Speedy Ortiz: "I thought 'Twerp Verse' was gonna be Deftones-influence, and instead it's Squeeze-influenced"

Sadie Dupuis is all-go basically all of the time. Hot on the heels of her solo debut, her band Speedy Ortiz are also back with a new 'un - and it didn't turn out quite as they initially planned...

Hey Sadie, how are you all at the mo? Have you had a busy 2018 so far?

It hasn't gotten too, too busy just yet--just the usual necessary evil preparations for putting out a new record. Making music videos, finalizing the tour supports, getting together artwork for t-shirts and posters and all that fun stuff. Making the most of my Netflix subscription before I spend the rest of the year in a van. And we just spent a week at SXSW which was fun - it was the first time we'd played a bunch of the songs from 'Twerp Verse' in front of an audience.

Congrats on your new album, ’Twerp Verse’ - does it feel to have been a long time in the making?

It's the longest a record's taken me, personally, only because we did it twice - we recorded it once in September 2016, and then again with new songs in February 2017. The first time we recorded it, we tracked some older songs - one of them dates back to 2006, even - so in that sense, it was a long time in the making. The second time we recorded it, we focused on a bunch of newer songs that paid respect to the political anxieties that lodge themselves in my brain every day. That felt more honest and reflective of where our priorities are lately.

How did you juggle working on this and your solo record side by side? It must’ve been full on for a while.

They weren't really happening at the same time. I home recorded the Sad13 album in January 2016, and all the overdubs were finished by February. We didn't start working on Twerp Verse until April of that year, and didn't start tracking til September. So I had a bit of downtime to mix and master the record, do the album artwork and music videos, all the fun stuff I described in your first question. And while I was touring that record most of 2017, there was plenty of downtime to dedicate to Speedy. I might just be an unrepentant workaholic though.