Sad13 - Slugger

Pitchfork 74

While working on Speedy Ortiz’s last LP, 2015’s Foil Deer, Sadie Dupuis was emerging from an abusive relationship. But rather than reflecting on the experience, Foil Deer was a concrete decision to grow stronger. “I’m not going to write any songs about this person because they’re a piece of crap who doesn’t deserve my mental energy,” Dupuis told Pitchfork at the time. Slugger seems to be still processing past pain but it takes “Raising the Skate”’s “I’m not bossy, I’m the boss” mentality and multiplies it by 100: what results is a guide to loving oneself, surviving, and supporting others.

This empowering attitude should not come as a surprise for any fans of Speedy Ortiz. While touring Foil Deer, the band started a “help hotline” to encourage safety and accountability at their concerts. That same year, they raised money for Girls Rock Camp Foundation through an all-ages tour. But sonically, Slugger is 180 degrees from the scuzzy guitars and tangled wordplay of Speedy; Foreboding simmering is replaced by sparkling keys, dissonance is made danceable, and maybe there’s a keytar in there, who knows. Dupuis wrote and recorded the songs that would form Slugger over a two week period while living in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Her original concept was to home-record each song before entering a studio and allocating each song to a different producer. Luckily, Dupuis avoided what could have been a chaotic collage and decided to produce the album herself, adding an additional layer of autonomy to a record all about positivity, in all caps and probably punctuated with multiple exclamation points.

In some ways, Slugger is more accessible than any Speedy release. “I wanted to make songs that were the opposite of ‘Genie in a Bottle’ or ‘The Boy Is Mine,’” Dupuis has said, and Slugger definitely succeeds in this mission. Its messages are loud and clear and little is left unexplained. The downside of this is that sometimes listening to Slugger can feel like being hit over the head. Considering that every two minutes an American is sexually assaulted, this explicitness is perhaps not a bad thing, but there’s a fine line between showing and telling, and Slugger does a lot of the latter.

Take lead single “Get a Yes,” a giggling and shimmering number that spells consent out quite plainly: “I say yes if I want to/If you want to you’ve gotta get a yes.” This message perhaps seems obvious to anyone listening to Slugger; that doesn’t mean it’s not an important idea to express. “Just a Friend” works in a similar way. “Put to bed your old ideas about my friend Ben,” Dupuis chirps over a swirling sea of blips before demanding, “If you’ve got a girl who says she’s just got a friend, then you should just believe.” The song concludes with the tongue-in-cheek call to “objectify these boys,” an idea that is unfortunately left at the end. “Hype” is a protest regarding labeling and pitting women against each other. “‘Cause I just wanna hype my best friends, man. I just wanna hype my best girls.” Slugger’s transparency raises the question “just what is the album trying to accomplish?” Is it simply offering anthems to an audience who already believes and agrees with these politics? Is there anything wrong with that?

The less instructive and more oblique songs on Slugger include “<2” and the infectious “The Sting,” the former of which sounds like it could be a Speedy song. “Krampus (In Love),” which was previously released as a demo, is a holiday jingle that feels applicable and listenable year-round with truly poignant lines and imagery like “If beauty is a terror, will the snow cover the evidence of love as something beautiful?” Closing track “Coming Into Powers” is perhaps the most interesting track, a literal “fuck you pay me” declaration of empowerment. Ithaca, NY rapper Sammus joins Dupuis at the tail-end of the track, offering a welcome change in tone.

“Sure, there’s sexiness to mystique, but when it comes down to it, it’s a really dangerous way to interpret what someone wants,” Dupuis told DIY magazine. Seemingly in protest against this mode of thought, Dupuis has left little within Slugger for listeners to unpack. One of Speedy Ortiz’s strengths is that beneath all the instrumental layers, there’s a narrative puzzle to unpack. Sad13’s Slugger solves its puzzle for you, but in the hope that you will be able to go at it alone in the future.