was one of the two main collaborative efforts I had in my life; the other was playing a video game. I got into FFXIV as a way to try to socialize in 2020 during lockdown, and succeeded in making a lot of great friends through it, who I could spend time with without leaving my house. By late 2021 and early 2022, I was a member of a raid group—a small number of people who dedicate a lot of energy to trying to complete the hardest content in the game. While the purpose and output were clearly very different than an artistic and musical group, doing the two things at once made me think a lot about communication, negotiation, and what “progress” and “success” could mean in different group spaces. In music, you have a lot more room for imperfection and flexibility, and playing a much more regimented video game made me really appreciate that and try to explore that in recording. I’m pretty burnt out on the MMO now, but it did shape the way I was thinking about life then.
EarthBound/Mother 2 (Andy)
Coming out of the strange, scary primordial zone of early pandemic time and into a 2022 ripe with possibility but still very uncertain, I found myself headed into the sessions for Rabbit Rabbit craving familiarity, but also longing for new adventure. While deep in the throes of workshopping the songs in Philadelphia in February 2022, Nintendo reissued EarthBound for Switch online. This was a rare game to me even when I was a child––I had heard of it, and the Mother series writ large, but had never dabbled. Playing it for the first time during these sessions left me with a deep appreciation for the odd story, magical setting, and absolutely unbelievably groundbreaking music and sound design, even for today. Upon my discovery that the game shared a composer (Hirokazu Tanaka) with hugely influential Mario Paint, it all started to click. EarthBound, however, takes many daring chances musically, especially in the world of sampling and interpolating past musical ideas and influences, as outlined eloquently in this video. The fact that I played through an entire game rife with cleverly disguised, mangled elements from universally beloved pop canon, yet I didn’t even notice upon first listen…that is a testament to the EarthBound team’s willingness to experiment, and this was hugely influential to my mindset when working on this album.
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Speedy are celebrating the LP release with an in-store at Rough Trade NYC tonight (9/1) at 6 PM ET, and their headlining tour brings them back to NYC on December 16 at Bowery Ballroom. All dates:
Speedy Ortiz — 2023 Tour Dates
Sep 1 – New York, NY @ Rough Trade (in-store)
Sep 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^
Sep 6 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s ^
Sep 7 – Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom (co-headline with Pile) ^
Sep 8 – Somerville, MA @ ONCE at the Center For Arts at The Armory ^
Sep 10 – Troy, NY @ No Fun ^
Sep 11 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House ^
Sep 13 – Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo *
Sep 14 – Toronto, ON @ Rivoli *
Sep 15 – Lakewood, OH @ Mahall’s *
Sep 16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Roboto Project *
Sep 18 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups *
Sep 19 – Grand Rapids, MI @ The Pyramid Scheme *
Sep 21 – Cudahy, WI @ X-Ray Arcade *
Sep 22 – Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop *
Sep 23 – Louisville, KY @ The Whirling Tiger *
Sep 25 – Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR #
Sep 26 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor #
Sep 27 – Columbia, SC @ New Brookland Tavern #
Sep 29 – Savannah, GA @ Lodge of Sorrows #
Sep 30 – Birmingham, AL @ TrimTab Brewing Company #
Oct 1 – Memphis, TN @ Growlers #
Oct 3 – St. Louis, MO @ The Sinkhole #
Oct 4 – Cincinnati, OH @ MOTR Pub #
Oct 6 – Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant Street #
Oct 18 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat ~
Oct 19 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel ~
Oct 20 – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook ~
Oct 21 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Purgatory ~
Oct 23 – Miami, FL @ Gramps ~
Oct 24 – Winter Park, FL @ Conduit ~
Oct 25 – New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa ~
Oct 27 – Houston, TX @ Black Magic Social Club ~
Oct 28 – Austin, TX @ The Parish – Levitation Festival
Oct 29 – Denton, TX @ Andy’s Bar ~
Oct 30 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger ~
Nov 1 – Phoenix, AZ @ Last Exit ~
Nov 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo ~
Nov 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop &
Nov 8 – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall &
Nov 9 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza &
Nov 10 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown &
Nov 11 – Vancouver, BC @ The Cobalt &
Nov 13 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux &
Nov 14 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge &
Nov 16 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall &
Nov 17 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown &
Nov 18 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck &
Nov 19 – Des Moines, IA @ xBk &
Nov 21 – Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle &
Nov 22 – Detroit, MI @ Lager House &
Dec 16 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
^ = w/ Washer
* = w/ Poolblood
# = w/ Foyer Red
~ = The Baths
& = w/ Spacemoth