Speedy Ortiz takes their new album Rabbit Rabbit on the road at Arts at the Armory on Friday, 8 September 2023.

Washer and TIFFY stay hydrated in the opening slots.

ONCE popped up at Arts at the Armory to bring the fine citizens of Somerville a night of music from local-ish legends Speedy Ortiz.

The former house of military preparation remains one of the most unique venues in the greater Boston area.

Huge space, Apollo moon mission-style duct work, and a street-facing facade that looks like it’s fit to safeguard Lawrence of Arabia from passing marauders for a fortnight or two.

Strong pours on the Sauvignon Blanc were wanting, but the cheapo beer was cheap enough. Plus, Sea Salt Caramels on offer! What sort of place is this?

TIFFY

The four- or five-strong indie rockers TIFFY have an album on the way. And maybe a single in a couple of weeks?

In the meantime you can tide yourself over with a listen to their self-titled EP and the standalone single “Social Sliding”.

Tall walls of sound washed over the crowd in waves of hooks, fills, and semi-extended solos.

TIFFY never unbuttons the solos for too deep of a V, staying within the general post punk parameters of 4, 5, 6 measures and then you’re out.

Don’t get it twisted, this is a guitar band all the way through, but they prefer the composed over the improvisational. Not shooting for the astral plains.

And those tall walls of sound better be really tall because playing Arts at the Armory is like launching a toy boat into the Atlantic. Gobs of space to fill, you can experience something like vertigo staring up into the airy void above. Maybe a spunkier lightshow or Cirque du Soleil-style monkeys swinging from the rafters would fill it out more?

Washer

Washer, reportedly “a band,” brought a two-person attack with guitar and drums to Arts at the Armory.

We’ll write up a lot of bands that come into a gig one or two members short, and suddenly, they’re a dynamic duo just looking to rock out. Science Penguin and Love Shamans come to mind lately. It’s not a good or bad thing; whether or not the reduced lineup works is obvious enough by what’s coming through the speakers.

Washer are in the legit two-piece category though. No one was out with Covid-19. It’s a duo by design and you hear it in minimalist songwriting that leans on a lot of hype-energy rhythm telepathy between guitarist Mike Quigley and drummer Kieran McShane. The set was full of sharp cuts, fast twists, punk yelps, and sprint finishes.

Hear that and more on their latest LP Improved Means To Deteriorated Ends. Shout out to Nalgene water bottles. Stay hydrated on the tail end of a mini-tour that takes them to the Monkey House in Vermont before heading to the Midwest after a few weeks off.

Speedy Ortiz

On the topic of new albums, Rabbit Rabbit. Indie rock veterans Speedy Ortiz are touring their new album and they’re staring down about three solid months on the road from September through November. The four-piece isn’t fucking around.

Hump Day News wrote up their song “Scabs” before Rabbit Rabbit dropped. Looking back, looks like we dropped the ‘s’ in the title of the related post. You know, no big deal. Happens all the time, But you feel like there’s a little egg on your face when you make these mistakes with a band fronted by Sadie Dupuis, who’s surrounded by a bit of a literary halo. She’s got a volume of her own poetry and ended up on the cover of the New Yorker? Anyway, we’ve corrected the typo…

Speedy Ortiz specializes in a kind of boutique indie rock that takes its time to build worlds rather than wrap the listener in sonic wallpaper. There are movements within these songs, or acts, fitted into the three-, four-, or five-minute running times. The musical textures will be familiar to music fans who’ve cut their teeth on indie rock in the 90s and 00s. The real trick with these songs comes in the parsing, little vignettes of sound waiting to be unwrapped.

It’s been more than a decade since this writer first pronounced the Speedy Ortiz project defunct. Far from it, after all these years, it’s the gift that keeps giving.

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